TL;DR: Four review centres in Iloilo City cover the NLE, and all four are in Iloilo City Proper within walking distance of each other. TopRank on General Hughes and SLRC at the CAP Building on General Luna both appear on their own chains' published branch directories, which makes them the easiest to verify. Merge on Solis Street does not appear on Merge's own branch list. R.A. Gapuz at the John Tan Building on Valeria has no working website; the chain's old domain now redirects to a parked page. No centre publishes classroom tuition. TopRank is the only one covering NCLEX and the international nursing pathways.
The four, side by side
| SLRC Iloilo | TopRank Iloilo | Merge Iloilo | R.A. Gapuz Iloilo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Address | 2/F CAP Bldg., Gen. Luna St. | General Hughes St. | Carlos Young Bldg., Solis St. | John Tan Bldg., Valeria St. |
| Phone | (033) 338 1819 | 0956 556 0276 | (033) 329 0151 | (033) 336 2692 |
| Exams besides NLE | LET | Midwifery, pharmacy, medtech, criminology, NCLEX | Pharmacy | None |
| Face-to-face | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Online | Yes | Yes | Not on file | No |
| On its chain's own branch list | Yes | Yes | No | Chain has no live site |
| Published fee | No (national self-study pack only) | No | No | No |
All four are in Iloilo City Proper. The full city list, across every exam, is on the Iloilo City review centres page, and our all-exam roundup for the city is here.
Start with what can be verified
For most review centre decisions the first question people ask is which is best. For Iloilo's NLE field, the more useful first question is which of these can you confirm exists as advertised.
SLRC Iloilo appears on St. Louis Review Center's own published branch directory, with a linked branch Facebook page. Contact details match our record. Verified.
TopRank Iloilo appears on TopRank's own branches page under its Visayas entries, with a branch email at the chain's domain. Verified.
Merge Iloilo does not. Merge Review Center's official site names exactly three branches: Angeles City, Makati and Davao. Iloilo is not among them. The Solis Street listing carries the Merge name and matches the brand's exam focus, NLE and pharmacy, but the network's own materials do not confirm it. That is a gap, not an allegation, and it is closed by a phone call to (033) 329 0151.
R.A. Gapuz Iloilo cannot be checked at all against a company website, because there isn't one. The domain historically tied to the chain, gapuzreviewcenter.com, redirects to a parked placeholder, confirmed 2 September 2026. Separately, Ray A. Gapuz Review System, a differently branded operation running under ICART Inc., has a live site listing Manila, Baguio, Batangas and Legazpi, and Iloilo is not on it. Two similar names, two different operations. We unpack that confusion in the Gapuz review centre guide and in our look at the Dagupan branch, which has the same problem.
None of this means the unverified branches are bad. Plenty of long-running Philippine review centres operate entirely through Facebook and a landline. It means the checking falls to you, and it should happen before any payment.
What each one is actually for
TopRank Iloilo: the widest programme range
TopRank's Iloilo branch is on General Hughes Street, on the 3rd floor of the Doubletoo Building, and it covers the most ground of the four: NLE, midwifery, pharmacy, medical technology, criminology and NCLEX-RN. The chain nationally adds radiologic technology, psychometrics, veterinary medicine, dentistry and respiratory therapy, plus Prometric, DHA, HAAD and UK-CBT.
For a nursing graduate, the relevant differentiator is that NCLEX and the Middle East licensing pathways sit under the same roof as the local board review. If your plan is NLE now and work abroad in two years, that continuity has real value. Our guide to going from the Philippines to the NCLEX covers what that route actually involves beyond the review itself.
TopRank states it is ISO 9001:2015 certified and lists roughly 30 branches plus international locations. Its Iloilo Google rating is 5.0 from three reviews, which is too small a sample to mean anything.
SLRC Iloilo: the most published detail
SLRC's Iloilo branch is at the CAP Building on General Luna and covers NLE and LET.
SLRC publishes more about what its NLE programme contains than any other chain here: comprehensive nursing lectures, skills enhancement, board exam simulation, clinical case discussions, and daily quizzes and assessments. It runs three formats nationally, face-to-face, live online with real-time instructors, and self-paced video with practice questions and rationales.
