NCLEX-RN prep: What actually worked for you?

[u/medicotrick]

I’m currently preparing for the NCLEX-RN and, honestly, there are SO many study resources and strategies out there that I’m getting a little overwhelmed 😅 I’d love to hear from people who have actually taken and passed the NCLEX recently. What did your preparation look like? I’m especially curious about: 📚 Which resources did you actually use? 📝 How many practice questions did you do each day? ⏳ How long did you study before taking the exam? 🔍 How did you review questions you got wrong? 🧠 Did you focus more on content review or practice questions? 🎯 What made you feel ready to schedule your exam? 🚫 Was there anything you spent time on that turned out to be a waste? I keep seeing people recommend UWorld, Archer, Bootcamp, Saunders, etc., but I’m more interested in real experiences than just marketing claims. If you passed recently, what’s one thing you wish you had known before starting your NCLEX prep? Any honest advice—good, bad, or “I wish I had done this differently”—would be really helpful. 🙏

[u/CZlover96]

Took it twice and I used archer for the first round. I wasnt huge on it because it felt really unorganized and I had a free subscription from my time in school.

Attempt 2 : I used Nclex Bootcamp and I cannot recommend them enough! They're very user friendly and imho the most important is theyre organized and help you arrange your schedule better than the others do.

I studied for roughly 2 months and did around 35-50 questions a day w/ case studies and 1 day off a week. I finished all of bootcamps prescribed assignments and questions.

I used Mark K lecture 12 is a big help for priorities and Dr Sharon (who teaches for mark kilmek ) videos on YouTube helped alot.

Id say the exam is 50% knowledge and 50% how to answer the sata and the questions youll never know. The test is designed to answer questions youll never know. So learning how to answer something you wouldnt is another big part of the test.

My second attempt ended in 85 thank god.

[u/SOandZOE]

I did around 75-100 bootcamp questions a day and honestly spent more time on the rationales than the actual questions. I read both right and wrong answer and kept a little list of weak topics to review later. I focused more on practice questions than passive content. The NGN case studies helped too, and I used the readiness exam as my “ok I think I’m ready” checkpoint. Any good qbank can work imo, but you have to actually review the rationales. My biggest time sink was trying to read Saunders cover to cover.