Picmonic vs. Sketchymedical

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Pushtothestars

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Hi all,

For those of u that have used picmonic, sketchymedical or both please let me know your take on these programs especially for micro..

Which did u like the most and why... Let me know the good, bad, and ugly

Thanks so much!

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Picmonic sucked for me , the sketches were just random objects thrown together in a mixup , and while it looks memorable , once you get over 80-100 of them you get everything mixed up... Sketchymicro on the other hand made much more sense and it has helped me a lot for bugs.. As far as drugs are concerned , i dont think you can memorize them from sketches , just learn the physiology and hope they dont ask obscure stuff... ( I havent taken the step 1 yet so take this advice with a grain of salt)
 
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I agree with going with SketchyMedical for the reasons tasar1898 listed. I would recommend just trying both out though - they both offer free samples and it shouldn't be to difficult to assess which one you like better.
 
Sketchy was great, never tried picmonic, but from what I've read about it I doubt it compares to sketchy.
 
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I absolutely loved Picmonic and don't know how I would have survived boards without it. To this day my knowledge on micro and pharm largely comes from these images, and they're really useful on clinical rotations. I also haven't used Sketchymedical but heard great things from friends who used it.
 
sketchypharm won't come out for a bit and picmonic already has cards for everything. picmonic is $250+, and some people split the cost of picmonic with 3-4 friends. you're not supposed to do that. and i'm telling you not to do that. but, ya know....
 
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I have done both and picmonic is nowhere near the same league as sketchymicro. Picmonic really needs to put a little more thought into their pictures and make them more like sketchy. Picmonic guys, if you're listening, throwing in a couple of images together to create huge clusterf****s is different to sitting down, thinking, and then drawing to create a good product.
 
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Haven't tried Sketchy, but Picmonic served me well first semester (my recall on exams was amazing with those images). I like that Picmonic includes additional images beyond bugs/antibiotics--it's an enormous help with a lot of other random pharm that arises in systems.

I think I'll give Sketchy a try once school starts again, but I imagine I'll have a hard time letting go of all those extra pharm images that Picmonic has.
 
I think sketchy is far superior for bugs (for the same reasons mentioned, much more clear and intuitive to me). But I did like picmonic for some drugs. Basically I like picmonic for things that I can't keep straight so I use the picture. Once I try to use too many of their pictures it all gets jumbled.
 
I think sketchy is far superior for bugs (for the same reasons mentioned, much more clear and intuitive to me). But I did like picmonic for some drugs. Basically I like picmonic for things that I can't keep straight so I use the picture. Once I try to use too many of their pictures it all gets jumbled.

This is essentially the way that I'll be approaching it.

Sketchy is second to none for the bugs. The drugs they have right now are okay, but I relied on Picmonic for a lot of the CNS/ANS drugs last year and I'll definitely be utilizing them in conjunction. Too many Picmonics in my head get jumbled since they are generally all over the place (in a good way, when you have less images).
 
I agree with people here, sketchy is better. But they don't have many drugs yet. If I had to choose, I'd choose sketchy.
If anyone around knows any discount coupon code or anything for sketchy please pm me :)

Also, any idea on when (+/-) are the sketchy pals going to make us happy with more drug sketches? I'm planning on taking my step 1 by march
 
Sketchy Pharm is out now and I use that for my Pharm class. In my opinion it's amazing, literally saving me all the trouble of dry memorizing all these drugs thrown at us. "A Midsummer's Night's Dyphenhydramine" was a good one for me. I used Sketchy Micro and I did really well in Micro because of it, and it's saving me through my Pathophys class right now (just for the micro block though). I do hold a bias opinion though since I haven't tried out Picmonic, but for what it's worth, Sketchying everything has definitely been worth it for me.
p.s. I hear they're coming out with a Sketchy Path. Too late for me, but maybe the next generation of medical students might enjoy Sketchy everything just like me.
 
My vote for sketchy micro!
I loved their illustrations. They covered all the high yield info and their sketches really helped me to remember stuff. I started it during my dedicated study while doing Uworld. I had started off with a weak grip on micro but I guess towards the end, it was my strongest subject (hence I decided to choose a bug as my screen name :D)

Never tried Picnmonic though.
 
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I've used both products. For micro, sketchy is a superior product because it encompasses everything in a story-like mode and never splits things up. The pharm is okay. The videos are too long. Picmonic is another "okay" because the problem is that there are way too many cards and eventually you start to confuse them all in your head. Stuff is placed at random, which makes it harder to follow some logical progression. I think overall Sketchy is better for what they offer, but use Picmonic to hammer in the harder topics. If you only buy one, go with picmonic simply because it covers more and use it only for topics that are hard to memorize to keep images at a minimum and be able to recall them all.
 
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