My NAPLEX experience

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I took the NAPLEX last week and wanted to share my experience with anyone who may be curious about it. I never posted on student doctor, just read it for the past year to get information on the NAPLEX so hopefully this will help someone else out!

I know this is lengthy but I wanted to give details to a lot of the questions I was curious about prior to the exam..

I highly recommend requesting a real calculator to use during the exam so you can avoid the on-screen calculator. However, I was told it is only a basic calculator on the computer but this is not the case anymore. My on-screen calculator had every function possible.

I was expecting a dry erase board which would be a pain since I am left handed but it's actually a packet of about 8 sheets (front and back) with laminated pages to do all the writing you want. It wasn't a problem to use at all!

These are the sources I used to study (and did pretty well on the exam)

RxPrep is by far the best. My school provided me both the APHA and Kaplan books. While they are both excellent sources, the RxPrep is by far the easiest to get through while hitting high yield information. I believe that book alone is plenty. Also, the RxPrep Q-bank you can buy (my future employee purchased this for me) is certainly the most similar as to what they will ask on the actual exam. The way the questions are worded were very similar. While they are all useful, I found the STATS questions and MATH questions from RxPrep Q-Bank the best - and definitely made the NAPLEX much easier for those portions. The only thing is the math on the NAPLEX is 99% all fill in the blank so when doing practice math problems, do not look at the choices until you have your answer since they won't be there on the exam. My school also purchased the KAPLAN Q-Bank and the APHA Q-Bank for us but those were not as good as the RxPrep Q-Bank in my opinion. In fact, my classmates and myself found some mistakes with the Kaplans that made me wonder about the rest of their questions.

I also purchased the ProntoPass math cards (not the entire packet). These were very helpful as well. On top of this, I also made sure I understood the 120 math questions floating around this site.

Notice I focused most of my study on calculations which I am very happy I was told to do this - so hopefully you are getting the idea that math is huge for the exam. Without going into details of questions, make sure you know Flow rates, mmols/meq's/osmo, and TPNs. Also don't overlook statistics. As mentioned earlier, the Q-bank from RxPrep on stats was a great resource for this.

The clinical questions were pretty simple - I was not the top of my class by any means but if you paid attention then they won't be a problem. You need to go in telling yourself that you won't get every question right, if you're not realistic about this you will get worked up during the exam and make it much worse for yourself. There was a drug I had never seen before but simply just gave it a best guess and moved on - hopefully you will do the same.

I am going to be realistic and not promise that you will pass it like others have stated, but if you have prepared and even paid attention in class then it won't be a problem. I had some pretty easy rotations so I read slowly through the RxPrep book throughout my rotations, then took 2 weeks off after graduation to hit the math and review RxPrep chapters here and there. I did very well so hopefully you guys will as well.

If you have any questions about it just let me know! Good luck everyone!

thank you...
Did you use the kaplan or APHA Books at all? I am reading the rxprep and i find it really useful too but for the math part i felt like it was confusing and seemed too basic almost too easy. what was your experience with that?

Thanks for sharing your experience...it's always helpful to hear other people's experiences.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.. You mentioned that its better to ask hand-held calculator. Can we ask them for it? I heard that it depends on the testing center, is it correct?

Originally Posted by Kitten18

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.. You mentioned that its better to ask hand-held calculator. Can we ask them for it? I heard that it depends on the testing center, is it correct?

I asked for one and they handed it to me. I wouldn't imagine there being variation between testing centers as they are all Pearson and it is a STANDARDIZED exam. Good luck!

think - I just used the RxPrep but as great as it is, the math is a little weak. I used the prontopass math cards and the 120 questions on here to supplement the math in RxPrep


shahj3 - No I can't post the username/password for my RxPrep Q-bank. My employer purchased it for us so I don't want to have any problems for doing that.

kitten18 - Like DrWrong said, I don't want to promise anything but since it's a standardized test it's not really up to the individuals running the testing center - they have set guidelines to follow and I would be very surprised if you were denied a calculator upon request. If for some reason they do, you should definitely get a hold of the NABP about it

One more thing - for PA students - since PA is one of the states that does not allow you to access your score on the NABP website, you can get around this by checking your license status checklist. If it switches from unchecked to "complete" for the National Exam then that means you passed. People on here will say it only means they received your score, not necessarily that you passed - however, I spoke with the board and the lady said while they cannot legally tell me my score (must receive it in the mail) then it would still be "unchecked" if you failed. So hopefully that will ease some minds.

Originally Posted by Kitten18

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience.. You mentioned that its better to ask hand-held calculator. Can we ask them for it? I heard that it depends on the testing center, is it correct?

My testing center gave me one without me even asking. It was just a basic calculator, but none of the questions were hard enough to need to do any fancy math.

Thanks DrWrong, pharm1192 and gg1120. I will definitely ask for one if they dont give me one. Good luck for your MPJEs.

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one more question..were there a lot of brand names on the naplex?

Originally Posted by think

one more question..were there a lot of brand names on the naplex?

