Hello all,
This is my first time posting on SDN. Reading NAPLEX forums really helped me with my studying and gave me confidence to tackle the exam, so I wanted to share my experience and give back to the future NAPLEX takers.
I took my NAPLEX on July 14th and just found out today that I passed with a 97. The exam does not focus on diagnosing patients and treating them with appropriate drugs. Rather, it focuses on side effects, counseling, dosage forms, mechanisms of action, BRAND NAMES, and lots of calculations (at least 30 calculations).
Some background about me: I was never a straight A student in pharmacy school. I got A's in the easy classes, but mostly I was a C+ to B+ student. I rarely ever went to class (unless it was mandatory), and I crammed the night before an exam, only to forget most of what I learned as soon as the exam was over. I knew basic mechanisms of action and basic side effect profiles for the most common drugs dispensed at a retail pharmacy just by conversing with my Pharmacist about it, but it was not in the detail that is in RX Prep.
I finished APPE rotations and had about 2.5 - 3 solid months of studying (or so I had planned). I slowly finished all the RX Prep calculations and the 120 calculations file that is floating around on this site (probably took me about a month sinceI procrastinated a lot). I kept postponing studying until I only had about 1 month left. I took the Pre-Naplex at this time and scored a 69. After reading all the success stories on SDN where people scored about 20-30 points higher on the real NAPLEX, a 69 didn't bother me much at the time. I bought the RX Prep quiz bank a little while ago and started doing the first few chapters only to realize that I DID NOT KNOW ANYTHING OTHER THAN CALCULATIONS and only had about 3 weeks left for the real thing!!! This was when I started to freak out and thought I was going to fail. I set aside time (about 6 hours a day for 5 days of the week) to go through the book, taking notes in my notebook as I study (I need to write stuff down to remember). Sadly, it was going much slower than I thought it would. I abandoned the quiz bank and solely focused on the book.
My weakest subjects were infectious diseases, HIV, and Oncology. As I was going through the book, I skipped these chapters and came back to them the day before the exam. With only 3 days left for the exam, I still had more than 400 pages to go through. This was when I looked back at page 4 of the RX Prep book and at the top it says to focus on some of the big topics such as diabetes, HTN, psych, etc. So that's exactly what I did. Three days before the exam, I went through all the main chapters and tried to memorize as much as I can. Two days before the exam, I skimmed through the remaining chapters that were not mentioned on page 4, focusing on the bold and underlined content. The day before the exam, I went through all my notes I had taken and skimmed through the ID, HIV, and Oncology chapters and focused on the bold and underlined portions again.
The day of the exam: I went in feeling confident about my calculations and the main topics. That's it! I had about 15-20 questions related to ID, HIV, and Oncology total; about 35 calculations; the rest of the questions were just random and all over the place. I came out of the exam thinking I failed especially since my Pre-Naplex was a 69 and I didn't think I had learned anything else from studying. After looking at my passing score today and thinking back on the exam, I would definitely advise everyone to do the following:
1) DO AS MANY PRACTICE CALCULATIONS AS YOU CAN
2) FOCUS ON THE UNDERLINED AND BOLDED PORTION OF RX PREP
3) KNOW BRAND AND GENERIC NAMES FOR ALL DRUGS
4) GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP BEFORE THE EXAM
With that being said, if I can pass, anyone can pass. I waited until the very last minute to study. Give it a solid 2 months and you will have nothing to worry about.
I barely used my RX Prep quiz bank, but from what I got out of it, it seemed helpful to go drill in some of the major concepts of each chapter.
Hope this was helpful. Please don't hesitate to ask me any questions. I will try to answer to the best of my abilities.
Good luck to all!
This is my first time posting on SDN. Reading NAPLEX forums really helped me with my studying and gave me confidence to tackle the exam, so I wanted to share my experience and give back to the future NAPLEX takers.
I took my NAPLEX on July 14th and just found out today that I passed with a 97. The exam does not focus on diagnosing patients and treating them with appropriate drugs. Rather, it focuses on side effects, counseling, dosage forms, mechanisms of action, BRAND NAMES, and lots of calculations (at least 30 calculations).
Some background about me: I was never a straight A student in pharmacy school. I got A's in the easy classes, but mostly I was a C+ to B+ student. I rarely ever went to class (unless it was mandatory), and I crammed the night before an exam, only to forget most of what I learned as soon as the exam was over. I knew basic mechanisms of action and basic side effect profiles for the most common drugs dispensed at a retail pharmacy just by conversing with my Pharmacist about it, but it was not in the detail that is in RX Prep.
I finished APPE rotations and had about 2.5 - 3 solid months of studying (or so I had planned). I slowly finished all the RX Prep calculations and the 120 calculations file that is floating around on this site (probably took me about a month sinceI procrastinated a lot). I kept postponing studying until I only had about 1 month left. I took the Pre-Naplex at this time and scored a 69. After reading all the success stories on SDN where people scored about 20-30 points higher on the real NAPLEX, a 69 didn't bother me much at the time. I bought the RX Prep quiz bank a little while ago and started doing the first few chapters only to realize that I DID NOT KNOW ANYTHING OTHER THAN CALCULATIONS and only had about 3 weeks left for the real thing!!! This was when I started to freak out and thought I was going to fail. I set aside time (about 6 hours a day for 5 days of the week) to go through the book, taking notes in my notebook as I study (I need to write stuff down to remember). Sadly, it was going much slower than I thought it would. I abandoned the quiz bank and solely focused on the book.
My weakest subjects were infectious diseases, HIV, and Oncology. As I was going through the book, I skipped these chapters and came back to them the day before the exam. With only 3 days left for the exam, I still had more than 400 pages to go through. This was when I looked back at page 4 of the RX Prep book and at the top it says to focus on some of the big topics such as diabetes, HTN, psych, etc. So that's exactly what I did. Three days before the exam, I went through all the main chapters and tried to memorize as much as I can. Two days before the exam, I skimmed through the remaining chapters that were not mentioned on page 4, focusing on the bold and underlined content. The day before the exam, I went through all my notes I had taken and skimmed through the ID, HIV, and Oncology chapters and focused on the bold and underlined portions again.
The day of the exam: I went in feeling confident about my calculations and the main topics. That's it! I had about 15-20 questions related to ID, HIV, and Oncology total; about 35 calculations; the rest of the questions were just random and all over the place. I came out of the exam thinking I failed especially since my Pre-Naplex was a 69 and I didn't think I had learned anything else from studying. After looking at my passing score today and thinking back on the exam, I would definitely advise everyone to do the following:
1) DO AS MANY PRACTICE CALCULATIONS AS YOU CAN
2) FOCUS ON THE UNDERLINED AND BOLDED PORTION OF RX PREP
3) KNOW BRAND AND GENERIC NAMES FOR ALL DRUGS
4) GET A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP BEFORE THE EXAM
With that being said, if I can pass, anyone can pass. I waited until the very last minute to study. Give it a solid 2 months and you will have nothing to worry about.
I barely used my RX Prep quiz bank, but from what I got out of it, it seemed helpful to go drill in some of the major concepts of each chapter.
Hope this was helpful. Please don't hesitate to ask me any questions. I will try to answer to the best of my abilities.
Good luck to all!
