Here’s a fun game: Google the search phrase “NCLEX-RN review course” or “NCLEX-PN review course” and check out the astronomical number of results that pop up. There are literally a million (plus change).
Actually, that’s not such a fun game. Because when you’re a student nurse in training and your career hinges on finding a good, reputable NCLEX review course to prepare you to take on this high-stakes exam, the last thing you need is to feel utterly overwhelmed. (You already have the pharmacology section to do that for you.)
Don’t fret. There may be 1,340,000 Google search results for NCLEX-RN review course, but the team here at Brainscape knows how to sniff out the quality ones!
In this article, we’ll give you tips for choosing the right review course for you, as well as what we consider to be the best NCLEX review courses and tools available.
These recommendations have been carefully chosen by our experienced team of NCLEX prep nerds, led by Justine Buick, The NCLEX Tutor, a qualified Registered Nurse with a Masters of Science in Nursing, which she earned with honors from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Features Of A Great NCLEX-RN Review Course
- Offered by qualified, experienced individuals or organizations
- Has been around for a while
- Written in accordance with the most up-to-date NCSBN test plan
- Explains the content well and in an engaging fashion
- Has NCLEX tutors with recent or active clinical experience
- Has instructors readily available for assistance
- Has good student reviews
- Covers both content and test-taking strategies
Tip 1: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Are Offered By Qualified, Experienced Individuals Or Organizations
It’s simple. You’ll want your NCLEX review prep to be offered by an individual or organization that has demonstrated expertise in nursing, medicine, and healthcare.
The more educated and experienced they are, the more you can benefit from their advice and, therefore, the more prepared you’ll be to take the NCLEX. So make sure your instructors are Registered Nurses with at least a Master's Degree in Nursing (or a related field, like education).
Tip 2: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Have Been Around For A While
Time is one of the best tests of the mettle of an NCLEX review prep course. Because if it isn’t all that good at helping students, it’ll have a low pass rate. And if it has a low pass rate for the NCLEX, it won’t recruit new students, which will see it fade into obscurity.
The best NCLEX review courses, therefore, are those that have a few years under their belt and a demonstrated track record of helping students pass the NCLEX, as well as recommendations from experienced instructors who can vouch for them. They are also dynamic: constantly refined and updated to iron out any UX (user experience) wrinkles, while remaining consistent with the most up-to-date NCSBN test plan.
This brings us neatly to our next point ...
Tip 3: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Are Written In Accordance With The Most Up-To-Date NCSBN Test Plan
The very last thing you want is to spend weeks, if not months, trudging through an NCLEX review prep course only to discover that it hasn’t prepared you properly for the exam. So you’ll want to make sure that the one you choose is designed per the most recent NCSBN test plan for the NCLEX-RN or NCLEX-PN exam.
In English: you want NCLEX review prep that teaches you what you can expect to be tested on in the NCLEX today. Avoid old, stuffy courses that change little over the years and refuse to keep up with the times. This is especially important considering the recent introduction of Next Generation NCLEX, the new line of exam questioning, by the NCSBN!
(The National Council of State Boards of Nursing or NCSBN is the independent, regulatory organization responsible for, amongst other things, administering nursing licensure examinations like the NCLEX.)
Tip 4: The Best NCLEX Review Prep Courses Explain The Content Well And In An Engaging Fashion
Right, so you’ve found a few NCLEX review prep providers that are experienced and qualified, and whose content is relevant and up-to-date. But this could all mean nothing if the review course doesn’t take the content and explain it in a way that is coherent, succinct, and accessible to everyone.
We’ve all had those bad teachers who have single-handedly managed to reduce an interesting subject to a near-comatose experience. Similarly, NCLEX review prep that invests little to no time in making its content understandable and engaging could compromise your ability to do well, or even pass the NCLEX.
Tip 5: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Have Instructors With Recent Or Active Clinical Experience
There are nuanced (sometimes marked) differences between textbook nursing and “real-life” nursing. What you learn in the textbook might not always be 100% relevant in the emergency room for a particular client. And this attests to the complexity of the human body and mind: they simply don’t always stick to the script or, in this case, the textbook.
An indelible part of being a good nurse, therefore, is evolving your skills of critical thinking, quick assessment, and sound judgment, which is best done through clinical work or being mentored by people with hands-on experience.
Tutors with recent or active clinical experience offer the benefit of proper education, but through the lens of the real world, which will prepare you for the inexorable realities and challenges of nursing.
Tip 6: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Have Instructors Who Are Readily Available For Assistance
Do you want to pay good money for your NCLEX review prep and then have to wait days to hear from your instructor whenever you have a question? NO! A good review course will be staffed by attentive, knowledgeable instructors who will be readily available to assist you and answer your questions in a timely fashion.
