Frequently asked questions

Create an account and verify your email. You do not need a card. The free plan gives you 10 new questions every day.

There is no time-limited trial to run out. Every account gets 10 new questions a day, permanently, and anything you have already opened stays readable.

Full access takes the daily limit off and opens up the timed two-part mocks. It is £9.90 for 99 days or £19.90 for 199 days, 10p a day whichever you pick. Every plan carries OSCE simulator attempts. Gems come with the 199 days plan. You pay once and it stops at the end. Nothing renews.

Three hours in total for 115 questions, sat in one appointment. Part A is 15 numeracy questions in 30 minutes and Part B is 100 clinical questions in two and a half hours. The two parts are timed separately and passed separately.

The NMC publishes it in its Test Specification. Part A, numeracy, is 87 per cent, which is 13 out of 15. Part B, clinical, varies by nursing field and is generally 60 to 70 per cent. These are the current marks and the standard is held steady statistically across versions of the paper, so they can move. You are told pass or fail for each part and not your score.

No. One mark a question, no partial credit, and nothing taken off for a wrong answer. There is no reason to leave anything blank, so guess rather than skip.

Yes, on screen, for the numeracy part. You also get an erasable note board and a marker, though you must not write on it until the tutorial has finished.

You only resit that part. You get up to three attempts on one application with at least ten days between them, and a new version of the paper each time. If all three go, the application closes and there is a six-month wait.

Only the ones you have not proved yet. A question you answer correctly in a mock is retired for you, and anything you got wrong or left blank stays in the pool so it comes round again. Practice does not retire anything.

Yes. Practice keeps your answer and marks against each question, and a submitted mock is fully reviewable with the explanations shown.

No, and you should be wary of anyone claiming otherwise. Exam content is confidential and candidates agree not to share it. Ours are written from the published blueprint and test specification.

Because the NMC weights them that way. The test specification sets how many questions come from each area, and we hold the bank and the mocks to those numbers.

A timed station you hold by typing: you speak to a simulated patient, ask the examiner for observations and findings, and hand in. Our simulator covers assessment-style stations from the 10: you hold the conversation with a simulated patient by typing, and are marked against criteria we wrote ourselves. The four clinical skills stations are performed on manikins and equipment and are not simulated here. The result is a simulated verdict, not a prediction of how an NMC assessor would mark you.

Yes. There is a recorded demo on the OSCE page, showing one station passed and the same station failed, with the marked report each one produced. Simulator attempts come with every access plan, 4 of them with the 99 days plan, which is a full APIE sitting, and in larger packs on their own.

An attempt is one go at one station. £9.90 for 25 attempts or £15.90 for 50 attempts. Attempts do not expire, and the 99 days plan includes 4 and the 199 days plan includes 25. Leaving a station within two minutes without saying anything gives the attempt back.

Against a written list of criteria for that station, each judged on its own and quoted back to you with the line from your transcript that earned it. Some criteria are marked essential, and there are red flags for unsafe acts or omissions. The verdict is then arithmetic rather than an opinion: every essential criterion met and no red flag raised is a pass, and anything else is not.

No, and we will not pretend otherwise. You are marked against criteria we wrote, not the NMC's. The NMC sets a pass mark for each of its 10 stations, generally 60 to 90 per cent against its own checklists, which are not published, so our criteria cannot reproduce them. What a station tells you is which parts you missed and what a structured handover of your own sounds like under a clock.

It is kept as the transcript of that attempt, which is what the report quotes when it explains a judgement, and you can read it back at any time. Write about the scenario in front of you rather than about a real patient or yourself, the way you would in any exam.

No. Each plan is a single payment for a fixed stretch of access. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel.

You drop back to the free plan rather than losing your account, so your progress and flagged questions are still there. You keep 10 new questions a day.

Yes. Buying while you still have time left adds to the end of it rather than starting from the day you pay, so you lose nothing by renewing early.

Condensed revision cards with your own notes on each page. They come with the 199-day plan.

No. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Nursing and Midwifery Council. They do not approve preparation providers.

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