It’s been a key ambition of yours to become a nurse, and now here you are: preparing for the NCLEX. Your study guide weighs a good six pounds, and you can feel your desk shake like there’s a T-rex approaching every time you drop it open, ready to start the study-a-thon.
The exam is a MONSTER. But there are key facts and hacks to preparing for it that can make the task far more manageable. We’re here to help. Having already developed the most effective NCLEX RN flashcards app (or NCLEX PN flashcards app), we’re now going to tell you how to study for the NCLEX and in a way that can save you tons of time and anxiety.
(Make sure you get our free NCLEX study planners and exam countdown sheets to plot your path towards and remain razor focused on your study goals!)
In this guide, we’ll cover:
- The mindset of efficient studying
- What really counts: the NCLEX secret
- What you need to know to pass the NCLEX
- The best NCLEX study tools
- How to study far more effectively for the NCLEX
- The best time to study for the NCLEX
Ready to get started? Let’s go!
(Check out our top apps for nurses and nursing students.)
1. The mindset of efficient studying
There’s a story about an incident that happened during the 1960’s space race between the USA and the USSR. The problem: normal ink pens wouldn’t work in space. No gravity meant no reliable ink flow, so how were their astronauts going to write anything down once they were in orbit?
The USA scientists spent countless hours trying to solve this problem. Eventually, they came back with the ballpoint pen, which has proven to be a pretty useful invention since then. The Russians? Well, they scratched their heads over the problem for about five minutes, before telling their astronauts: “Just use a pencil.”
When you have an enormous challenge ahead of you and not much time to accomplish it in, this is the innovative attitude you need to adopt.
All-too-often, students get overwhelmed not only with how much there is to learn but over which study guide they should invest their trust in. But with the NCLEX fast approaching, your challenge shouldn't be to memorize every single word of your 1,000+ page study guide (or to invent a brand new pen from scratch).
Rather, if you get a little creative, and identify exactly what you NEED to know to crush the NCLEX, you can save yourself an enormous amount of time and stress. Lucky for you, we're gonna help you with that right now...
2. What really counts: the NCLEX Secret
Unfortunately, many students believe they have to learn everything in the NCLEX guide they’re using. This is a recipe for cognitive overload, and it’s not at all true. There’s a much smaller portion of knowledge you need to master in order to pass. The problem? Most NCLEX study guides don’t make it clear (or they don’t know) what that portion of knowledge is.
Pssst! Make sure you're up-to-speed with Next Generation NCLEX: the new line of exam questioning from the NCSBN!
Studying the 80/20 way
There is a smart way to study for the NCLEX. It takes hard work, no doubt about it. But the smart way is far more efficient and it’s called the 80/20 Rule.
The 80/20 Rule states that in every situation, only a few things are very important. In an entire textbook chapter, only about 20% is crucial to you passing the exam. The other 80% is more detailed, background information that’s not entirely necessary for you to memorize. The proportions are not always strictly 80/20 but the principle holds true for most subjects.
In the NCLEX, there’s knowledge that really counts, and then there’s the superfluous rest. If you dedicate most of your time to studying those vital portions, you’ll do just fine. But if you get overwhelmed and rush around trying to memorize every single fact in that bible-sized study manual, you’ll put yourself on the fast track to burnout.
3. What you need to know to pass the NCLEX
For practical purposes, the NCLEX practical nurse (PN) and registered nurse (RN) tests are almost exactly the same when it comes to content. The main difference is in how they frame the test questions, and this reflects the roles of practical versus registered nurses in a hospital.
For example: Instead of "which patient should you see first" the PN test question will say: "which patient should be reported to the RN first?"
The NCLEX test plan is broken up into these sections:
- Management of Care (Coordinated Care for the NCLEX PN)
- Safety & Infection Control
- Health Promotion & Maintenance
- Psychosocial Integrity
- Basic Care & Comfort
- Pharmacological & Parenteral Therapies
- Reduction of Risk Potential
- Physiological Adaptation
The main outline difference for the NCLEX PN is that instead of ‘Management of Care’ there is a section called ‘Coordinated Care’. These sections carry the most weight in terms of assessment, accounting for between 17 to 23% of the test. The other sections are spread out fairly evenly after that, around 10 to 12% each.
The entire test integrates the nursing process of caring, communication, documentation, and teaching. So while there are 8 sections on the test, you may be tested on the nursing process in any of these sections.
Using Brainscape to prepare for the NCLEX
For every major section of the NCLEX, there’s a subset of knowledge you absolutely have to know. It’s much smaller than the entire knowledge base, but you do need to know it well. That’s what Brainscape’s NCLEX RN flashcards (or NCLEX PN flashcards) cover.
These 3,490+ smart, digital flashcards cover the most important concepts in Saunders, Kaplan, Hurst, Lippincott, HESI, Khan Academy, and other top test prep resources and providers. In other words, no matter which one you’re using, we’ve got you covered!
