Nurse Plus Academy Reviews: Is it Worth It?

So you’ve soldiered through nursing school, your bright future as a registered nurse is visible on the horizon, and now all you’ve got to do is master the NCLEX to become a registered nurse.In this foremost of Nurse Plus Academy reviews, we’ll explore the pros and cons of the prep program, and explain why it’s on our list of the 8 Best NCLEX Review Courses.

Nurse Plus Academy

4.0

$49

An affordable subscription-based NCLEX review course that's specifically designed for anxious test takers.

Pros:

• Free mode available to test-drive the platform & materials with no login, registration, or credit card required
• Practice offline with the NCLEX Test Genie App
• More affordable than the average NCLEX prep course
• Pass guarantee

Cons:

• No in-person/live online component option
• No physical books

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About Nurse Plus Academy

Nurse Plus Academy is a well-regarded NCLEX prep resource that’s been around since 2017 (so it’s relatively new). Out of 700+ reviews, it’s earned a 4.4/5-star rating on TrustPilot.

My Thoughts on Nurse Plus Academy’s NCLEX Course

After using the NPA prep course extensively, here’s my concise feedback.

Platform

I found the relatively frills-free platform more accessible than other more elaborately-designed ones from competitors like Kaplan. Navigating the coursework is easy – 5/5 stars in the user-friendly department.

I once encountered a technical troubleshooting issue and used the help feature to contact the staff. They got back to me within 12 hours or so to help resolve it. Bonus points for responsiveness.

Nurse Plus Academy offers a very generous trial run feature, which enables you to test out the platform without any type of registration.

So give it a go and see if you enjoy the look and feel of the platform yourself with a free trial – since it’s commitment-free, you literally have nothing to lose.

In addition to the NCLEX training, the NPA program is also a great resource for career advice and tips via the “Nursing Career Guide.” The articles from real nurses – like this one on nursing burnout — are relatable and practically helpful.

Curriculum

In total, you get 1600+ NCLEX practice questions to work through. Each comes with a detailed explanation. So, importantly, you don’t just get the right answer – you know why the right answer is in fact correct.

The practice questions are broken up into categories and subcategories – psychosocial, pediatric care, etc. Each subcategory features 20-60 questions, so working through each seems manageable and not so intimidating.

As you move through each section, the program keeps a tally of your hits and misses. If you get stuck, you can use the “get a hint” feature to help you out. NPA forces you to get each answer right before it allows you to move on to the next section – which can be frustrating, but ultimately is designed to maximize your chance of success on the test.

Working your way through the material, NPA tracks your performance and gives you a calculated estimate on how you would do on the real test based on what you’ve accomplished thus far in the course. I found it pretty helpful.

(Don’t worry, that 10% chance screengrab was from the beginning of the course; I passed.)

When you sign up for a premium course, you also get, in addition to the practice questions, 5 sets of flashcards. They are broken up by category: safe and effective environment, health promotion,, psychosocial integrity, physiological integrity, and terms and abbreviations.

If, like me, you struggle with recalling acronyms, the terms and abbreviations flashcards are a superb way to drill them into your memory.

The down side to having a practice-based course, however, is that there is not much left for content review in this NCLEX course. This course is more like a question bank, as there are no video lessons or print material to work through.

Rather than watch interactive video lessons or work through classic review material, you will be spending the majority of your time building on your NCLEX knowledge through reviewing problem solutions and working through their flashcard set.

If having more traditional lessons or live classes is important to you, then I suggest you look elsewhere for an NCLEX review course (we make alternative recommendations later in this review).

Practice Tests

NPA has tons of realistic practice tests (65!). Chances are, like me, you won’t get to them all, but for the most industrious preppers out there, it’s good to know you have so much material to work with.

The practice test questions I encountered in the NPA practice test were very similar to the ones that I eventually tackled on the actual NCLEX exam. The interface, called the “NCLEX simulator,” is designed to mimic that of the real test.

Each of the practice tests focuses on one of the four NCLEX categories: Physiological Integrity, Safe and Effective Care Environment, Health Promotion and Maintenance, and Psychosocial Integrity.

Nurse Plus Academy NCLEX Options

NPA offers three course options, which we’ll explore below.

The Monthly

At $49 per month, The Monthly is the most basic option.

The key features you get with The Monthly include:

• 2,500+ exam questions
• 80 practice tests
• 350+ SATA questions
• Unlimited NCLEX CAT Simulations

The Bulletproof

For $99 with The Bulletproof, you get 60 days of access. While the monthly cost works out to be the same for both The Monthly and The Bulletproof, the benefit of the latter is that you get all the features included in The Monthy plus:

• 300+ NCLEX Flashcards
• 4 NCLEX Cheat Sheets

The Lifetime

At a $139 price point, The Lifetime is the most expensive option. You get all the features of The Bulletproof, but with a full year of access as opposed to just two months.

It’s just $40 more for the additional ten months of access, so springing for The Lifetime may be worth it if you have the extra funds and aren’t taking the NCLEX in the immediate future.

What’s the Refund Policy?

Like other leading NCLEX prep providers Nurse Prep Academy outfits students who sign up to its Premium course with a money-back pass guarantee.

