MS1 anki question

[nlemme10]

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Hey All,
I am new to anki and was looking for some advice. I would like to use anki for both test prep and board prep. I am just starting ms1 and i was curious how people sort out their cards. for example after exams i do not want to have to go back over anki cards that were only relevant to my tests and not necessarily so for step 1. Also what is the consensus on the best anki settings as far as intervals. Any help is appreciated.

 

[operaman]

First, everything is fair game on step 1, even the stuff that seems like it won't be. Don't fall into the trap of thinking "not high yield" is the same as "not tested at all." If you want to score really high, then everything is high yield.

When I started M1 I would make anki decks that basically used every single word from every single slide of lecture. I would make a new deck for each block (systems based curriculum) and then tags for subject (anatomy, histology, etc) and finally tags by individual lecture titles (ie. "upperextremity1"). Each card would therefore have 3-4 tags.

Making cards was done by opening pdfs of the lectures on half the screen and the add material anki window on the other. Lots of ctrl c/ctrl v. The old version of anki had a nice Cloze function where you highlight some text, press F9, and it would create a blank where you had just highlighted, and automatically create the back of the with all of the previous text and your highlighted text in blue. Got to the point I could convert a 45 minute lecture to anki cards in a little over an hour. I would also screengrab pics of the slides for any charts/illustrations and add those to the back of each card (forgot the speed keys). The new version has more options but I liked the old version because of how fast I could convert stuff. Usually each block I would end up with 4000-5000 cards. That sounds like a lot, but remember these are little tiny bits of info, testable minutiae, etc. Often I would turn one sentence into 3 or 4 cards, each one excerpting a different testable fact. Over the course of reviews, these cards would be spaced apart from one another.

Intervals will greatly depend on your curriculum and time between exams. I liked the defaults for the old version (soon, 1 day, 3 days, 5 days) and felt they worked well with our 5-6 week blocks. I'm not a fan of the newer version with 1m, 10m, 3d defaults -- takes forever to get through stuff. You can still download the old versions on the anki site but you have to dig for them.

I originally planned to keep up with all my cards as a way of doing board prep, but this never really happened. Even if I'd been mentally able to keep making cards for everything (quit that after a few blocks as it was soul crushing), it would have been 25,000+ cards PER YEAR. No way I would have been able to keep reviewing all of that! Thankfully there is a lot of repetition in m1/m2 which will help with long term retention.

 

[sinombre]

I basically did exactly what @operaman described for m1. For m2 I'm planning on sticking to Anki for lecture-specific stuff throughout each block and Firecracker for longitudinal spaced repetition review.

 

[Silent Cool]

First, everything is fair game on step 1, even the stuff that seems like it won't be. Don't fall into the trap of thinking "not high yield" is the same as "not tested at all." If you want to score really high, then everything is high yield.

When I started M1 I would make anki decks that basically used every single word from every single slide of lecture. I would make a new deck for each block (systems based curriculum) and then tags for subject (anatomy, histology, etc) and finally tags by individual lecture titles (ie. "upperextremity1"). Each card would therefore have 3-4 tags.

Making cards was done by opening pdfs of the lectures on half the screen and the add material anki window on the other. Lots of ctrl c/ctrl v. The old version of anki had a nice Cloze function where you highlight some text, press F9, and it would create a blank where you had just highlighted, and automatically create the back of the with all of the previous text and your highlighted text in blue. Got to the point I could convert a 45 minute lecture to anki cards in a little over an hour. I would also screengrab pics of the slides for any charts/illustrations and add those to the back of each card (forgot the speed keys). The new version has more options but I liked the old version because of how fast I could convert stuff. Usually each block I would end up with 4000-5000 cards. That sounds like a lot, but remember these are little tiny bits of info, testable minutiae, etc. Often I would turn one sentence into 3 or 4 cards, each one excerpting a different testable fact. Over the course of reviews, these cards would be spaced apart from one another.

Intervals will greatly depend on your curriculum and time between exams. I liked the defaults for the old version (soon, 1 day, 3 days, 5 days) and felt they worked well with our 5-6 week blocks. I'm not a fan of the newer version with 1m, 10m, 3d defaults -- takes forever to get through stuff. You can still download the old versions on the anki site but you have to dig for them.

I originally planned to keep up with all my cards as a way of doing board prep, but this never really happened. Even if I'd been mentally able to keep making cards for everything (quit that after a few blocks as it was soul crushing), it would have been 25,000+ cards PER YEAR. No way I would have been able to keep reviewing all of that! Thankfully there is a lot of repetition in m1/m2 which will help with long term retention.

Holy crap.

 

[chronicidal]

First, everything is fair game on step 1, even the stuff that seems like it won't be. Don't fall into the trap of thinking "not high yield" is the same as "not tested at all." If you want to score really high, then everything is high yield.

