Hi everyone, new here, and just wanted to encourage others who still have to take the NAPLEX (and PA or IL MPJE),
I found out today that I passed the NAPLEX with a 123! Pretty surreal feeling that I'm done with exams and that I'll be getting my license in the mail soon!
I took the PA MPJE 5/21 (got an 88), the IL MPJE 6/20 (got a 92) and the NAPLEX 6/27.
Anyway, I wanted to relay my experiences and advice!
PA MPJE:
I studied 2 weeks for this exam at about 4 hours a day and it was the one exam I took first as I was most familiar with PA law since I went to pharmacy school in Pittsburgh (Pitt). I went to a law review class by Mr. Musheno, bought a practice test through him as well, and I studied the notes I got through that. I also read through the actual PA code and PA Pharmacy Act. I felt this was the hardest exam of the ones I took-I absolutely thought I failed when I walked out of that exam-the questions seemed vague and the choices seemed strange, but I think that way I studied was definitely sufficient-I have no idea what else you would look over!
IL MPJE:
I studied for 1 week at 4 hours a day. I bought Dr. Rickert's notes (at the suggestion of one of my classmates), and tried to skim the actual law (didn't get much out of that though). I did not feel like I was prepared before I went into the test, but the test ended up not being bad at all-in fact, it was A LOT easier PA MPJE from my point of view (even though IL law seems a lot stranger in real life and I never had an IL pharmacy law class!). His notes are all you need for sure.
NAPLEX:
The biggest thing I can tell you is not to freak out about or try to figure out the computer adaptive system (because you can't!). MOST of my friends told me that they had really hard calculations at the end of the exam and whatnot so I got really scared (and felt so anxious since Friday until 5pm today when IL posted the score!) because mine never got very difficult (they were not any harder than the RxPrep practice calculations for me). Same with the other questions in general-they never got harder that I could tell; seemed relatively basic which totally surprised me. Overall, I really felt that the NAPLEX was not a difficult exam and that you have to trust your knowledge and experience when you take it, because you definitely know more than you think you do!
Here's how I studied: I studied about 4-5 weeks total (this was over the course of 2 months-started at the end of April, took 3-4 weeks off in there for moving back to IL from PA and then taking 2 law exams: PA and IL). I had the RxPrep book and question bank, exam master access (which was through my school), and the 120 calculations. I would said that it took 3 weeks total for me to get through the whole book (did about 3 hours a day and skipped a lot of days) and then 1-2 weeks for doing practice questions/calculations and hitting high points of ID, HIV, diabetes, cardiology and anticoagulation (studied 7-8 hours a day those weeks). I felt personally, that the exam master questions matched the format of the NAPLEX the best (mostly cased based), and that's what helped me the most. RxPrep was good for practicing the choose all that apply types of questions, but needed more cased based questions I thought; the calculation and biostats sections were also very strong and highly correlated with what showed up on the actual exam.
I hope this helps anyone taking any of the above exams! Good luck and trust your knowledge and education! YOU CAN PASS!
I found out today that I passed the NAPLEX with a 123! Pretty surreal feeling that I'm done with exams and that I'll be getting my license in the mail soon!
I took the PA MPJE 5/21 (got an 88), the IL MPJE 6/20 (got a 92) and the NAPLEX 6/27.
Anyway, I wanted to relay my experiences and advice!
PA MPJE:
I studied 2 weeks for this exam at about 4 hours a day and it was the one exam I took first as I was most familiar with PA law since I went to pharmacy school in Pittsburgh (Pitt). I went to a law review class by Mr. Musheno, bought a practice test through him as well, and I studied the notes I got through that. I also read through the actual PA code and PA Pharmacy Act. I felt this was the hardest exam of the ones I took-I absolutely thought I failed when I walked out of that exam-the questions seemed vague and the choices seemed strange, but I think that way I studied was definitely sufficient-I have no idea what else you would look over!
IL MPJE:
I studied for 1 week at 4 hours a day. I bought Dr. Rickert's notes (at the suggestion of one of my classmates), and tried to skim the actual law (didn't get much out of that though). I did not feel like I was prepared before I went into the test, but the test ended up not being bad at all-in fact, it was A LOT easier PA MPJE from my point of view (even though IL law seems a lot stranger in real life and I never had an IL pharmacy law class!). His notes are all you need for sure.
NAPLEX:
The biggest thing I can tell you is not to freak out about or try to figure out the computer adaptive system (because you can't!). MOST of my friends told me that they had really hard calculations at the end of the exam and whatnot so I got really scared (and felt so anxious since Friday until 5pm today when IL posted the score!) because mine never got very difficult (they were not any harder than the RxPrep practice calculations for me). Same with the other questions in general-they never got harder that I could tell; seemed relatively basic which totally surprised me. Overall, I really felt that the NAPLEX was not a difficult exam and that you have to trust your knowledge and experience when you take it, because you definitely know more than you think you do!
Here's how I studied: I studied about 4-5 weeks total (this was over the course of 2 months-started at the end of April, took 3-4 weeks off in there for moving back to IL from PA and then taking 2 law exams: PA and IL). I had the RxPrep book and question bank, exam master access (which was through my school), and the 120 calculations. I would said that it took 3 weeks total for me to get through the whole book (did about 3 hours a day and skipped a lot of days) and then 1-2 weeks for doing practice questions/calculations and hitting high points of ID, HIV, diabetes, cardiology and anticoagulation (studied 7-8 hours a day those weeks). I felt personally, that the exam master questions matched the format of the NAPLEX the best (mostly cased based), and that's what helped me the most. RxPrep was good for practicing the choose all that apply types of questions, but needed more cased based questions I thought; the calculation and biostats sections were also very strong and highly correlated with what showed up on the actual exam.
I hope this helps anyone taking any of the above exams! Good luck and trust your knowledge and education! YOU CAN PASS!