The decks are aligned with the content in the sections outlined in the previous section. Because some of the test plan sections are very broad or generalized, the decks are broken down into a course format style instead. This is similar to nursing school and makes it easier to review the content.
For example: the ‘Health Promotion and Maintenance’ section includes both prenatal maternity and disease prevention for every system. However, it’s just easier to study maternity and then each adult health system separately.
Here’s the key point: within each section, some information is far more likely to be on the test than others.
In Pharmacology, there may be ten, twenty, or thirty things you could learn about each drug. Only some of these are going to be important on test day and they’re most often related to the safe use and administering of that drug.
For example, if a drug has twenty rare side effects, but only two of them are common, then make sure you know these two, because they’re likely to come up in the test. Also, this knowledge may impact majorly on a patient’s health in the future. It’s this subset of vital facts that the Brainscape NCLEX RN flashcards (or NLCEX PN) cover.
This practicality is what most study guides miss when they try to prep students for the NCLEX. Why is this? Because most study guides are designed by academics.
These people create guides based on some sort of ideal scenario where students have loads of spare time available to devote solely to study. Newsflash: this is almost never the case.
Most NCLEX students have other responsibilities: part-time jobs, nursing school, or caregiving roles. They don’t need the complete academic knowledge of organic chemistry. They just need to know what material to study so they can pass the test.
Spoiler alert: we created Brainscape NCLEX flashcards for time-stretched students who want the skinny on exactly what’s vital to pass the NCLEX and become a good nurse. We’ll explain how our flashcard collections make your job easier in more detail shortly. (Check out 'How to use Brainscape in nursing school' to squeeze the very most value out of our web and mobile app!)
NCLEX test-taking technique
A final thought on NCLEX test-taking technique: some nursing students get tripped up on the exam because they over-complicate things when they use their practical experience as a base to answer the questions. While real-world experience is definitely a help, it can also get in your way.
This usually happens when you overthink a scenario. Experienced nurses sometimes don’t do as well on NCLEX style questions because they ask themselves too many ‘what if’ questions and confuse the central issue. For example: ‘what if it’s a child’ or ‘what if they have this other disease’ or ‘what if they took this other medication?’
While the NCLEX tries to be a true test of what it’s like to be a nurse, it’ll never be quite the same as real-life nursing. It’s a standardized, national exam meant to test your knowledge of certain facts, and how to apply those facts to a scenario.
When you’re presented with a situation, the exam question can’t cover every possible detail you would want to know in a real case. And it’s worth remembering this when you go to do the test.
Get used to answering the question with just the information you’re given. If you can think of other questions you’d want to ask before you decide on the best course of action, leave them aside, and focus on the next best option in front of you.
4. The best NCLEX study tools
Review courses and other tools
There are a lot of challenges NCLEX students need to overcome when they set out to master the material. Firstly, there’s a huge number of study books and courses on the market. As we mentioned before, there’s no regulation around the NCLEX: anyone and their grandmother can put out study resources. This means there’s a lot of variation in quality.
[If you want a blow-by-blow on how to choose the best NCLEX review courses, then we got your back. For a brief glimpse, see our favourites ones below!]
The review materials and services we like best are:
- Saunders Comprehensive Review book
- The Hurst NCLEX Review course
- Klimek Reviews (we recommend the live, in-person review only)
- Remar Review
Other popular resources are:
- Kaplan NCLEX book and review course
- Mike Linares from SimpleNursing.com
- Sarah from RegisteredNurseRN.com
Then of course there’s NCSBN, the actual test writers. You’ll certainly get the official party line with their resources; however, they’re very much in the business of telling you to cover everything plus the kitchen sink when it comes to studying. They’re not the kind of review who’ll tell you: “This bit and these parts are super important. These bits ... meh. Not so much.”
You should also know about:
- Pearson VUE: this is the testing center where you go to take the exam. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with where you’ll be taking the test ahead of time so there are no surprises.
Practice exams
It’s important to test your knowledge with NCLEX practice exam questions, of which there are a myriad online. These aren’t regulated either so you’ll find some excellent ones and some not-so-good ones.
In the not-so-good practice exams, some of the questions are worded badly, giving students the impression the examiner is trying to ‘trick’ them into the wrong answer. And other times some of the answers are just plain wrong!
The practice NCLEX exams we trust are:
- The NCLEX Mastery app
- The Saunders Comprehensive Review (there are practice questions in the book and online)
Another popular resource for practice questions is UWorld. This is a great product to use if you are already very strong in your knowledge of nursing content. But if you are still focused on reviewing the basics, we recommend starting elsewhere.
