Dear all of the wonderful people at allnurses.com. I have been browsing this website since I started studying for the NCLEX. It's really good to know that there are so many good nurses and future nurses out there. I passed the NCLEX on first try with 130 questions, and I want to give some advice back to those who helped me and the allnurses.com community. First, I mainly studied with Kaplan material for two months. I read and memorized the whole course book over a two month period. I suggest to read the course book even though it's really long and boring. However, I felt it was very important to review it as it helps to build a solid foundation before jumping into NCLEX style questions. Also, I watched all of the videos that Kaplan review class had provided for me online, while I was reading the book. I went through my weak areas first, then my strong areas. The most important thing is to practice the NCLEX style questions. I have studied and memorized around 1000 of them. I found them really helpful because when I went into the real NCLEX exam, I could remember all of the questions that I studied and memorized. I went through all of qbank, and some of qtrainer, but I never had a consistent 65% or above in most of my areas. My average was around 55%, however, I kept doing it and reviewed every question regardless of the fact that I got it wrong or right, and I did some of them twice, until I got a 100%. There is a med list that I found from allnurses.com in an excel form. I tried to find it again, but I forgot which thread I saw it on previously. It helped me A LOT. I mean A LOT. Even though I read all of the medications from the Kaplan course book, I forgot most of it prior to the beginning of the exam. The last few days, I really concentrated (2 hours every night), to just go over all of the medications. I could tell that two of the medications that I studied showed up on my real NCLEX exam. If I knew that, I wouldn't have spent all of the time making flash cards of medications from the Kaplan book. Also, I found it really helpful to memorize the infection mnemonics. Those really helped me a lot in NCLEX. I had a ton of infection-control questions in my real test. Those mnemonics helped me to pinpoint the essential information that I needed about infection control. I would suggest that for those who are like me, and really need content in order to pass the NCLEX. I would suggest doing Hurst review rather than Kaplan, because I heard a lot of good things about it, and Kaplan is more like teaching you how to answer NCLEX style questions using their strategies. However, they never go into any content at all in the class. So I reviewed all of the content on my own, with the book and the video that they provided. I truly believe that anyone who can pass nursing school can get through NCLEX. There is no tricks or easier way around it. It takes hard work, time, focus, concentration, determination, constant effort, and most importantly, never doubt about yourself. There were so many times that I doubted when I would be ready for the exam. However, yourself is the biggest critic, and you will know when it's time. Trust me on that. One comment that I read on allnurses.com is that 95% of the work to pass the NCLEX comes from yourself, and 5% comes from the review that is provided from the information. Thank you so much for everyone on allnurses.com. May my prayers go out to those who are currently an RN, or people who are soon to be taking the test. Good luck!
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I send to all those who requested today..sorry for the late response cause i was out of town without my laptop...~~