Saunders Comprehensive Review for NCLEX? Its dashing my hopes!

[TXRN44]

I passed the RN program in May. I always did really well in nursing school. I made mostly A's with a few B's here and there. I have studied so hard and made a 90 on my HESI-RN exit exam, so I thought I was going to be totally prepared for the NCLEX. I bought the Saunders 5th edition NCLEX book and before reading I have took several of the NCLEX like exams it provides and I have been scoring in the high 60's low 70's. EEEK. I am devastated and it has dashed my confidence. There are so many things on there that either we didn't go over in school, or we didn't go in depth on. So now I am seeing my flaws and trying to study to recover. I am doing the HURST review next week, so I am hoping it will help. I was really hoping that me doing so well on the HESI-RN exit exam would be a good indicator of my success on NCLEX but I am now realizing after doing the Saunders exam, it was not. Is the Saunders pretty much on track with NCLEX? Or is the HESI? It blows my mind how I can do so good on one and bomb the other. All I know to do is to read that 1000 page Saunders book for a while and postpone the NCLEX because after reading Saunders exams I do NOT feel ready! Please tell me that this book is just "harder" than most? Any advice?

[NurseNightOwl, BSN, RN]

The Hurst review will increase your confidence exponentially. Saunders is very overwhelming -- it's all important content and technically any of it is up for grabs on the NCLEX -- but it's very, very detailed and is not right for everyone and their study tactics. If you feel like it's overwhelming, find another study source -- I have both the Saunders yellow book and the Hogan 2nd edition, and I prefer the Hogan a million times to Saunders as far as NCLEX studying goes -- it has just as much information in it (if not more), but it flags very specific information as "most likely to be on the NCLEX" so you can sort through all of that info and just focus on what is most important -- that makes everything much more manageable (at least for me).