Be aware that some test exam companies deliberately make their tests harder than the NCLEX. In theory, it’s meant to give students confidence (if I passed this, the NCLEX will be easy!) In practice, it’s often the opposite, and students can get discouraged by how much more they need to learn. That’s why we recommend sticking to the practice exams above, as they’re a fair representation of the NCLEX.
[One of the most dreaded parts of the NCLEX is the ‘select all that apply’ (SATA). Here's our guide on how to answer them!]
Nursing school
Most students find that their NCLEX review is something they need to take charge of outside nursing school. This is because nursing schools have to strike a balance between training you to be a good nurse, and preparing you for the NCLEX.
Being a good nurse is different from being a top NCLEX student. Unfortunately, many nursing schools focus primarily on training you to be a good nurse, and deal with NCLEX requirements by either:
- Assigning huge amounts of reading from brick-like textbooks, or
- Doing a three-day NCLEX review course at the end of the semester. (In other words, an extended NCLEX cram session.)
Neither of these methods is very effective. Simply reading the information doesn’t mean you’ll retain it. And trying to cram material into your head at the end of a semester is largely a waste of time, as very little of it will end up in your long term memory.
This means there’s a large gap in NCLEX study prep. We’re here to help you fill that gap in a way that will make your life easier and your study time far more efficient.
Brainscape NCLEX flashcards
We created Brainscape's NCLEX RN flashcards (and our NCLEX PN flashcards) in partnership with Justine Buick, “The NCLEX Tutor”, because of the gap between nursing school, study guides, and what you really need to know for the NCLEX.
Teachers would tell these students things like: “Learn chapters 19-25 of your textbook in the next three days,” and they’d fry their neurons trying to do this. Justine wanted a more standardized way to help the many students she saw who were completely swamped by the vast sea of information they had to learn.
In contrast, Brainscape NCLEX flashcards are a massive timesaver. They don’t cover every single iota of knowledge in the NCLEX but that’s exactly the point!
Instead, these 3,490+ smart, digital flashcards focus on the most crucial knowledge in the latest Next Gen NCLEX outline, as well as Saunders, Kaplan, Hurst, Lippincott, HESI, Khan Academy, and other top test prep resources and providers.
Additionally, you get the information in easy, well-organized, bite-sized chunks you can study anywhere: during a five-minute wait before class, on the bus, or at home after dinner. It’s all there on our app, and you can sync all your devices over the net.
Also, you may find learning the Brainscape way strangely addictive …
You’ll still need to do the normal NCLEX test prep: answering practice exam questions, reading the study guides, and going to class. However, with the Brainscape flashcards, you’ll get the most important facts into your long term memory, far ahead of time.
They’ll be there, ready to be used, when you’re actually staring down the barrel of your NCLEX test and the clock is ticking.
Customize your flashcards
In addition to the pre-made NCLEX flashcards, you can also make your own flashcards. This can be very useful when addressing subject areas you’re not very strong in.
The extra steps you take to make your own flashcards will force you to break down complex topics into their simplest pieces. This process is a powerful way to deeply understand and embed knowledge so you’ll always have it.
5. How to study far more effectively for the NCLEX
So far we’ve covered what to study for the NCLEX (and it’s rather less than you’d think). Now we’re going to look at how to study.
Passive vs active studying
In the same way that patients don’t present at the hospital with a perfect list of their symptoms, real-world study isn’t always straightforward.
For example, reading through material in a book may feel like you’re learning. It’s a great way to get an overview of what you need to learn. But it's a passive technique, and things learned passively don’t stay in your memory for long.
Passive studying may feel like you’re being productive, but it’s not really. It’s a bit like doing a pleasant stroll on the flat ground to build muscle. It’s nice, but not effective. In contrast, active studying is hard work. And it really gets knowledge into your long-term memory.
Similarly, answering multiple-choice questions may seem like a great way to practice. After all, the NCLEX uses multiple-choice, right? It’s certainly a useful revision technique. Again though, it’s not that great for putting information into your memory. This is because answering multiple-choice questions uses recognition, rather than active recall.
Recognition is just when you see a list of medications and recognize the one that’s used to decrease a fever.
Active recall is when you see the question:”‘what medication can be used to treat a fever?” And, without any clues, your brain goes and retrieves that piece of information from your memory. It’s a far more reliable way to test whether you really know something or not.
Active recall is what Brainscape flashcards use to test your knowledge. This type of learning is especially important for the dense NCLEX sections like pharmacology.
Retaining what you’ve learned
Many study guides are structured like this: watch the video, read the chapter, fill out the workbook exercise, and BAM! You’re done.
Except …
A week later, are you really going to recall a fact like: antiemetics can be known as ondansetron, metoclopramide, or promethazine?
Probably not. (Unless you have cyborg-like memory abilities.)
When you have literally hundreds of these facts to remember, you need to take the most efficient path, which is doing more than just reading the study guide.
Fortunately, there’s a magic ingredient to truly learning information in a time-efficient way. The magic ingredient? Spaced repetition.
