When to start studying for NCLEX

Two things: You'll never understand any of it now anyway (if you do, you don't need to attend nursing school), trust me... and you'll forget it if you start too soon. I started at the beginning of THIS last semester and took four weeks off when school got crazy~it will!~, and found that I had already forgot a lot of what I had studied. Not the big ideas, no, but the strategies which are arguably more important than the content.

Relax, you'll have plenty to do to keep yourself afloat!

If you've started nursing school, then you're already starting to prepare for NCLEX! I would recommend getting an NCLEX prep book, but don't worry about studying it so much as doing the practice questions. Get one with a companion cd so that you can choose to do practice NCLEX questions on whatever topic you are currently doing in school. That way you can get used to those kinds of questions, but it will also help you review the content you're currently going over.

This is what I did - and it worked for me - but I grew up in the hospital, so nothing in nursing school was very 'new'.

I bought a Princeton Review NCLEX book with the CD in the back.

During med surg 1 and 2, obi pedi, and psych, I would do the book work for school and then go do the applicable chapter in the princeton review book. It was very nice - some practice nclex questions that lined right up with whatever I was going over, and a resource to line up the a&p, patho, and pharm.

Then after pharmacology (which was 1/2 way through the program), I bought the Saunders box of questions. I divided them up into things I'd already covered (for the most part) and sectioned the rest according to the rest of the classes. Then I'd do a card a day (one card has 3 questions). One card, every day - went through the last six on Sunday - then started with a new card on Monday.

After graduation, I read back through my Princeton Review book with all of my answers filled in and any notes that I had jotted. I started taking the 8 sample tests on the CD in the back of the book. I read through my pharmacology cheats - the endings, the uses, the toxicities.

For seven days before the NCLEX, I looked at the lab values in the back of the HESI book.

Two days before the test I locked all the books up and went to the movies, the swimming pool, and bowling with my children.

I never, ever EVER spent more than 30 minutes studying - except when I took practice tests (165 questions)... but then I only did the practice test and reviewed my answers, no other studying that day.

I passed with 75 questions on the first try.