hey guys......... :) this one is gonna be long ..... i am about to rant .. so be prepared n read along at your own risk so i will start with the fact that i m a foreign nurse ... its been around 4 years since i finished my studies ...so i had pretty much involuntarily deleted everything from my mind that i had ever studied !! therefore i set aside around 3 months to get prepared for nclex ... immediately after christmas i started my nclex journey .... my plan was to focus on my content first n foremost .. i started with saunders ... it took me around a month n half to finish it !!! i read it page to page !! let me add .. around 12 hours each day !!! with saunders i set my base .. then i started kaplan's qbank ... my scores in kaplan are : diagnostic 62% qbank 60% qt1 74% qt2 76% qt3 65% qt4 69% qt5 67% qt6 68% qt7 65% i also did pda .. just the 18 chapters... it hits home the P n D questions .... i got anywhere from around 50's to 70's ... i also did lippincott 3500 .. just the alternate questions i was freaking out before taking the qtrainers..... after my scores i settled down a bit cuz i knew i was above the passing standard.... believe me i was a mess.... when my test date was approaching i was so borderline... one moment i would study like i was on 5min energy drink ... next i would sulk around !!! i must have made my husband miserable !! i was positive i would fail .... it was so overwhelmining .... only the fact that my content n qtrainer score were what kept me positive ... . i have always been a crammer so i got around 1 hour of sleep last night ... even then i just could not fall asleep.... so this morning i said a prayer to god n left everything in fates's hand ..... god bless my husband who took leave from his work n waited for me outside the test centre :) i got the following around 15 sata's 10 prioritazation 2 delegation 3 ekg 3 exhibit 2 calculations 15 drugs some teaching questions other's were just here n there and yess i found nclex easier than kaplan ... infact so much so that i was positive that my test would end in 75 questions around halfway through .... i really took a long time getting to the 75 question though ... around 2;45 hrs .. i dont know how i would have finished had i gone beyound 75 !! the questions were pretty straight n easy ... i was like woahhh m i flunking this !!! if i had to pick one and say which did nclex resemble most ... it would probably be kaplan .... the wording was similar . not the questions ... but yes doing kaplan had made me prepared for nclex i dont know why but i had a good feeling once i finished my xm ... cuz i got around 5 straight prioritazation questions from 70 to 75 .... and i was panicking coz i had too little time if my xm went beyound 75 so i was answering without thinking much .. just like how i would have had i been taking it at home !! BUT ... after 75 question the screen went blue ... n i was positive that i had passed ...... just a gut feeling :) so ... i rushed home ... and tried to register n got the good pop up .. went out to have lunch ..n a few shots ..... i had truely worked sooooo hard ... as much as 12 hours a day .... around 15 hrs towards the end ... i really wanted to get this over with ... i didnt know if i could take this again .... most importantly coz i am going back home after 2 years ... i just wanted to put this behind me n enjoy my time back home :).... next week i m going back home i really want thank all the people here in allnurses ... u guys are great ... :) during my most despair state i found motivation to go on by reading the experiences of people here in allnurses ... thats why i wanted to give back to this community n share my experience here..... when i got hopeless i would read about people passing and be a bit more motivated to study n get hope from comparing scores :).... to all the people studying for the test .... it not really as hard as u think .... be calm.. just imagine as if u were giving it as your home ... and ALL THE VERY BEST :)