How to Study for Exams Part IV
- AUSNA Officer
- Jun 8, 2020
- 3 min read
A question every nursing student will end up asking at some point: what's the point of answering questions over things I haven't even learned yet?
Answer: it sounds counter-intuitive, but the more questions you do before exams (even if you haven't learned all the content yet), the better you will do. Every time.
Step Five: Testing Yourself Using Questions
When I first started nursing school, everyone told me it was important to do tons of questions for an exam. I had never done that before, and I had a 4.0; I decided to ignore that advice. Big mistake.
My first exam, I did made my study guide and flashcards (except I didn't use the ATI books or an NCLEX comprehensive exam book - I did all of the Lippincott readings - can you imagine?). I didn't get an A. I was shocked.
The second exam, the only thing I changed is that I did a bunch of NCLEX-style questions. I improved my grade by 5%. I HIGHLY recommend you don’t skip this step. It sounds weird at first and it feels odd, but doing questions will help you in the long run.
There are a few different ways to find questions that apply to the material in your content exams.
Using PrepU
Some students will disagree with me, but I think PrepU questions are worth doing.
Method 1 to finding questions on Prep U: use your reading list.
Pull up your reading list. If the chapters aren't listed, take some time to look up each reading and write down the chapter next to it.
Highlight, circle or otherwise mark chapters that you have to read most of; for example, if you're only assigned 1 or 2 pages in a chapter, skip that one.
Do PrepU quizzes based on those chapters you highlighted.
This is how you'll set up your quizzes in PrepU using Method 1:
Click on Practice Quiz
Click Adaptive Learning Quiz
Choose Nursing Topics from the drop-down menu
Look for the correct book and chapter you want to review (one at a time!)
Number of questions: choose 5 or 10 from the drop-down menu, no more, because the algorithm gives you progressively harder questions and you don't want to waste time on easy questions if you already know that material well
Make sure you read the rationale for every question at the end, even if you got it right.
Look up the answers that you didn't know! There is a reference page attached to each question; you can always pull that up if you're still confused.
How many PrepU questions should you do? For this method, I pick a chapter and when I can get 5/5 on three quizzes in a row, I move on to the next chapter. If I can't get 5/5 but feel pretty good about that content, I may move on and come back later. Try to do around 50 questions per chapter if you can.
Method 2 to finding questions on PrepU: use your exemplars.
This method isn't as useful in term 1, but it does work for some exemplars from term 2 and 4. The only step from above that you're going to change is 3-4; choose concept exemplars instead of nursing topics from the drop-down menu.
Using Other Resources
There are tons of places that you can find NCLEX-style questions; you don't need to use all of these. I will put them in order from most- to least-used based on my own study habits.
ATI book end of chapter questions (absolutely do these)
Saunders (or whatever NCLEX comprehensive review book you have) end of chapter and online question bank
Lippincott books end of chapter questions
atitesting.com online questions (you can find these under My ATI>Test>Learning System 3.0>Adaptive Quizzes)
RegisteredNurseRN questions
Quizlets made by others
NCLEX Prep Apps
When should you start doing NCLEX-style questions?
It is a good goal to try to do 10 relevant questions per day while you're in nursing school.
When you're studying for an exam, though, it is ideal to be done with all of your content review (reading, study guide, flashcards, flashcard review) 1-2 days before the test. Then you can just hammer out tons and tons of questions, literally do as many as you can stand.
I also like to add questions that I missed into my flashcards so if I have time, I can go back and review those again.
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