Level Up RN Nursing School Study Planner Review

The Level Up RN study planner is free in the strictest sense of the word: the planner page hands you a Google Sheet with no email capture, no account step and nothing to buy, and Google's own sharing panel on the file reads "Anyone who has the link can access. No sign-in required." What it gives you is a nursing school semester grid, three tabs deep, and it contains no NCLEX content at all.

We opened the spreadsheet on 27 September 2026, read all three tabs end to end and counted the grid. This review is what that count found, including the one thing that catches students out before they ever open it.

Summary Table

The free planner's home on leveluprn.com, captured September 2026. The free sheet is on the left. The $36.95 book in the sidebar is a different product with almost the same name.

Level Up RN study planner overview

Two things on Level Up RN's site are called the Nursing School Study Planner, and only one of them is free.

The free one is a Google Sheet by Cathy Parkes, published on 22 July 2020 and last updated on 12 September 2025. The paid one is a printed, wire-bound book that sells from the planner product page at $36.95, listed against a regular price of $48.95. Search the exact phrase "level up rn study planner" and the book takes the first result while the free sheet sits at number six. Students land on the book, see a price, and assume the free planner was withdrawn. It was not.

This review is about the sheet. It has three tabs and nothing else.

Every figure counted from the file itself on 27 September 2026.

Level Up RN study planner review for 2026

The grid is a semester, not a study plan

The Calendar Template tab is the product. It is headed NURSING STUDY PLANNER with a Year field and a Semester field, then six course columns, each with a Title cell pre-filled as "Nurs 2XX (Course Name)" and a "Day(s) of the Week" field under it. A seventh column is headed NOTES AND SPECIAL DATES.

Down the left edge run 16 week rows, labelled "Week 1 (DATES)" through "Week 16 (DATES)". Between every one of them sits a row called "Additional Study Goals (Cards, Videos, Groups)". That alternation is the whole design, and it is a good one: the week row holds what the school is making you do, and the row beneath it holds what you decided to do about it. Most planners give you one or the other.

Sixteen weeks is the tell. That is a standard semester, not a dedicated NCLEX review window. The dates are blank, so the grid stretches to fit whatever you put in it, but the structure was drawn for a term of coursework.

The example tab is a real semester, and it is from 2015

The third tab is not a demo. It is Cathy Parkes' own summer semester, dated Week 1 on 6/1/15 through Week 10 on 8/7/15, with six courses named and timetabled: Nurs 333 Peds clinical on Monday, Nurs 331 OB clinical on Wednesday, and Nurs 332, Nurs 330, Nurs 450 and Nurs 451 all stacked on Friday.

The cells are filled with the texture of nursing school rather than exam prep: clinical shifts written as 7am to 2pm, graded care plans, SBARs, weekly journals, discussion board assignments one through seven, skills testing, a birth center visit, ATI practice exams and course exams. The study goal rows between them read like "Peds Cards and videos (Part 2), Maternal Newborn Cards and videos (Part 2), Leadership Cards 31-40 and videos".

Two things follow from that. The example genuinely teaches the method, because you can see a hard ten week term laid out by someone who survived it. And the study goal rows inside it are illustrative rather than historical: in the walkthrough on the same page, Cathy says of the Level Up RN cards and videos listed there that she did not have them when she was in nursing school. The deadlines in that example are real. The study plan drawn underneath them was added afterwards.

What is not in it

There is no NCLEX item anywhere in the file. No NCLEX-RN or NCLEX-PN test plan, no Client Needs categories or weightings, no question-bank target, no readiness exam checkpoint and no field for your Pearson VUE date. Nothing counts down to a test day, because nothing in the sheet knows you have one.

That matters for how you use it. The NCLEX is 85 to 150 items with a five hour limit, and the thing that decides your result is how many practice questions you work through and how carefully you read the rationales. A calendar that does not track question volume cannot manage that for you. It can hold it, if you type it in yourself.

The Instructions tab is also carrying stale copy. Its pitch for the printed planner still describes "The 2022 Nursing School Study Planner", four editions behind the one the store now sells. Smaller, but in the same spirit: the sharing hashtag on the sheet is #LevelUpYourPlan while the page that links to it asks for #LevelUpMyPlan.

