How NP Board Prep is put together

Numbers come from what each certifying body publishes: candidate and renewal handbooks, test content outlines and blueprints, fee pages and yearly statistics. That means NPCB (AANPCB), ANCC, PNCB, NCC, ONCC, AACN and DNPCB. A fee, cut score or pass rate lives in a single record per exam, and every table that shows it reads that record, so a comparison cannot drift from the exam's own cost page. Each row cites its document and when we read it, mostly in November 2026.

Some answers are missing or conflicting, and the pages say so rather than fill the gap:

• Cut scores: NPCB and NCC publish no passing number, so none is printed for their exams. An older NPCB scale is shown only as history.
• Pass rates: NCC divides by everyone tested, not first-time takers; PNCB's 2025 report was not on the pages we could read, so 2024 is shown; ONCC posted no 2024 report we could find.
• Two counts of one thing: the NPCB FNP blueprint gives 26.5% for two tasks on its web page and 27% in the handbook; we use the web page and note the handbook.
• Dates ahead: ANCC's 2027 renewal handbook, NCC's 2029 eligibility rule and PNCB's 2030 rule are written as announced, not as if already in force.

The questions are drawn from the banks behind our study apps, and none goes live after a single read. Pass one assigns it to a domain of the current outline, re-checks the keyed answer against current guidance (USPSTF, ACIP and AAP, ACOG, ADA, GOLD and GINA, DSM-5-TR, NCCN and ASCO, the 2023 Beers Criteria) and writes a note for each option. Pass two is done by a different reviewer who answers without the key, then grades the item against a fixed checklist: exactly one defensible answer, nothing in wording or length that gives it away, notes that agree with the key. Rejected items are repaired or replaced and reviewed again.

Six exams share a lot of medicine, so each topic has a single home page, chosen by population: adult primary care and screening under FNP-C, children under CPNP-PC, the newborn under NNP-BC, gynecology and pregnancy under WHNP-BC, psychiatry under PMHNP-BC and cancer care under AOCNP. Other pages link there instead of repeating it.

• A rule, fee or rate appears only with its source document.
• When the board's current document and this site differ, the board's document is right.
• Pages are re-read against their sources when a stored date expires (pass rates each year, ANCC renewal before February 2027) and when search data shows a page needs work.
• Study apps are linked from exam pages; app content is not described as the board's material, and no page promises a score.

Eligibility rulings, test authorizations, score reports and renewals come only from the certifying body. Questions of licensure and prescriptive authority belong to your state board of nursing, which also decides which certifications it accepts.