The Exams

One Ladder.
Six Examinations.

AccelaStudy® AI Nursing covers every rung on it.
Here is what each exam actually is — how many questions, how long you get, how it decides when to stop, and what the result actually says.

Every question count and time limit on this page is the published figure for that examination.

Before the table

How a Computer-Adaptive Exam Actually Works

Five things are true of the registered-nurse and practical-nurse exams, and knowing them changes how you study.

Every figure below comes from the current published test plan for that examination.

It adapts to you, question by question

Answer well and the next question is harder; answer badly and it is easier. Your result depends on the difficulty of what you answered correctly, not on how many you got right — which is why a bank reporting “78% correct” cannot tell you whether you are ready.

85 questions minimum, 150 maximum, five hours

The clock includes your breaks. Finishing at 85 is not automatically good news and running to 150 is not automatically bad — the exam stops as soon as it is confident, in either direction.

Three case studies are built in

At minimum length you get 52 content questions, 18 clinical-judgment case-study questions in three unfolding cases of six, and 15 unscored questions that are being tried out on you. You cannot tell which are which, so answer all of them like they count.

Partial credit is real

Next Generation items are scored by published partial-credit rules rather than as right or wrong. Getting four of five findings earns you part of the point, and on some item types a wrong selection cancels a right one. Practice that grades these all-or-nothing is teaching you the wrong instinct.

There is no score

The result is pass or fail. There is no number, no percentile and no scaled score, so any product that hands you one has invented it. If you do not pass, you get a report showing where you fell short by content area.

You can take it again

A failed attempt is followed by a required waiting period before you can retake — the length is set by the regulator you are applying to, and a subscription that runs by the month is a much better fit for that than a window you bought in advance and watched expire.

The ladder

Pick Your Exam.
Get the Right Course.

Every one of these is in the same subscription.
You do not have to know which rung you are on before you subscribe, and moving between them costs nothing.

NCLEX-RN^®

Registered-nurse licensure

The exam for registered-nurse licensure in the United States and Canada, and the multiple-choice component of Australia’s assessment for internationally qualified nurses. One exam, three jurisdictions, one course.

Length: 85–150 questions
Time: 5 hours, breaks included
Result: Pass or fail, no score

The eight client-needs categories it is weighted to

Management of Care · Safety and Infection Control · Health Promotion and Maintenance · Psychosocial Integrity · Basic Care and Comfort · Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies · Reduction of Risk Potential · Physiological Adaptation. Management of care is the largest single slice, which is why priority and delegation get a page of their own here.

NCLEX-PN^®

Practical- and vocational-nurse licensure

The same adaptive format and the same five-hour clock, written to practical-nurse scope of practice. Its blueprint leads with Coordinated Care rather than Management of Care, and it asks what a practical nurse decides rather than what a registered nurse delegates — a distinction a bank that reuses registered-nurse items will blur.

Length: 85–150 questions
Time: 5 hours, breaks included
Structure: Same 52 / 18 / 15 at minimum

CANADA

REx-PN^® and CPNRE^™

Canadian practical-nurse registration

Canadian practical nurses take one of two examinations depending on the province or territory they are registering in. Ontario and British Columbia use the REx-PN, a computer-adaptive exam. The rest of the country uses the CPNRE, which is not adaptive and has its own blueprint. Both are in the subscription, and both are taught to Canadian scope of practice rather than as a relabeled American course.

Canadian registered nurses take the NCLEX-RN — the same exam, the same course. Your regulator tells you which examination applies to you; we do not, and nothing here substitutes for what they say.

AIDE

NNAAP^® and MACE^® — written exams

Nurse aide and medication aide

The first rung of the ladder, and the one nobody else bothers to build well. The nurse-aide written examination is 70 questions in 90 minutes; the medication-aide examination is 100 multiple-choice questions. Both cover the care skills, the psychosocial half of the work, and what the role is and is not allowed to do.

Read this part carefully. Both credentials also require a hands-on skills evaluation, performed in front of an evaluator. We prepare you for the written examination only. Nothing here is a substitute for the skills evaluation, and no amount of studying will pass it for you.

Not on this page, deliberately: specialty certifications, advanced-practice board examinations, and nursing-school admission tests. They are planned, they are not built, and a marketing page is not the place to imply otherwise. What is on this page is what the subscription covers at launch.

How we use it

What Knowing the Shape Is Actually Worth

A published blueprint is only useful if something acts on it.
Here is what acts on it.

Practice is weighted the way the exam is

Your sessions and your simulations are composed to the published category weights, so the largest slice of the exam gets the largest share of your evenings. A textbook allocates by chapter length; this allocates by what you are actually tested on.

Simulations run at the real length and clock

Including the adaptive stopping rule, the three case studies, and the five hours with breaks inside them. Pacing is a skill, and it is not one you want to be learning for the first time at hour four of the real thing.

Partial credit is scored, not approximated

Each Next Generation item type is graded by the rule that actually applies to it. That changes how you should answer — on some types a guess costs you, on others it does not — and you should find that out in practice.

Readiness is reported against the real standard

A pass probability with its confidence band, measured against the passing standard for your exam. Not a percentage, not a fabricated scaled score, and honest about how sure it is — including when it is not sure yet.

Whichever Rung You Are On, It Is One Subscription

$49/mo month to month, $39/mo on the annual tier. Every exam on this page, unlimited case studies, and Dosage Calculation Fundamentals free. Launching January 2027.

Join the Waitlist

One Ladder.Six Examinations.