Kaplan vs. NCLEX

Nursing Students NCLEX

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Hi all,

I graduated December 2019 and I am scheduled to take the NLCEX at the end of January. I have been seeing people say that NCLEX is easier than Kaplan !!?? For anyone who has already taken the NCLEX, is this true?? I have been using Kaplan for about 2 weeks now and I must say, this content is pretty hard. I do around 60-75 Q Bank questions a day (4 days/week) and then look over the rationales. I still haven't used the book yet. I honestly haven't really met the 60% passing score and this is making me nervous.

Here are the results:

Management of Care: 45% (Ouch)

Safety and Infection Control: 78%

Health Promotion and Maintenance: 56%

Psychological: 68%

Basic Care and Comfort: 38% (Wow...)

Pharmacology and P.N.: 54%

Physiological: 51%

Reduction of Risk Potential: 54%

Diagnostic Exam: 61%

NCLEX RN PRactice Test: 70%

Questions Trainers averaged out 50%

My category scores are really not impressive... I take the NCLEX in 4 weeks. Can anyone give me advice on ways to study using Kaplan?

Specializes in Postpartum, PICU.

Stick with Kaplan! Make sure you do as many practice questions as possible. The NCLEX really is about learning how to take questions and the more you practice the better you will do. To be completely honest I HATED Kaplan at first. But my school paid for it so I felt obligated to use it. I thought it was incredibly hard and it gave me so much anxiety for the real thing. Honestly my scores were pretty similar to yours until the very end when something clicked and I magically started reaching those benchmarks they wanted us to reach. Don't just read the rationales, but actually try to understand them. Practice your lowest categories the most. I eventually supplemented with U-World. But honestly I think Kaplan is what really saved me as much as I hated it at first. So keep going and you'll get there I promise! Even if you need an extra week or two from your current test date.

Personally I did find Kaplan to be way harder than the NCLEX. I remember getting like a 28% in one of the last question trainers or categories on something after I had been doing so well and I was devastated... but I passed the NCLEX in 75 questions on my first try ?

Good luck!!

I was also required to complete a Kaplan course as part of my curriculum for nursing school. I hated it at first, but warmed up to it once I was studying on my own. I found that using Kaplan/ u-world combination worked the best for me in helping me pass NCLEX-RN. I was never the best taker, but Kaplan def helped. I liked the questions in Kaplan better, BUT I enjoyed the U-world rationales way more.

The Kaplan rep. that came to our school said if you're getting above 50% on the trainers and overall consistently, then you should be good

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