Hey guys,
I recently found I out passed all three of my licensing exams and thought I'd share my study habits for them all since this board has helped me so much in getting to this point.
Naplex- It is really as random as people say. There's no certain topics you should concentrate on more then the others, because it somehow finds a way to ask you about everything. I had about 3 questions on diabetes on 5 on MS. I studied just Rxprep (no question bank) for 2 weeks (9-6 everyday and more on weekends) and passed with a 124. I read through the book 3 times during that time, skipping over the beginning chapters until my final run-through. I looked at the SDN 120 calculations and felt that they were much more complicated then the math would be on the actual exam, and I was right, the math in the naplex math chapter was more then enough (NERD ALERT: I love math so I wasn't too worried about it). I walked out of the exam feeling like I'd failed, but from everybodys experiences, I think that's how everybody pretty much feels no matter how much they prepared for the exam. I can't say much about the pre-naplex because it didn't seem like it was worth taking based on what other people have said but it may be a good idea if you want peace of mind about where you stand a couple days before taking the exam. I had MANY biostats questions, but know of others who had next to none (which shows just how random the exam can be). A question I frequently asked classmates about before taking the exam was how many check all that apply questions are there, and for me there were about 15-20ish like that.
CPJE- this one was a killer. I had the misfortune of taking the exam during the QA period and waited about a month and a half for my results. The best advice I can give for this exam is to take it as soon after the NAPLEX as you can. I used the Wiessman law book and RxPrep CPJE book which I went through 2 times before the exam and ended up having only about 5-6 law questions. I had 2 simple CrCl calculations which I wasnt expecting, but other then that it was all clinical drug questions. For this I reread the Naplex RxPrep book 2 times (I had a week between both exams) and concentrated on the ID section, IV compatibility that was mentioned for drugs throughout the book, the chart that listed drug antidotes, and made sure I knew DOSAGES. I cannot stress that enough, for the biggest difference between the CPJE and NAPLEX is that the CPJE requires you to know much more detailed information about the drugs, especially the normal dosages for each condition and their routes of administration. Most of the prescriptions they showed me had dosage problems which I would never have gotten right if I hadn't studied the specific drug dosages. For the material I used, the Weismann book was good for a general overview, while the CPJE book was a quick 24ish page summary of all the important points for the exam. I would not recommend using just the CPJE book to study the law portion, but it is a good quick reference to look over after reading the Weissman book. In the end I walked out of this exam completely unsure of whether I passed or not, because the tricky thing about the exam is that you don't know which of the 90 questions are going to be removed, so you can't figure out if you did well or not. However, to answer the question of how many you can safely miss in order to pass, the answer is 18 questions. My logic to this is that is you miss 18 questions out of the 90, then even if they don't remove any of those 18 that you missed, you would still have a 57/75, which is a 76 (passing). Add in the fact that its a scaled score and you may be able to miss a couple more. I came out with 17 questions I did not know the answer to and ended up with an 80, which seems about right (this scoring also made sense for the MPJE to me). Once again this was my way of thinking about scoring, if somebody knows this is invalid then please say so and explain.
Texas MPJE- I took this as a back up after the CPJE while waiting for the QA to end. I studied for about 3-4 days for 5-6 hours each day. To be honest I didn't put my full effort into studying for this exam because I just wanted to pass the CPJE, but I feel like this was more then enough time for most people. My sources were the Sarah Fichuk "Pass The Texas Pharmacy Law Exam", Cacciatore 29 page supplement (I didn't have the actual book just the supplement) and a 50 page review of federal law from 2010. The book by Fichuk, while very good, was not enough to pass the exam. Some sort of federal law review is needed because I had numerous questions about stuff like adulteration, federal acts, and such on the exam. Fichuk does not go over there things and I probably would not have passed if I had only relied on her book. I got my results online 3 days later around 1 pm in the afternoon and passed with an 88. Just a heads up, I did all of the questions at the back of the Pass Texas Law Book, and you should know that MPJE questions are not like that. They are all scenario based mostly on the exam, and there are choose all that apply questions like that naplex (I had about 6 of those on my exam). The answer choices can also be very tricky, with two answers that are very similar but just worded a little differently that you have to somehow differentiate between and choose the correct answer.
I know this was a lot to read, but like I said at the beginning these boards have helped me reach where I am now and so I felt the need to give back as well. Big shout out to everybody thats been posting this past summer about their exam experiences, your advice helped calm me down when I began feeling too nervous. I hope this helps anybody still preparing for the exams, and feel free to PM me about any questions relating to anything I've mentioned above. Good luck everybody!
