Anki scheduling/intervals for cards (block curriculum)

[MateoGM416]

Hello,

I know this forum is kind of dead but if anyone is lurking and willing to share some wisdom about using Anki I would appreciate it. So I just started OMS-I at a program with a block curriculum. I did above-average on the first exam by watching osmosis videos before lectures, going to the lectures, and then mainly using pre-made Anki decks that a student last year made who did really well in her first year. My plan was to try to learn all of the cards in the deck the day I watched the lecture to make sure I retained the information, and then I would just review them whenever anki told me to review them. I have my 'easy' interval set to 2 days and have no limit to the number of cards I learn or review per day because we have the block schedule. I haven't messed at all with the 'advanced' options like 'max interval' or 'learning ease', and I don't know how those work.

This time around my next exam for this block is on Friday and I'm very behind on my reviews. What is the best way to schedule cards so as to get the most out of anki's learning algorithims? Should I just not be falling this behind? I went through like 500 cards yesterday for hours and I'm still behind by a couple hundred (this person's decks are pretty superfluous, although we're definitely not learning material at a slow pace..).

TIA!

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[Sidus1011]

My school has pretty frequent exams and I usually end up going through as many as 1000 cards a day on heavier exams. I have my intervals at 3 15 1d, Grad interval 2 days, easy at 3. The biggest things to make anki go faster is to hit again if you don't know it or need to think hard about it. Don't spend time on cards for more than 12 seconds if you can help it. I can usually finish 600 in a few hours or so in a day, as long as they are properly made cards and aren't asking for paragraphs long of info.

Edit: Planning on changing this once I can start using third party material, the schedule for my school is conducive to cramming like this unfortunately

 

[MateoGM416]

My school has pretty frequent exams and I usually end up going through as many as 1000 cards a day on heavier exams. I have my intervals at 3 15 1d, Grad interval 2 days, easy at 3. The biggest things to make anki go faster is to hit again if you don't know it or need to think hard about it. Don't spend time on cards for more than 12 seconds if you can help it. I can usually finish 600 in a few hours or so in a day, as long as they are properly made cards and aren't asking for paragraphs long of info.

Edit: Planning on changing this once I can start using third party material, the schedule for my school is conducive to cramming like this unfortunately

Are you talking about 1000 reviews or 1000 cards completed? I can 'review' 1000 cards a day but its really only like 500 cards with some of em taking me two or three tries to remember correctly

 

[Sidus1011]

Are you talking about 1000 reviews or 1000 cards completed? I can 'review' 1000 cards a day but its really only like 500 cards with some of em taking me two or three tries to remember correctly

1000 reviews (probably somewhere around 6-700 actual cards), new cards I usually do about 250-350 depending on the class.

Edit: If you're at a point of cramming a couple days before, you can lower your settings from 3 15 1d to 15 1d and get through the new cards a bit more readily

 

[aml868]

Just browsing late to this to say that’s crazy. I think in m1 preclinical right now I have 450-550 total cards on average a day and that takes me 2-2.5 hours (sometimes it can be more but not ideal. Per lecture (1 hour) I get about 50-100 cards so like 200-300 new cards a day at most. I don’t think you should learn more than 200-300 new cards in a day anyways…

 

[Sidus1011]

Just browsing late to this to say that’s crazy. I think in m1 preclinical right now I have 450-550 total cards on average a day and that takes me 2-2.5 hours (sometimes it can be more but not ideal. Per lecture (1 hour) I get about 50-100 cards so like 200-300 new cards a day at most. I don’t think you should learn more than 200-300 new cards in a day anyways…

I've found a much better workflow now that my school has entered a systems based block curriculum. I've been able to prioritize anking to a much greater extent and focus on boards related questions. I usually only have 100 new cards a day and that's primarily low yield info my school wants us to know. I usually finish covering everything within 5 hours of studying a day.

I'm still tweaking things, it's a bit difficult with a mandatory attendance curriculum.

 

[aml868]

I've found a much better workflow now that my school has entered a systems based block curriculum. I've been able to prioritize anking to a much greater extent and focus on boards related questions. I usually only have 100 new cards a day and that's primarily low yield info my school wants us to know. I usually finish covering everything within 5 hours of studying a day.

I'm still tweaking things, it's a bit difficult with a mandatory attendance curriculum.

That’s awesome! It takes me about 3-4 hours to actually remember new material so the thought of 1000 anki cards on top of that would be so daunting. Glad that it’s not so much anymore

 

[MateoGM416]

Just browsing late to this to say that’s crazy. I think in m1 preclinical right now I have 450-550 total cards on average a day and that takes me 2-2.5 hours (sometimes it can be more but not ideal. Per lecture (1 hour) I get about 50-100 cards so like 200-300 new cards a day at most. I don’t think you should learn more than 200-300 new cards in a day anyways…

"that's crazy" okay this would mean more to me if it came from someone else who wasn't an M1! Thank you for your input though

 

[esob]

"that's crazy" okay this would mean more to me if it came from someone else who wasn't an M1! Thank you for your input though

As an M4 about to enter residency, I agree with a max of a couple of hundred cards in a day, though it depends on the difficulty of the cards. Over the past few years, I've seen NBME content for preclinical, as well as step 2 and 3 content, continue to trend away from pure knowledge answers (example: Drug X mechanism of action is Y) to integration questions (example: The patient has a condition that is treated with drug Z, which is most similar to which other drug). Hence, if you learn stuff in isolation using anki, then it is less helpful than doing fewer cards that have a broader scope.

 

[MateoGM416]

As an M4 about to enter residency, I agree with a max of a couple of hundred cards in a day, though it depends on the difficulty of the cards. Over the past few years, I've seen NBME content for preclinical, as well as step 2 and 3 content, continue to trend away from pure knowledge answers (example: Drug X mechanism of action is Y) to integration questions (example: The patient has a condition that is treated with drug Z, which is most similar to which other drug). Hence, if you learn stuff in isolation using anki, then it is less helpful than doing fewer cards that have a broader scope.

I think I'm starting to understand the value of having a good grasp of the broader concepts before trying to memorize the one-off rote memorization that anki encourages.