Spaced repetition relates to how often you review new information. Getting the timing of this right gives you the most efficient way to learn and retain information. There is an optimum spacing at which to revise new facts, and Brainscape does this for you automatically behind the scenes.
In Brainscape, you rate how well you know each card, from not at all (that’s a 1) to perfectly (a 5). The algorithm then repeats the cards you don’t know far more frequently. And the ones you do know? It tests you on those just enough to ensure you retain them in your long-term memory.
Spaced repetition is especially helpful when you don’t have much time available to study. By doing a little bit, often, you get far better results than students who try to cram all their study into the week before the test.
Here’s what effective NCLEX studying looks like
To sum up how to study efficiently for the NCLEX, there are three aspects:
- Understand the topic
- Learn: get the information into your brain (memorization)
- Retain: keep your knowledge fresh
1. Understand
Read through your study guide and make sure you understand everything in it. Highlight any parts that aren’t clear, and make a note to ask your teacher or other students to clarify them until you’ve fully mastered them.
Write the key concepts down in your own words. This is an important part of both understanding and memorization. When you put something into your own words, as well as the textbook version, you’re creating an extra ‘hook’ your brain can use to retrieve the information when you need it next.
Teach someone. Teaching someone else (especially a non-nursing student) is the best way to test your knowledge and ensure you have a firm grasp of the concepts.
2. Learn
Break each topic into small, bite-sized pieces of knowledge. This is an important step to getting information into your memory. Brains don’t ‘upload’ large volumes of data in one large information dump. They store information the same way you build a house: brick by brick.
This is where the Brainscape NCLEX RN flashcards (or NCLEX PN flashcards) are exceptionally useful. Working with Justine Buick “The NCLEX Tutor,” we’ve broken the mountain of knowledge that is the NCLEX into its key parts, and created flashcard decks based on these.
Inside each flashcard deck, we’ve further distilled each topic into its most important individual facts and written out these facts in question-and-answer pairs on single flashcards.
In the entire set of Brainscape NCLEX classes, there are 3,400+ flashcards. However, considering we’re condensing knowledge from what would be thousands of pages and years of experience, these flashcards will save you literally days of knowledge-sorting time.
Even better, you don’t need to break open the giant textbook, figure out where you left off, or go back and review all the parts you aren’t confident about. In Brainscape, you self-assess how well you know every card you see, and our intelligent algorithm will organize your studying for you, using the principle of spaced repetition.
This keeps you in the zone of optimal learning, where just the right amount of new material is mixed with information you already know. In other words, your working memory is stretched just enough to build new knowledge scaffolding. It’s like a perfectly-paced fitness workout ... for your brain.
3. Retain
When you simply read a section of the NCLEX material, and never look at it again until a week before your test, you leave yourself vulnerable to memory decay. New information stays in your short-term memory for a few hours and then fades. Even a quick review of new material will help fix it in your long term memory far more effectively.
Studying a little every day means that by exam time, your brain has had plenty of time to fit the vast catalog of NCLEX knowledge into a neatly organized library of information.
Do this, and you’ll be one of those students who aren’t frazzled and stressed to the max at test time. Instead, you’ll be quietly confident, ready to ace the NCLEX, and start a new chapter of your life!
6. The best time to study for the NCLEX
Along with what to study, when to study is the component that’s most often overlooked by NCLEX students.
The best time to study is: ideally, all the way through your nursing degree.
However, some students don't get serious about the NCLEX until their last semester. That’s ok, as long as you’re giving yourself months, not weeks, to prepare. With the right tools and approach, this can suffice for many students.
Either way, you don't have to take hours and hours of extra time during the week to study. In fact, even ten to fifteen minutes of flashcard study a day can make a big difference.
The best way to do this review is to pair up your flashcard sessions with what you’re currently studying in your classes or review course. For example: if you just reviewed pediatrics, you could spend fifteen minutes after dinner going over the pediatric flashcard deck in Brainscape.
When you review something the day you learn it in class, and then a few days later, your retention rate goes up dramatically. This is something Brainscape does for you automatically, without you needing to think about it. Just load up the cards, and press ‘go’ ...
Students who study in this way are often able to take and pass the NCLEX with more confidence while spending less total time preparing.
Why do all this? The importance of studying for the NCLEX effectively
The world needs more qualified nurses. And it always will. They do an incredibly important job. All the way back to Florence Nightingale, Walt Whitman, and before, nurses have risked their lives to help others. They’re on the front lines caring for the sick, the in-need, and the vulnerable.
The best way to get yourself into NCLEX study mode is to remember your end goal. The NCLEX is the final hurdle for you to vault over in order to become a nurse, and with focus, determination, and some effective study, you’re sure to get there.
**NCLEX-RN® is a registered trademark of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), which neither sponsors nor endorses this product.