When I started M1 I would make anki decks that basically used every single word from every single slide of lecture. I would make a new deck for each block (systems based curriculum) and then tags for subject (anatomy, histology, etc) and finally tags by individual lecture titles (ie. "upperextremity1"). Each card would therefore have 3-4 tags.

Making cards was done by opening pdfs of the lectures on half the screen and the add material anki window on the other. Lots of ctrl c/ctrl v. The old version of anki had a nice Cloze function where you highlight some text, press F9, and it would create a blank where you had just highlighted, and automatically create the back of the with all of the previous text and your highlighted text in blue. Got to the point I could convert a 45 minute lecture to anki cards in a little over an hour. I would also screengrab pics of the slides for any charts/illustrations and add those to the back of each card (forgot the speed keys). The new version has more options but I liked the old version because of how fast I could convert stuff. Usually each block I would end up with 4000-5000 cards. That sounds like a lot, but remember these are little tiny bits of info, testable minutiae, etc. Often I would turn one sentence into 3 or 4 cards, each one excerpting a different testable fact. Over the course of reviews, these cards would be spaced apart from one another.

Intervals will greatly depend on your curriculum and time between exams. I liked the defaults for the old version (soon, 1 day, 3 days, 5 days) and felt they worked well with our 5-6 week blocks. I'm not a fan of the newer version with 1m, 10m, 3d defaults -- takes forever to get through stuff. You can still download the old versions on the anki site but you have to dig for them.

I originally planned to keep up with all my cards as a way of doing board prep, but this never really happened. Even if I'd been mentally able to keep making cards for everything (quit that after a few blocks as it was soul crushing), it would have been 25,000+ cards PER YEAR. No way I would have been able to keep reviewing all of that! Thankfully there is a lot of repetition in m1/m2 which will help with long term retention.

Sounds like you used Anki as a flashcard cramming program rather than a longitudinally spaced repetition program.

Advice for OP: check out the official Anki thread. If your goal is long term retention, you can't add cards at the rate that operaman did without getting your soul crushed. You would need to prioritize what is high yield. I would occasionally make crappy cards solely for cramming for tests and would delete them right after the exam. For intervals for high quality cards that I made myself, I like 10 min again, 1440 min good, 7 day easy; ~140% interval modifier, 130% easy modifier. This gets me to about 90% correct on mature cards.

 

[sinombre]

Sounds like you used Anki as a flashcard cramming program rather than a longitudinally spaced repetition program.

It's still spaced repetition, just over smaller periods of time. It's still very useful when blocks are 8-10 weeks long.

 

[operaman]

I used it longitudinally but over the course of any given block. Obviously the lectures closer to the exam didn't see as much review time. Usually I tried to get all of them converted a couple of weeks out.

I thought about only making more relevant high yield cards, but then for me that would defeat the whole purpose of this system -- long term spaced repetition to memorize the heaps of minutiae that m1/m2 is famous for. Using it I got pretty close to perfect scores on class exams, but at the expense of sanity. Eventually dropped it after a couple of exams, though resurrected it for just for pharm and some micro in M2.

 

[DermViser]

Sounds like you used Anki as a flashcard cramming program rather than a longitudinally spaced repetition program.

Advice for OP: check out the official Anki thread. If your goal is long term retention, you can't add cards at the rate that operaman did without getting your soul crushed. You would need to prioritize what is high yield. I would occasionally make crappy cards solely for cramming for tests and would delete them right after the exam. For intervals for high quality cards that I made myself, I like 10 min again, 1440 min good, 7 day easy; ~140% interval modifier, 130% easy modifier. This gets me to about 90% correct on mature cards.

But does it actually work? I mean if you do the cards during Block 1 of MS-1, you'll remember the information just as well 2 years later based on doing Anki cards?

 

[jdj16]

Op-i used anki during m1 and m2 and am 2 months past step 1 now. Everyone is different so take my advice and if it doesn't work for you then disregard it.

What I did was make a deck specifically for class (my tests pseudo correlated to step 1 topics...we were systems based but had a lot of minutiae) where I'd put any lecture stuff I needed to remember in and do those over the test period. After the test, I just suspended those cards and never used them again.
Concurrently, I made a Pathoma deck with every bullet point of whatever chapters we were covering and memorized them...but kept those cards active and saw them through the whole two years. I downloaded the first aid deck from anki online and did the same with that since the guy made the cards with tags for each organ system.

So tldr I think that anki for class is great but don't try to keep up with class cards for two years. By memorizing Pathoma and first aid over two years as I was learning the stuff it made it stick a lot better and I did really well on step 1.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions

 

[SlowCodeToChina]

@jdj16 I really like the idea of making a Pathoma deck on the side. I was planning on doing something similar to what you did -- Use Anki to cram lecture material and suspend them after each exam. But for long-term retention I was thinking about using Firecracker and just flagging topics as I go. Would this be too much of a time commitment?

