Hello all! I took the NCLEX-RN on Saturday 2/14/15 and I just found out this morning that I passed! The computer shut off at 156 I believe and took me just over 2hrs with no breaks. I had a ton of alternate format questions like SATA, drag and drop, and others. I just thought I'd give some advice from a different perspective. I didn't just graduate nursing school. I graduated in April 2013 and between life and my husband being in the military, I had to put my career on hold. We were finally in a place that I could take the next step towards my career. I'll admit, I was really nervous about taking the nclex with how long it's been since I graduated. I felt as if I was completely going against the odds and I prepared myself for the fact that I may fail because of how long I waited to take it.
I received my ATT on January 15th and I scheduled my exam for February 15th. I had been studying off and on for a month before I got my ATT but I didn't really start hard core studying until my exam my scheduled. I honestly studied every single day, but had to work around my work schedule which was tough but I just committed to studying anytime I wasn't working. I thought about taking a review course because I thought it might help my odds but in the end it was just too expensive. These are the items I used to study:
--Saunders Comp Review for the NCLEX-RN Examination 6th edition (used the online resources too)
--Strategies for Test Success (saunders 3rd edition)
--NCLEX-RN Content Review Guide Kaplan (Kindle version, FREE on Amazon, used on my mac)
--Nclex Mastery App for iPhone (paid for the full version)
--35 page review that I found on this site!
As far as my study strategy goes, I was more concerned with content because I needed a serious refresher. I'd say the first few weeks I focused mainly on that and then the last week or so I did a lot of questions using the Saunders online resources through Evolve and going over everything once more including meds more in depth.
When going over content, I used my study strategies that I had in nursing school. For me it helps to read over the material and then write it down on a notepad in my own words. It allows me to write the most important things and it just helps info stick better for me (I went through two basic sized notebooks).
I wouldn't suggest waiting to take your exam but if life happens and you don't have another option, just know that it is still possible to take the exam after being out of school for a good bit. I highly recommend all the study materials I used. Saunders was a great, easy read and covered all the important stuff. I registered my book on the Elsevier Evolve website and had access to a ton of study questions which were so helpful. The test taking strategy book was super helpful in recognizing wrong answers and I definitely used those skills on the NCLEX. The Kaplan content review I read through (didn't take notes) but i liked how they set up the medication chapter (I did take notes, they grouped meds into their classifications). One thing I found surprising and sucky was that the Nclex did not have both names of the drugs, they only had the generic name. You really need to focus on those and recognize prefixes, suffixes, and root words to decide classifications of meds because the brand name is not there to help you out.
Well now that I've written my own book (lol), I hope that this is helpful to some and is encouraging at the same time. As long as you work hard, nothing is impossible! Good luck everyone!! :)