It also does two things nobody else on this list does. It publishes a price for a product, its NLE self-review pack at 990 pesos, one payment, 2,500 board-style questions across NP1 to NP5 with rationales, access through February 2027. And it publishes a free online NLE reviewer that requires no enrolment at all.
Neither is a substitute for a review programme. Both let you test the chain's item style before you spend real money, which is the cheapest due diligence available to you. Our SLRC guide covers the network.
Merge Iloilo: nursing-first, but unconfirmed locally
Merge is a nursing and pharmacy specialist established 2003. Nationally it runs live online weekend classes via Zoom, Saturdays and Sundays 9am to 4pm, a hybrid option, an "Experts' Notes" workbook, a simulated preboard with full rationale, and a roughly 10-day intensive final coaching block before the exam.
That final coaching block is the part worth asking about. Ten focused days before the exam date is a defined product, and most centres are vaguer about what their run-up actually looks like.
Our record shows the Iloilo branch as face-to-face only, so do not assume the national online schedule applies here. And Merge's website was still showing 2025 batch pages when we checked in September 2026, so treat the calendar as needing confirmation even where the format is accurate.
R.A. Gapuz Iloilo: NLE only, face to face, unverifiable online
The John Tan Building branch on Valeria Street reviews for the NLE and nothing else, face to face. The chain also has a Bacolod branch, so it has a Western Visayas footprint rather than being a one-off.
With no working chain website, there is nothing to check the branch against and nothing published about programme length, inclusions or fees. Call (033) 336 2692 or visit before you commit.
Nobody publishes what the classroom programme costs
Not one of these four publishes tuition for its Iloilo NLE programme.
The way to make them comparable is to ask all four the same questions and write the answers down:
- Total programme fee, in writing, before any reservation.
- Programme length in weeks, and session days and hours.
- Whether final coaching is inside the fee or extra.
- How many full-length simulated board exams, and whether you get item-level rationales.
- Whether materials and workbooks are included.
- Class size.
- Retake or sit-in terms if you do not pass.
Question 4 is the one that separates programmes most in practice. Lecture hours are easy to add; well-written mock exams with proper rationales are not. Our review centre cost guide covers why quoted market ranges are so unreliable.
None of them has a verifiable pass rate
TopRank cites Top 1 placers across several sittings. SLRC references hundreds of topnotchers. Both are self-reported, chain-wide and undated in places.
The structural point: PRC publishes lists of passers by name and does not release results by review centre. No review centre in the Philippines has an independently audited pass rate, so any figure quoted to you is the centre quoting itself. We set out what the official numbers do support in board exam passing rates by course.
Judge these four on what is checkable: whether the chain confirms the branch exists, what the programme contains, how many mock exams you sit, and how directly they answer a question about money.
Our read
If verifiability matters most, SLRC or TopRank. If you are planning to work abroad, TopRank, for the NCLEX continuity. If you want a nursing-first specialist with a defined final coaching block, Merge, after confirming the branch's status by phone. If you are choosing R.A. Gapuz, visit the John Tan Building first.
Before any of that, work through SLRC's free online NLE reviewer. It costs nothing and it will tell you honestly how far you currently are from the pass line. Our NLE guide covers the exam structure, and how to pass the NLE first try covers the study plan no centre will build for you.
Sources
- SchoolFinderPH directory records for Merge Review Centers Iloilo City, R.A. Gapuz Review Center Iloilo Center, St. Louis Review Center Iloilo City and Toprank Review Academy Iloilo Branch
- toprankacademy.com/branches, which lists the Iloilo branch among its Visayas entries
- slrcreview.com, for its NLE programme description, three formats, free online reviewer, branch directory and the 990-peso self-review pack
- mergereview.com, for the network's published branch list, weekend online schedule and final coaching block
- gapuzreviewcenter.com, which redirects to a parked placeholder page, and raygapuzreviewsystem.com, whose published locations do not include Iloilo (both checked 2 September 2026)
