Best way to review material throughout first two years

[clementane]

Hi, everyone!

M1 here starting second semester soon and I just wanted to ask y'all how you review stuff throughout medical school. I basically covered biochem, immuno, and anatomy. It's been a lot of information and I did fairly well in school, but I also forgot a lot of it. How do people review stuff throughout medical school?

One thing I know is that I learn best through flash cards and I also learned that I need to materialize information through flash card as soon as I learned them. Right now, my options are bro's deck, Firecrackers, Rx Flashfacts or making my own decks.

I am not sure if I like firecracker a lot because you can't edit cards and you can't repeat cards that day once you score them. I like bro's deck, but I am not sure how much new cards I have to add per day in order to cover everything before dedicated time. Do people have experiences with this?

I will definitely be doing pathoma, some kaplan videos/qbanks and Rx qbanks supplementing my learning during school, but I just need another flash card regime to actually remember everything.

Any thoughts?

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[mxmd]

OK, at your stage, if you can admit to yourself that you will forget and have to re-learn basically 80% of what you learn, you're already off to a good start. good thing is, the most important stuff is still ahead of you. What you've already done can easily be reviewed on weekends, over the course of a few months.

For the future, I'd suggest you make really good notes (or flashcards if that's your thing) of whatever you study from now on, and then store them away somewhere. then it's just a matter of opening them again when you get some time and it comes back again. That's the beauty of spaced repetition, and that's why I love it so much.

And oh, don't worry too much about this already. You've basically just started, you'll figure things out as you go along. making mistakes is part of the process hehe

 

[achamess]

As you already mentioned, spaced repetition is an awesome tool to help you continuously review material. There is no better way, in my opinion. The key is consistency. Doing it every day. That's how you see the gains. What happens too often is that someone starts using SR really enthusiastically, piling up many cards in their review queue. Then they get blasted with hundreds to thousands of cards and become overwhelmed and just quit.

You mentioned several sources of SR content, all of which are legit and of high quality. They could all serve you well. Pick one and stick with it and do it daily. The best way to ensure that you don't lose steam is to set the bar fairly low. Don't put every single card into your review queue. Be selective, focusing on the big topics (Path, Physio, Micro, Pharm) and conceding that some things are still worth cramming before your test (Embryo/Biochem). Keep your review schedule manageable so that you don't get hundreds of cards a day. If that means banking only a fraction of testable material (say 40-50% of all possible cards), do that. Because 50% is better than nothing. Your baseline will be that much higher when it comes time for dedicated Step 1 studying.

I used Anki nearly everyday for 2 years leading up to Step 1 and it was extremely helpful. It can be done.

For more specific guidance on filtering knowledge and using SR for medical school, check out this guide I wrote with one of my classmates.

 

[TheLionheart]

Currently using bros deck and love it. Many of my classmates have now hopped on the Band wagon as well. It's worked out nicely over the last few months. The key is consistency.

 

[futuremdforme]

Hi, everyone!

M1 here starting second semester soon and I just wanted to ask y'all how you review stuff throughout medical school. I basically covered biochem, immuno, and anatomy. It's been a lot of information and I did fairly well in school, but I also forgot a lot of it. How do people review stuff throughout medical school?

One thing I know is that I learn best through flash cards and I also learned that I need to materialize information through flash card as soon as I learned them. Right now, my options are bro's deck, Firecrackers, Rx Flashfacts or making my own decks.

I am not sure if I like firecracker a lot because you can't edit cards and you can't repeat cards that day once you score them. I like bro's deck, but I am not sure how much new cards I have to add per day in order to cover everything before dedicated time. Do people have experiences with this?

I will definitely be doing pathoma, some kaplan videos/qbanks and Rx qbanks supplementing my learning during school, but I just need another flash card regime to actually remember everything.

Any thoughts?

What's bros deck?

I just read Medical School 2.0 and really like a lot of the ideas, but I haven't had a chance to implement them yet. It's super clever though!