You’ll know everything you need to about the quality of the instructors from the next point ...
Tip 7: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Have Great Student Reviews
When in doubt about an NCLEX review prep course or provider, check out what other students have had to say in online reviews and testimonials. If you can, look up a couple of those students and ask them what their experience was like—what they liked and disliked about the course—and whether they’d recommend it to you.
This will put you in a much more objective position to make the best possible decision for you, without being swayed by marketing rhetoric.
Tip 8: The Best NCLEX Review Courses Cover Content And Test-Taking Strategies
A good NCLEX review prep provider won’t just teach you what you need to know to pass the exam but will also guide you through how to tackle the exam questions, particularly the dreaded ‘select all that apply’ or SATA questions. Knowing what to expect from the exam and having a test-taking strategy in place will take the guesswork out of the NCLEX, making you feel more confident and prepared.
The Best NCLEX Review Courses (In Our Opinion)
Considering all of the above points, Justine Buick filled us in on her favorite NCLEX review books and courses:
- Saunders Comprehensive Review book
- Hurst NCLEX Review course
- Mark Klimek NCLEX Reviews (we recommend the live, in-person review only)
- ReMar Review
Other really helpful supplementary study resources are:
- SimpleNursing.com (definitely check out Mike Linares’ videos)
- RegisteredNurseRN.com (watch Sarah’s videos)
FYI: A “100% Guaranteed Pass” Is A Unicorn. Ain’t No Such Thing.
Before we introduce you to a few other supplementary tools for your NCLEX review prep, we need to alert you to the following: no review course, no matter how good, can 100% guarantee that you’ll pass the NCLEX. Just as you can never 100% guarantee the outcome of a medical procedure, no matter how routine, you cannot promise a student that they’ll pass if they take your course.
There’s a word for that: advertising. And advertising is all too often bad science.
The only way you’re 100% guaranteed to pass the NCLEX is by putting in the hard work. And now that we’ve given you some great tips on how to choose the best NCLEX review courses, we’re going to introduce you to some excellent supplementary study tools to help you on your journey of NCLEX mastery: flashcards.
Why Are Flashcards The Best Supplementary NCLEX Review Prep Tools?
The real secret to passing the NCLEX the first time is the hard work YOU put into mastering the content. The only thing is: the NCLEX is a knowledge-intensive exam with a staggering volume of facts to remember. It also requires you to take all that knowledge and apply it to the scenarios in question, and this can be a major challenge for many nursing students.
This is where digital flashcard apps like Brainscape and Quizlet step in as a proven supplementary study tool to help students learn and review content twice as fast as simply working through textbooks and study notes.
Aside from the convenience of being accessible by the web or an app on your phone or other devices, digital flashcards work in accordance with key cognitive science principles to work with your brain’s hardwiring to help you learn and remember the facts. They compel you to study using active recall and metacognition, two cognitive learning principles that are proven to help you form deeper, more permanent memories of the information you’re studying.
As an added bonus, they enable you to study anywhere, anytime in those little breaks you find yourself with throughout the day (on the bus, treadmill, between classes, etc.), all of which add up!
A Final Word On Finding The Best NCLEX Review Courses
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of NCLEX review prep resources “out there” in the wild, wild west that is the World Wide Web. But with the tips we’ve given you in this article, you have everything you need to choose an excellent, reputable NCLEX review prep course, as well as some recommendations, AND learning resources like digital flashcards from Anki or Brainscape.
Armed with these tools, you have almost everything you need to prepare for and successfully take on the NCLEX. The only missing ingredient is YOU, your hard work, and your dedication to pursuing your ambition to become a nurse.
And we can tell you right now that if you’re reading this, YOU’VE GOT IT.
**NCLEX-RN® is a registered trademark of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), which neither sponsors nor endorses this product.
Additional Reading
- How to study medications for the NCLEX
- The best way to use NCLEX practice questions
- Does it matter which nursing school you attend?
References
Butterfield, B., & Metcalfe, J (2006). The correction of errors committed with high confidence. Metacognition and Learning, 1(1), 69-84.
Karpicke, J. D. (2012). Retrieval-based learning: Active retrieval promotes meaningful learning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 157-163.
NCSBN launches Next Generation Nclex Exam. NCSBN. (n.d.-a). https://www.ncsbn.org/news/ncsbn-launches-next-generation-nclex-exam
The NCLEX Tutor. (2025, March 20). https://thenclextutor.com/
We’re there in the moments of nursing. NCSBN. (n.d.-b). https://www.ncsbn.org/index.page
Xu, J., Wu, A., Filip, C., Patel, Z., Bernstein, S. R., Tanveer, R., Syed, H., & Kotroczo, T. (2024). Active recall strategies associated with academic achievement in Young Adults: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 354, 191–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2024.03.010