Here’s how it works:

• Successfully complete all the practice tests (required)
• Take the exam
• If you don’t pass, you email the company with your full name and email address (must be the same ones you used to register for the program) and a scanned copy of your failing test score within 30 days of taking the test
• Nurse Plus Academy verifies the information you submitted and issues a full refund

Nurse Plus Academy Reviews from REAL Students

You should always scour the web for reviews from real students (not paid promotional content) before spending your hard-earned money on a prep course.

Seek feedback from multiple sources to increase the likelihood of getting a fully objective feel for the pros and cons of any given program.

So, here’s a taste of what real students who have used Nurse Plus Academy have to say about it. Reviews for NPA on the web are sparse compared to more well-established providers such as Hurst or Kaplan, but they’re out there if you do a little digging.

Here’s Alice via Trustpilot:

Austin Reigle via Facebook doesn’t recommend Nurse Plus because of the repetitive nature of questions on the simulated test:

Beautiful-Gap5508 via Reddit says:

Who Needs the Nurse Plus Academy Course

You might want to consider Nurse Plus Academy for a few reasons:

• For those on a budget, it’s a relatively high-quality, low-cost alternative to more expensive alternative courses (see following section for more info)
• It can also be an affordable supplemental course to complement another NCLEX prep program
• If you’re most interested in a ton of practice questions with solid explanations (and don’t need live instruction), Nurse Plus Academy delivers in spades (plus flashcards). A professor of mine in nursing school once called kids like us “drillers.”

Nurse Plus Academy Course Alternatives

Here’s how NPA stacks up against other more high-profile prep courses.

Nurse Plus Academy vs UWorld

UWorld is quite popular among nursing students, so you’ve probably heard of it.

You get 2,100+ NCLEX-RN questions covering the waterfront of NCLEX topics as well as 2 practice tests (which they call “self-assessments”).

The course cost runs between $129-$279, so it’s costlier than NPA (but still relatively low).

Unlike NPA, there is no money-back score guarantee, nor is there a free trial.

However, one decided advantage of UWorld over NPA is its proprietary graphics, which are great visual learning tools.

UWorld NCLEX RN Test Prep | 3,500+ Practice Questions

4.5

$139

A robust Qbank that is best for supplementing your existing NCLEX-RN comprehensive prep course.

Pros:

• Extensive, well-researched bank of classic and NGN questions
• Hundreds of brief lecture videos on the most important topics on the exam
• Adaptive (CAT) Practice tests mimic the format of the exam
• Multiple Self-Assessments can be purchased separately
• Tracks your improvement in a detailed manner
• Accessible with mobile app; convenient when away from home

Cons:

• No live or online review course included with the subscription
• Doesn’t offer a comprehensive curriculum review
• No “pass guarantee”

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Nurse Plus Academy vs Hurst

Hurst offers 1,600 practice questions (roughly the same quantity as NPA) and four 125-question practice tests. The cost runs from $109-$399, making it slightly more expensive than NPA.

One benefit Hurst offers for those of us on a budget is the ability to break up the payments into thirds across a few months.

The minimalist, austere platform looks more like NPA’s and less like the more elaborate Kaplan’s or UWorld’s.

Hurst offers a respectable pass guarantee similar to NPA’s as well as a 7-day free trial.

Hurst Review NCLEX

4.5

$249

A fully comprehensive NCLEX-RN course that features responsive customer support and Nurse Coaches to guide your studies through core content.

Pros:

• Core Content Review
• Offers in-person and live online review sessions
• On-demand video content

Cons:

• Hurst’s QBank doesn’t mimic the look and feel of the NCLEX
• Gated readiness exams - users must unlock access to the 4 readiness exams by completing a live or online review or purchasing a Hurst Now subscription

Try Now Read our Review

Nurse Plus Academy vs NURSING.com

Read our in-depth NURSING.com review

NURSING.com is comparatively priced to Nurse Plus Academy. For a student seeking a one-month subscription, NURSING.com will save him/her $10 ($39 instead of $49 per month). What you will get with NURSING.com over Nurse Plus Academy, however, is a more robust library of videos and graphics, which are better for those who learn visually.

Both courses offer a free trial, so you can take each for a test drive before committing.

NURSING.com

4.5

$82

A comprehensive and budget-friendly NCLEX-RN course that's great for visual learners.

Pros:

• Well-developed mobile application
• High-quality, exclusive NCLEX simulator (SIMCLEX) that uses test-like algorithm
• Lots of practice questions (6,000+)
• Gold standard 200% pass guarantee (double-money back guarantee)

Cons:

• No live instruction option
• User interface can feel clunky and harder to navigate

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Nurse Plus Academy FAQs

Let’s run down some frequently asked questions (FAQs) that nursing students have about Nurse Plus Academy.

The Bottom Line on Nurse Plus Academy

Here are the key points you should ideally take away from our Nurse Plus Academy Review:

• Nurse Plus Academy is both highly reviewed and highly affordable (much more so than competing courses)
• Your success is backed up with a full money-back guarantee
• There is no option for a tutor or live instruction. If you require either of those features, you should consider an alternative 

Nurse Plus Academy

4.0

$49

An affordable subscription-based NCLEX review course that's specifically designed for anxious test takers.

Pros:

• Free mode available to test-drive the platform & materials with no login, registration, or credit card required
• Practice offline with the NCLEX Test Genie App
• More affordable than the average NCLEX prep course
• Pass guarantee

Cons:

• No in-person/live online component option
• No physical books

Try Now for Free

We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.