Finally got my results back and I passed with an 82%. I was an LPN for 6 years before going back, so I had the clinical experience but the theory side was rough. Spent about 7 weeks studying, around 2–3 hours a day after shifts.
The pharmacology section hit harder than I expected. Maybe 30% of the questions felt like they were testing drug calculations and interactions specifically. I'd say if you're weak on pharm, spend at least 40% of your prep time there. I used a combo of Saunders and a few practice question banks.
For anyone pursuing the nace certification pathway, the transition modules in the official study guide are worth reading twice. There's a lot of content about scope of practice differences between PN and RN that shows up in multiple choice framing.
My biggest regret is I waited too long to start timed practice exams. Do a full timed mock at week 4 at the latest so you know where your gaps are before it's too late to fix them.
I took it last year and the maternity/OB section was what got me. Failed by 4 points the first time. Second attempt I scored a 76 after drilling OB content for two extra weeks.
The transition-focused questions are genuinely different from standard NCLEX-style. They're testing whether you understand the RN role shift, not just clinical knowledge.
7 weeks sounds about right. I've heard people try to cram it into 3 weeks and struggle. With work and family it's hard to find the hours, but 2 hours a day minimum is what I tell everyone.
The timed exam advice is spot on. I did my first full mock the night before and bombed it purely from pacing issues. Practice under real conditions early or you'll learn that lesson the hard way.
Congrats on the 82%! I'm sitting for it in 3 weeks and pharm is exactly my weak spot. Did you find the Saunders pharm chapters covered it well enough or did you supplement with something else?
I failed my first attempt by 4 points and honestly it wrecked me for a while. What I changed the second time was stopping the passive reading and just doing questions — like, hundreds of them. I'd been highlighting notes thinking that counted as studying but it really didn't. Once I switched to doing 30-40 practice questions a day and actually reviewing why I got things wrong, stuff started clicking way faster. Pharmacology was my weak spot too and I just had to accept I needed to grind it.
The other thing that helped was not cramming. I know that sounds obvious but I'd done that before and it didn't stick. Spacing it out over a few weeks meant I actually retained it when I sat down for the real thing. You've already got the clinical experience so trust that it'll carry you through the application questions — it's really just about shoring up the theory gaps. You'll get there.
Congrats on the 82, that's solid. The one thing that genuinely moved the needle for me was stopping the random YouTube rabbit holes and just doing timed practice questions every single day. I didn't care if I got them wrong — I cared about understanding why I got them wrong. That shift changed everything. Pharm especially, because you can't just memorize drug names, you have to understand the mechanism or the questions will trick you every time.
Also don't sleep on the adaptive reasoning stuff. I'd been an LPN too so I thought clinical experience would carry me but the NACE I isn't testing what you've done at the bedside, it's testing how you think about it at a higher level. Once I accepted that I wasn't already prepared just because I'd seen it in practice, I studied differently. It's uncomfortable to admit but it's true.