My NCLEX-RN Study System

Alrighty, now that I'm a mere week away from my NCLEX date (YIKES!!!) I'm here to post about my NCLEX study system.

This is definitely not the only way to study, heck its probably not even the best, but it's what I did. And we'll see if it works when I take boards!

So here's the broad timeline of my studying. Unfortuantely I had no way of knowing a concrete date for me to take the NCLEX due to some stupid school issues with releasing my certificate of completion to my state (in order to get my authorization to test).
But I knew ahead of time that there was going to be about a 6 week time period from graduation to when I could test. (Turns out it was more like 2 months and a day).

I graduated the middle of December and did absolutely no studying for the next week and half. I went on vacation, I relaxed, I watched TV that I'd missed in the past 16 months. Granted this is not for everyone. Some people don't want to, or can't take a break because they have to (get to) take the NCLEX soon after graduation. I'm actually pretty glad I had a bit of time because I was braindead after finally finishing school.

December 27th I started doing Kaplan Q bank questions.
I did my first Kaplan Question Trainer test Jan 1. The question trainers 1-6 were required by my school prior to releasing our certificate of completion. But I did QT 1-3 the first week of January.

I also started going through my Saunders comprehensive review book.

This is the book that I'd seen people recommend for content review. It breaks down each body system into chapters, with meds in the next chapter for the body system. There are chapters on fundamentals, maternity, peds and mental health in addition to adult. I felt like I needed this review. Because there is just a ton of info I couldn't remember when going through Kaplan Q bank questions.

In the beginning I did a couple of chapters a day, and then slacked off a bit but recently I'm back to doing 1-2 big chapters or a couple of smaller chapters everyday. I read, highlight and do the questions at the end of the chapter.
**A disclaimer about Saunders: I feel that the questions in this book are way too easy! There are good to review concepts you just learned.. but I don't think that they're on par with NCLEX or Kaplan questions. So keep that in mind if you just choose one study system.

I went to the 4 day Kaplan review session which was included in my school tuition, but anyone is free to take if you pay for it. This session basically included info about the test, how to test, what's required and then the Kaplan Decision Tree. After you learn the decision tree it is basically just going through question after question with the teacher. She explains how to go through the question, how to think about it and what the correct answer is and why. It was long.. and kind of hard to sit through but I think it did help me.

After the review I finished QT 4-6. Then I continued to do q bank questions each day as well. I aimed to do about 50-100 questions per day.. and I did okay some days and others not that great.

Towards the end I was doing Saunders content review chapters each day, and making qbank quizzes of 25-50 questions.

I eventually dropped down to just Q Bank questions. Then I did nothing to study the 24 hours before the test. I reviewed an RN exam cram sheet. Looked over lab values the morning off and off I went.

The exam shut off at 75 questions and I was sooo relieved. Even it meant I had failed at least I was DONE.

I found out the next day that I had passed!

WOOHOO. Officially an RN.

How did you study for the NCLEX?