RandyN

babanie, First off, thanks for the congrats. Are the questions in Saunders easier than in NCLEX? Yes and no. One of the things I thought going into the NCLEX, based on reading/hearing other people, was that the NCLEX questions were much more difficult than what I was used to. The difficulty of the NCLEX questions followed a bell curve (i.e., some questions were very easy, some difficult, and most questions fell in the middle). Don't expect to see pure knowledge questions on the NCLEX. Instead, expect to see questions that require you to have the knowledge and apply it. Personally, the NCLEX test wasn't any more easier or difficult than what I was used to in nursing school. The difficulty is the NCLEX covers all of nursing school and you just don't know what specific topics will be covered. If people knew the topics covered in their NCLEX, most would be able to study that content and have little difficulty passing the test. In short, some of the Saunders questions are easier and some are more difficult than the NCLEX questions. The value lies in understanding the rationales for each question. If I were going to use only 3 resources to study for the NCLEX, I would choose Saunders (for content and practice questions), Kaplan (strategies and practice questions), and LaCharity's "Prioritization, Delegation, and Assignment" (the best written of any of the books I looked at and even though there weren't that many questions specific to the title, working through this book makes you think more about why you're selecting each answer). Anyway, sorry for the length of the reply and best of luck on your test.

djavaross, I just took my exam this past Friday (3/11) and passed with 75 questions. I mainly used Saunders and Kaplan for studying but spent the majority of my time doing the Saunders' Nclex practice questions on the CD. Doing as many questions as possible and reading and understanding the rationales for each question helped me more than anything else. Best of luck on your exam (it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting based on everything I've heard/read).