Man, every test is going to be different. Know as much as you can about everything you can.

Brand/generic is probably the easiest thing to know. I don't see how you couldn't know most common brand/generic.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by think

one more question..were there a lot of brand names on the naplex?

I would say a fair amount. Most of them are brands that you should know (Levaquin, Keflex, Plan B, Norvir, etc...). I got 1 obscure brand name, but otherwise the brands were straightforward,

thanks guys . I feel like I know the common brand names but those obscure ones are freaking me out and i guess I have to understand I wont know everything after all...I just keep postponing the exam because I feel like I am not prepared when I see obscure things...

I barely got any calcs.. I feel like it was ~10-15% of my exam... I'm scared since everyone else said it was like 30%+.. hope I was not bombing em all. My test was RIDICULOUSLY difficult with therapeutic questions/random diseases..

Sorry to hear that Avelox. I am taking mine tomorrow. Everytime I am doing something other than studying, I freak out and start thinking that I should probably study but in reality I know that I am not going to absorb any more info. I hope you did well and I hope I do well tomorrow too. :/

Originally Posted by Avelox

I barely got any calcs.. I feel like it was ~10-15% of my exam... I'm scared since everyone else said it was like 30%+.. hope I was not bombing em all. My test was RIDICULOUSLY difficult with therapeutic questions/random diseases..

I think other posters mean they have like 30 calc questions vs 30%.... I, too only had approx 27 calc questions (which is ~15%). The therapeutic questions were very random and the ktype answers were tough, tricky. I felt like I had some tricky calculations that had answer choices given (thankfully)... although I hope they were the test questions.

This wait is agonizing and I feel like i'll have an MI every time I check NABP

Originally Posted by ADN1226

I think other posters mean they have like 30 calc questions vs 30%.... I, too only had approx 27 calc questions (which is ~15%). The therapeutic questions were very random and the ktype answers were tough, tricky. I felt like I had some tricky calculations that had answer choices given (thankfully)... although I hope they were the test questions.

This wait is agonizing and I feel like i'll have an MI every time I check NABP

that sounds terrible. now i am even more nervous and i am taking the test tomorrow.

Originally Posted by DesiRX

that sounds terrible. now i am even more nervous and i am taking the test tomorrow.

I think the most important thing is to stay calm and watch the clock. You'll definitely see things you won't recognize or know, its okay, make a guess and move on!

Good luck! Try to eat something before hand since its a grueling 4hrs

Originally Posted by ADN1226

I think the most important thing is to stay calm and watch the clock. You'll definitely see things you won't recognize or know, its okay, make a guess and move on!

Good luck! Try to eat something before hand since its a grueling 4hrs

I also finished with 40 minutes to spare lol..

I took the exam today. Walked out of there feeling miserable. I had a ton of calculations. The ones in the beginning seemed easy but some of the ones towards the end were pathetic (even though they had the answer choices listed). In terms of the clinical questions, I had a little bit of everything and some of the questions they asked were beyond ridiculous and I know I guessed a lot. Some of the answer choices that I guessed were definitely wrong and I could feel that they were wrong but since I didn't know what was right, I ended up guessing the wrong choice anyway (I have bad instincts when it comes to guessing). I just hope I passed. I got out an hour early too so I don't know if that was a bad sign o_O

Originally Posted by DesiRX

I took the exam today. Walked out of there feeling miserable. I had a ton of calculations. The ones in the beginning seemed easy but some of the ones towards the end were pathetic (even though they had the answer choices listed). In terms of the clinical questions, I had a little bit of everything and some of the questions they asked were beyond ridiculous and I know I guessed a lot. Some of the answer choices that I guessed were definitely wrong and I could feel that they were wrong but since I didn't know what was right, I ended up guessing the wrong choice anyway (I have bad instincts when it comes to guessing). I just hope I passed. I got out an hour early too so I don't know if that was a bad sign o_O

That's exactly how I felt about my exam. I finished early, couldn't answer some of the calculations and had to guess. I feel terrible

In terms of therapeutics, I felt like I was getting a lot of ID and the other disease states were just barely touched on...what does this mean??

Originally Posted by sharpiee

That's exactly how I felt about my exam. I finished early, couldn't answer some of the calculations and had to guess. I feel terrible

In terms of therapeutics, I felt like I was getting a lot of ID and the other disease states were just barely touched on...what does this mean??

I got plenty of infectious disease (~20 questions). The next closest I go were diabetes and cardiovascular.
I had one question on HIV which I know for certain I got correct.
I knew of all the 30 or so calculation questions, I missed two.

I finished in about 2 hours and 30 minutes (I was like on question 150 something when it was time for my break) and got a 117.


The best advice I can give is you know what your strengths are. I knew my strength was calculations, biostatistics, clinical trials and cardiovascular and my weaknesses were mental health. So, I pretty much spent only one single evening doing calculations, biostats (~4 hours), etc and focused more on my weaknesses.


Personally, I read an old edition of RxPrep, did the 120 calculations and went through a question bank my school purchased for us.