Kaplan vs Saunders- revisited...after NCLEX

[Drmy4ever]

I got a lot of valuable information from this site and now it's give back time.

I took my NCLEX on 1/9 in CA, my school Fed Ex my transcript to the BRN on the 12th, BRN entered my transcript information on the 18th, and my result was posted on 1/19 on the BRN web site. I can talk about the emotion going into the exam and how I felt afterward, but it's very much like everyone else... so I'll just give my two cents on the programs that I used and how they'd or had not helped me in prepping for the exam.

I took a 6 weeks Kaplan course (cost $455) beginning in mid-October. Each class was about 3-4hr long and we mainly went thru tons of review questions and some content review. The course comes with a Trainer CD which has 7 tests, ranges from 75 - 265 questions. (I did the first 6 tests but could get myself to do the last one since it was 265 questions long). I also bought the Q-bank w/ the Kaplan course, which is another 1000 online questions and I did all of them.

I also bought Saunders-Comprehensive Review since it's highly recommended. But since there are SO MANY questions in this program, I only used the study mode to review contents on Cardiac, Peds & L&D. I did close to 1000 questions in Saunders.

After taking the test, I felt that Kaplan's questions styles were very similar to the NCLEX's questions (the way that the questions were worded). However, the answers choices in the NCLEX were much harder to choose from. The strategy that was taught in class and on the Kaplan web site did helped me in narrowing down quite a few answers.

Saunders's questions, on the other hand, were nothing like the NCLEX. Other than providing me the content review, I really didn't feel that it did anything to prep me for the exam.

Here's some stats. I did a total of 2800 questions prior to the exam (my goal was 3000). I took the test in a 1 hr and 45 min. (spent too much time on a few questions in the beginning) and the computer shut down at 75 questions.

Please understand that I'm by no mean trying to discourage the use of Saunders because if you need content review and if you have the time, then you should definitely go thru Saunders first. However, in my opinion, Kaplan was the program that really prepped me for the exam and I would highly recommend it. BTW........... by His grace .......I passed!

[Matilda50]

How were the NCSBN questions.