Where to purchase practice tests...

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Hi NPs, since you all are obviously DONE with your training, I hope that somebody can direct me here.

I have a bit of school to go yet, but i want to start building up my pile of study guides and such for my eventual boards.

i know i saw others on here talking about having bought 'bundles' of exams from somewhere. can anybody direct me? also, i will be taking ANCC as my school directs so I don't know if that will make a difference.

Lastly, I have read that Barkley is better for the ANCC than Fitzgerald. anyone care to comment on that?

thanks so much!

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.

The APEA Q Bank allows you to study questions in specific body systems, as well as the non clinical questions. In terms of actual reviews, I feel like Barkley CD's content on the non-clinical portions are much better than Fitzgerald. I also believe the ANCC puts out their own content and questions, and my belief is that if the people that write and give the test are giving you practice content, it's silly not to utilize it.

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Specializes in family practice.

i bought the FamilyNPPrep/ Exam edge. They had the 10, 20 and 30 set exam questions. You could also get coupon codes for 10% off. there were some repeated questions but not that many in my 10 set.

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Specializes in Internal Medicine.

Great advice as well Honeykrown. I used ExamEdge for the AANP exam, but am aware that they also have ANCC exams as well. Dollar for dollar, this is by far the cheapest practice exam resource out there, and at least for me, I felt like they were incredibly valuable in helping me prepare for the real thing.

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Specializes in Cardiac, Home Health, Primary Care.

If I could do it all over again I'd probably go with the Q Bank for my last 2-3 months before the exam and a good practice question book (I've heard Fitz is good) for practice during the semester.

Exam Edge is ok and a better value than almost anything BUT I bought a 20 question pack and had several repeated questions (usually in the same exam so it was very noticeable). I'd say this happened in close to half of my exams and sometimes 2 questions were repeated in the same exam. That would mean 4 questions I either got or missed regardless. That can be aggravating to miss 2 extra questions because the test repeated them. Also some of the questions weren't clear or had very obvious wrong answers which takes out some of the challenge. Even though I selected AANP I got several non clinical questions every exam too (and I didn't study much non clinical stuff cause it's AANP!!). I scored mid 70's or so on these towards the end.

I took a practice exam from APEA which I believe consisted of their Q Bank questions. These questions made me think, didn't have obvious right answers, and we're all clinically based. I made a 79% on this exam. I really liked the breakdown of what I missed at the end.

If you give my Exam Edge grades a few extra points for repeated and non clinical questions it looks like the two even out a bit.

As far as quality, though, I kind of wish I'd spent my $100 on 3 months of unlimited Q Bank.

And if you go with Q Bank I applied for AANP in July and graduated December 13. When I got my ATT the first exam date available was December 30. So for timing when to get Q Bank I'd got for at least 2-3 months before you graduate so it's time out pretty well.

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