 

[xffan624]

@jdj16 I really like the idea of making a Pathoma deck on the side. I was planning on doing something similar to what you did -- Use Anki to cram lecture material and suspend them after each exam. But for long-term retention I was thinking about using Firecracker and just flagging topics as I go. Would this be too much of a time commitment?

My curriculum tends to mirror FA mostly. I make slides for the curriculum and then at the end of the block review for the less high yield topics I suspend them. Still going from year 1 and I have about 40 cards a day.

 

[jdj16]

I tried firecracker for a month free and it took me about 2-3x longer to do than anki. I could take down 200 cards in about 30 or so minutes on anki...with fc it would have taken 2-3 hours. Anki was just more efficient for me personally.

 

[xffan624]

I tried firecracker for a month free and it took me about 2-3x longer to do than anki. I could take down 200 cards in about 30 or so minutes on anki...with fc it would have taken 2-3 hours. Anki was just more efficient for me personally.

Don't forget cheaper 🙂

 

[jdj16]

Lol yeah that was reason #1 for me for sure

 

[SlowCodeToChina]

To me, the cost of Firecracker wanes in comparison to the cost of attendance at my medical school. I don't mind shelling out a little extra money if it means I'll have better long-term retention. Aside from the cost aspect, is the anki (short term)+ firecracker (long term) going to be a good idea?

 

[type12]

To me, the cost of Firecracker wanes in comparison to the cost of attendance at my medical school. I don't mind shelling out a little extra money if it means I'll have better long-term retention. Aside from the cost aspect, is the anki (short term)+ firecracker (long term) going to be a good idea?

This is true, but the reason why FireCracker is a sucker's purchase is a great deal of learning comes from building the card. I've seen idiots say it's great because it does the learning for them, which won't help you on test day.

In addition, the cards aren't bent to your learning style or perspective, and probably have stuff you don't care about or missing stuff you do. If you're one of the few who would benefit from it, great; otherwise, Anki really works for everyone.

It's my two cents. The price is not an issue, but it's definitely overpriced for what it is when Anki is superior.

 

[chronicidal]

But does it actually work? I mean if you do the cards during Block 1 of MS-1, you'll remember the information just as well 2 years later based on doing Anki cards?

No, you have to keep up with the repetitions that are scheduled. You might see a card at least five times spaced out over the first year before you can say (with 90% confidence) that you'll remember it two years after that.

 

[starstarie]

Op-i used anki during m1 and m2 and am 2 months past step 1 now. Everyone is different so take my advice and if it doesn't work for you then disregard it.

What I did was make a deck specifically for class (my tests pseudo correlated to step 1 topics...we were systems based but had a lot of minutiae) where I'd put any lecture stuff I needed to remember in and do those over the test period. After the test, I just suspended those cards and never used them again.
Concurrently, I made a Pathoma deck with every bullet point of whatever chapters we were covering and memorized them...but kept those cards active and saw them through the whole two years. I downloaded the first aid deck from anki online and did the same with that since the guy made the cards with tags for each organ system.

So tldr I think that anki for class is great but don't try to keep up with class cards for two years. By memorizing Pathoma and first aid over two years as I was learning the stuff it made it stick a lot better and I did really well on step 1.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions

This is very similar to what I am doing currently. I am an MS2 and last year I went through the FA relevant sections with my classes. I usually made cards for both facts from lecture and facts from FA. I suspended the lecture cards after (by tagging the FA cards and then suspending the rest). That was helpful but it is a little overkill sometimes. Thus, this year, I think I am just use Anki for FA (Pathoma actually sounds like a great idea too!!).

I like using Anki but I like having something to do BESIDES Anki to (I think for me it is actually more beneficial to write an outline of my class material as opposed to putting it in Anki. It is pretty rough trying to keep up with it all. A lot of people tried to follow my plan and quit really fast. You have to be pretty dedicated. With that being said, it was helped me a TON in terms of cumulative knowledge. I also take a bit less strict approach than others may. I view it more as a game and getting some wrong is not a big deal for me. If my answer was on the right track, but was wrong I will usually just choose difficult and if I realllly have no clue I will repeat it.

I plan to stop using the deck during my scheduled time in the spring and just focus on reviewing those subjects I am weak at (which I will be very cognisant of by noting which ones I am consistently not getting correct).

In regards to FC, I also tried it (TWICE actually!) and just couldn't get into it. For me, I like the idea that I can personalize the cards. I also don't like the free answer (I prefer fill in the blank, it's a lot faster), and I felt like some of the FC things, at least in anatomy, were kinda not all that high yield (not in FA? I could be off base with that tho because I didn't use it too much). Plus, with it being that pricey, you might as well just make your own cards, because you learn while you make them. And even if you don't want to, you can still download the Anki deck already on Anki (again I couldn't' get into that one because of the format... I have my own style that I like).

Just my opinion!!