Pricing

The sheet costs nothing and asks for nothing. There is no email wall in front of it, no account prompt and no upsell between the button and the file. Opening it needs no Google account. Making it yours does, because the file is view only: the Instructions tab tells you to either make a copy to your Drive or download it as an Excel file, and the second route means you can run it in Excel with no Google login at all.

The printed planner is the paid product, and it is a genuinely different thing rather than a premium tier of the sheet. On 27 September 2026 it listed at $36.95, down from $48.95, in one dated edition described as the 2026-2027 Academic Year covering August 2026 to August 2027. It runs 196 pages at 7 by 10 inches with lay-flat wire binding, and it carries 18 dedicated reference pages across 10 subjects: lab values, health assessment, fundamentals, pharmacology, medical-surgical, pediatrics, maternity, nutrition, psychiatric mental health and leadership. Level Up RN's own store shows it at 4.9 out of 5 from 111 reviews.

So the honest comparison is not free versus paid. It is a blank grid you fill in yourself versus a dated book with reference content bound into it. If what you want is the reference pages, the sheet will never give you those. If what you want is a schedule, the sheet does that for $36.95 less.

Who the Level Up RN study planner is best for

It is best for a nursing student mapping a term. Six course columns, clinical days, care plan deadlines and a study goal row under every week is exactly the shape of that problem, and the worked example shows you how a heavy semester looks once it is written down. Print it landscape and fit to width, which is what the Instructions tab tells you to do, and stick it on a wall.

It also suits anyone who refuses to trade an email address for a download. That is rarer than it should be among free planners, and it is the clearest reason to pick this one over the alternatives on our NCLEX study planners page.

It is a poor fit as your NCLEX plan on its own. Used for that, it is an empty container: you supply the subject order, the question targets and the checkpoints, and the sheet just remembers them. If you are in NCLEX review rather than coursework, start from a plan that already knows the exam and use this grid to hold it.

When you might look elsewhere

• You want a plan built around your test date. Our free NCLEX study plan generator takes your date, your weekly hours and your license type and returns weekly phases with a daily question rhythm, in the browser, with no account.
• You want an NCLEX-specific calendar someone else has filled in. The NCLEX Bootcamp printable study schedules assign real work day by day, though every assignment names Bootcamp's own material, and the NurseInTheMaking 30-day NCLEX study calendar is the shorter, email-gated alternative.
• You want the content order, not the container. Our guide to what the 2026 NCLEX test plan weights decides what goes in the cells, which is the question a blank calendar cannot answer. Pair it with an NCLEX question bank, and see the rest of what is free in our NCLEX free resources roundup.

Final verdict

Level Up RN study planner FAQs

Is the Level Up RN study planner free?

Yes, completely, and without an email address. The button on Level Up RN's planner page opens the Google Sheet directly, and the file's sharing setting is anyone with the link, no sign-in required. The separate printed planner sold on the same site is a different product at $36.95.

Do you need a Google account to use it?

Not to open it. You do need one to make it yours, because the sheet is view only and editing means copying it to your own Drive. The Instructions tab offers a way around that: download the file as Excel and fill it in there with no Google login.

Is the Level Up RN planner good for NCLEX prep?

Only as a container. There is no NCLEX content in the file: no test plan categories, no question targets, no readiness checkpoints and no test date field. It will hold an NCLEX plan you have written somewhere else, and it will not write one for you.

How many weeks does the planner cover?

The blank Calendar Template runs 16 week rows with an Additional Study Goals row between each one, which is a standard semester. The dates are not filled in, so you can compress or stretch it. The worked example on the third tab uses 10 of those weeks for a condensed summer term.

What is the difference between the free sheet and the $36.95 planner?

They share a name and almost nothing else. The free one is a spreadsheet you fill in. The paid one is a printed, wire-bound book of 196 pages for the 2026 to 2027 academic year, with 18 reference pages across 10 nursing subjects bound in. Reference content is the thing the sheet does not have and cannot give you.

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