Hello everyone, I took the NAPLEX this month and just found out the results today - I passed! I wanted to post my thoughts on it in hopes of helping anyone else who is frantically reading SDN posts to make themselves feel better about the exam. I did that too and now that I passed I really wanted to write this just as my way of giving back to the SDN community.
I will be sharing: what I used/did to study, my thoughts on what was helpful/not helpful, overall experience from taking the exam
I will NOT be sharing: specific topics or questions from the exam, and unfortunately my materials will not be available for sale
Materials I used:
- RxPrep2017 book
- SDN 120 Math Questions for practice
- I took the Pre-NAPLEX
- Attended a one-week review class class held by my school
1) RxPrep2017 book - I did NOT read every word of every chapter of this book or do every single one of the end-of-chapter test questions. I read the chapters of topics that I knew were big like infectious disease, oncology, HIV, diabetes, biostatistics & pharmacoeconomics, the psych chapters, non-sterile compounding, drug references, immunizations, and calculations. These topics in my opinion were the big topics that I found out from reading other SDN posts and I agree that focusing on these areas did serve me well on the exam. I completely did not study asthma, cystic fibrosis/lung diseases - but I made it and passed.
2) I found the SDN 120 Math Questions on here and thank you to the community for making that available! If you are reading all over SDN for tips about the NAPLEX you may have seen other users say that they felt this document was overkill and way harder than the real NAPLEX math questions - I agree. Math is not my strong suit at all, but I did not have any difficulty with the math on the exam, minus maybe 1-2 questions. I did not know how to calculate NNT and RRR and things like that beforehand, so I STUDIED that and you WILL need it for the exam.
3) Pre-NAPLEX - I read somewhere on here that whatever you get on the Pre-NAPLEX you will score 10 points higher on the actual exam. That DID happen for me, but I know for some people that it didn't. So interpret that as you may, just wanted to say that it worked for me. I think the math on the Pre-NAPLEX is a very solid representation of what you will see on the exam. There were topics that I think there is no way you would ever need to know that much detail. Overall, I think it just comes down to whether or not you want to pay $65 for the extra practice - I personally think I would have been fine on it and the test did not let me review my answers vs. the correct answers which for me is what I need to learn.
4) Lecture by my school - this was a 4-day review class with a practice exam at the end. It was very fast paced and I didn't know follow most of what was being said but it was required by my school to attend. If your school offers anything similar I would say do what I did and pay attention during the big topic areas that I mentioned above.
Overall, I walked out feeling like I FAILED the NAPLEX. Everyone around me knew how much I was hyperventilating about "omg did I pass?!" But just remember that there are 50 questions that do not count towards your score, the math is not as hard as you may think, and even after all of that there is some standardization that goes on. Thank you so much to the SDN community and to all the users that keep this network active - it really was a big help to me and I hope my very very long post will be useful for future exam takers. Good luck to everyone taking the test!
I will be sharing: what I used/did to study, my thoughts on what was helpful/not helpful, overall experience from taking the exam
I will NOT be sharing: specific topics or questions from the exam, and unfortunately my materials will not be available for sale
Materials I used:
- RxPrep2017 book
- SDN 120 Math Questions for practice
- I took the Pre-NAPLEX
- Attended a one-week review class class held by my school
1) RxPrep2017 book - I did NOT read every word of every chapter of this book or do every single one of the end-of-chapter test questions. I read the chapters of topics that I knew were big like infectious disease, oncology, HIV, diabetes, biostatistics & pharmacoeconomics, the psych chapters, non-sterile compounding, drug references, immunizations, and calculations. These topics in my opinion were the big topics that I found out from reading other SDN posts and I agree that focusing on these areas did serve me well on the exam. I completely did not study asthma, cystic fibrosis/lung diseases - but I made it and passed.
2) I found the SDN 120 Math Questions on here and thank you to the community for making that available! If you are reading all over SDN for tips about the NAPLEX you may have seen other users say that they felt this document was overkill and way harder than the real NAPLEX math questions - I agree. Math is not my strong suit at all, but I did not have any difficulty with the math on the exam, minus maybe 1-2 questions. I did not know how to calculate NNT and RRR and things like that beforehand, so I STUDIED that and you WILL need it for the exam.
3) Pre-NAPLEX - I read somewhere on here that whatever you get on the Pre-NAPLEX you will score 10 points higher on the actual exam. That DID happen for me, but I know for some people that it didn't. So interpret that as you may, just wanted to say that it worked for me. I think the math on the Pre-NAPLEX is a very solid representation of what you will see on the exam. There were topics that I think there is no way you would ever need to know that much detail. Overall, I think it just comes down to whether or not you want to pay $65 for the extra practice - I personally think I would have been fine on it and the test did not let me review my answers vs. the correct answers which for me is what I need to learn.
4) Lecture by my school - this was a 4-day review class with a practice exam at the end. It was very fast paced and I didn't know follow most of what was being said but it was required by my school to attend. If your school offers anything similar I would say do what I did and pay attention during the big topic areas that I mentioned above.
Overall, I walked out feeling like I FAILED the NAPLEX. Everyone around me knew how much I was hyperventilating about "omg did I pass?!" But just remember that there are 50 questions that do not count towards your score, the math is not as hard as you may think, and even after all of that there is some standardization that goes on. Thank you so much to the SDN community and to all the users that keep this network active - it really was a big help to me and I hope my very very long post will be useful for future exam takers. Good luck to everyone taking the test!