I recently found I out passed all three of my licensing exams and thought I'd share my study habits for them all since this board has helped me so much in getting to this point.
Naplex- It is really as random as people say. There's no certain topics you should concentrate on more then the others, because it somehow finds a way to ask you about everything. I had about 3 questions on diabetes on 5 on MS. I studied just Rxprep (no question bank) for 2 weeks (9-6 everyday and more on weekends) and passed with a 124. I read through the book 3 times during that time, skipping over the beginning chapters until my final run-through. I looked at the SDN 120 calculations and felt that they were much more complicated then the math would be on the actual exam, and I was right, the math in the naplex math chapter was more then enough (NERD ALERT: I love math so I wasn't too worried about it). I walked out of the exam feeling like I'd failed, but from everybodys experiences, I think that's how everybody pretty much feels no matter how much they prepared for the exam. I can't say much about the pre-naplex because it didn't seem like it was worth taking based on what other people have said but it may be a good idea if you want peace of mind about where you stand a couple days before taking the exam. I had MANY biostats questions, but know of others who had next to none (which shows just how random the exam can be). A question I frequently asked classmates about before taking the exam was how many check all that apply questions are there, and for me there were about 15-20ish like that.
CPJE- this one was a killer. I had the misfortune of taking the exam during the QA period and waited about a month and a half for my results. The best advice I can give for this exam is to take it as soon after the NAPLEX as you can. I used the Wiessman law book and RxPrep CPJE book which I went through 2 times before the exam and ended up having only about 5-6 law questions. I had 2 simple CrCl calculations which I wasnt expecting, but other then that it was all clinical drug questions. For this I reread the Naplex RxPrep book 2 times (I had a week between both exams) and concentrated on the ID section, IV compatibility that was mentioned for drugs throughout the book, the chart that listed drug antidotes, and made sure I knew DOSAGES. I cannot stress that enough, for the biggest difference between the CPJE and NAPLEX is that the CPJE requires you to know much more detailed information about the drugs, especially the normal dosages for each condition and their routes of administration. Most of the prescriptions they showed me had dosage problems which I would never have gotten right if I hadn't studied the specific drug dosages. For the material I used, the Weismann book was good for a general overview, while the CPJE book was a quick 24ish page summary of all the important points for the exam. I would not recommend using just the CPJE book to study the law portion, but it is a good quick reference to look over after reading the Weissman book. In the end I walked out of this exam completely unsure of whether I passed or not, because the tricky thing about the exam is that you don't know which of the 90 questions are going to be removed, so you can't figure out if you did well or not. However, to answer the question of how many you can safely miss in order to pass, the answer is 18 questions. My logic to this is that is you miss 18 questions out of the 90, then even if they don't remove any of those 18 that you missed, you would still have a 57/75, which is a 76 (passing). Add in the fact that its a scaled score and you may be able to miss a couple more. I came out with 17 questions I did not know the answer to and ended up with an 80, which seems about right (this scoring also made sense for the MPJE to me). Once again this was my way of thinking about scoring, if somebody knows this is invalid then please say so and explain.
Texas MPJE- I took this as a back up after the CPJE while waiting for the QA to end. I studied for about 3-4 days for 5-6 hours each day. To be honest I didn't put my full effort into studying for this exam because I just wanted to pass the CPJE, but I feel like this was more then enough time for most people. My sources were the Sarah Fichuk "Pass The Texas Pharmacy Law Exam", Cacciatore 29 page supplement (I didn't have the actual book just the supplement) and a 50 page review of federal law from 2010. The book by Fichuk, while very good, was not enough to pass the exam. Some sort of federal law review is needed because I had numerous questions about stuff like adulteration, federal acts, and such on the exam. Fichuk does not go over there things and I probably would not have passed if I had only relied on her book. I got my results online 3 days later around 1 pm in the afternoon and passed with an 88. Just a heads up, I did all of the questions at the back of the Pass Texas Law Book, and you should know that MPJE questions are not like that. They are all scenario based mostly on the exam, and there are choose all that apply questions like that naplex (I had about 6 of those on my exam). The answer choices can also be very tricky, with two answers that are very similar but just worded a little differently that you have to somehow differentiate between and choose the correct answer.
I know this was a lot to read, but like I said at the beginning these boards have helped me reach where I am now and so I felt the need to give back as well. Big shout out to everybody thats been posting this past summer about their exam experiences, your advice helped calm me down when I began feeling too nervous. I hope this helps anybody still preparing for the exams, and feel free to PM me about any questions relating to anything I've mentioned above. Good luck everybody!
