Questions for current students who use Anki for exams in med school

[Dilemma33]

Hey guys,

For those that use Anki regularly for med school classes, how do you guys use Anki efficiently AND practically on a daily basis?

In my own experience, every time I sat down and started making my cards from the lecture slides, it just felt like I used A LOT of time making them and it drained a lot of energy out of me. Eventually, this whole process became dreadful at some point. Like, it felt like a real chore to transfer overwhelming amount of information from the ppt slides to Anki.

What am I doing wrong? How much time do you guys usually spend on making the cards each day? How should I go about this to make this process as efficient as possible?

I would greatly appreciate any advice.

Thanks,

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[LyMed]

Have you tried pre-made decks?

 

[Dilemma33]

Have you tried pre-made decks?

Hey, thanks for the reply. What if these pre-made decks do not line up well with the lecture slides given by my professors?

 

[Doctor Dream]

It takes time and experience to get more efficient at making cards and picking out what the more important things are. Are you a first year? How much time are you spending making cards? I pretty much only used Anki because I learn by making cards and going over them repeatedly until they're burned into my brain. Here's what I did.

In the morning, I'd always review my cards. The amount of time that took varied depending on how far along in the block we were. I'd never watch lectures live, don't know how people sit through that. Early in the block it'd take maybe an hour to go through, later on it could take 3+hours.

In the afternoon, I'd download and watch lectures at 2.5-3x speed, to where it's barely coherent. On the back of my cards I'd screenshot the presenter's slide and annotate that with whatever else they said that sounded relevant, and on the front I'd just put a simple header like the disease or whatever the concept was. First year I spent way more time doing this (like around 2 hours/lecture hour), 2nd year I got faster by leaving out more of the little tiny details that likely were never going to show up and could finish a lecture in under an hour and a half.

It definitely takes time, but if that's how you learn just keep working at it and you'll get faster.

 

[wanderingorion]

The pre-made decks cover the most important info (highest yield for the long term), and you can throw in the minutiae cards here and there. I made decks from lectures for 1st year, and it took an eternity. There also might be some upperclassmen with decks they have made from lecture, which could help. Our class shares ours

 

[Goro]

Hey guys,

For those that use Anki regularly for med school classes, how do you guys use Anki efficiently AND practically on a daily basis?

In my own experience, every time I sat down and started making my cards from the lecture slides, it just felt like I used A LOT of time making them and it drained a lot of energy out of me. Eventually, this whole process became dreadful at some point. Like, it felt like a real chore to transfer overwhelming amount of information from the ppt slides to Anki.

What am I doing wrong? How much time do you guys usually spend on making the cards each day? How should I go about this to make this process as efficient as possible?

I would greatly appreciate any advice.

Thanks,

I suggest that if you're spending too much time making Ankis, then it's more worthwhile investing in other study resources. Maybe save Ankis for drugs and bugs?

 

[7331poas]

Anki is more important than your classes.

You should be doing the bare minimum in your classes to pass and instead focus your time on something more useful like zanki + research.

 

[Chelsea FC]

Anki is more important than your classes.

You should be doing the bare minimum in your classes to pass and instead focus your time on something more useful like zanki + research.

I have a handful of classmates who follow that method and ended up repeating the year.

 

[7331poas]

I have a handful of classmates who follow that method and ended up repeating the year.

Clearly they weren't capable of passing their classes.

 

[watermelon master]

I have a handful of classmates who follow that method and ended up repeating the year.

And I am consistently in the top 1/4 of my class using that method, so, just another n=1 for you

 

[Coltuna]

Fwiw, this is a lazy way to make cards coming from someone who really doesn't learn anything from the act of making said cards-- Open up Notability on one side of your ipad screen and anki on the other. On the "front" side of the anki card, type in the topic that is covered by your slide(s). Use the scissors tool on notability to copy and paste the slide(s) onto the back of the card. Move on to the next topic within the lecture. As you're studying the topics, if there's a small detail that you keep missing, just make a more specific card for said detail(s). I did it in this way because 1) as stated above, I want to actually study my cards asap and 2) this allowed me to keep the big picture in mind even as I was making detail-oriented cards throughout my studying.

 

[deleted645092]

I was pretty inefficient at making my decks when I started, but even being inefficient making them got me higher grades. I started making them spring of first year and jumped from 75% average on exams to 85%, and then got honors (>90%) after getting good at it both semesters 2nd year.

At first I took about 5-6 hours a day making them, basically during lecture and then 20-30 minutes per lecture at the end of the day. I’d then spend the evening reviewing all the cards I could, sometimes not finishing all of them and having to make up for it either the next day or during the weekend.

After I realized I could skip classes it took me less than an hour to make decks for each lecture since I wasn’t distracted and got better at filtering what was both relevant and that I needed to actually put into my cards. Eventually you’ll figure out stuff like this; Do you really need to make a card to review the fact that Strep Pneumo is a gram positive diplococci? Probably not.

I ended up having a pretty thorough collection and was able to use it for dedicated. What you’re going to see (already obvious from this post) is that since so many people use Zanki, you’re going to pretty much see a bell curve of scores from it’s users just like every other study method. As my n=multiple I can tell you that the die-hard Zankiers at my school have apparently done pretty poorly on boards, and I would recommend continuing to make your own cards. You’ll be happy to have cards tailored to your learning style that you can use during dedicated that are testing you on material that you obviously thought you needed to remind yourself of at some point.

 

[puahate]

I was pretty inefficient at making my decks when I started, but even being inefficient making them got me higher grades. I started making them spring of first year and jumped from 75% average on exams to 85%, and then got honors (>90%) after getting good at it both semesters 2nd year.

At first I took about 5-6 hours a day making them, basically during lecture and then 20-30 minutes per lecture at the end of the day. I’d then spend the evening reviewing all the cards I could, sometimes not finishing all of them and having to make up for it either the next day or during the weekend.

After I realized I could skip classes it took me less than an hour to make decks for each lecture since I wasn’t distracted and got better at filtering what was both relevant and that I needed to actually put into my cards. Eventually you’ll figure out stuff like this; Do you really need to make a card to review the fact that Strep Pneumo is a gram positive diplococci? Probably not.

I ended up having a pretty thorough collection and was able to use it for dedicated. What you’re going to see (already obvious from this post) is that since so many people use Zanki, you’re going to pretty much see a bell curve of scores from it’s users just like every other study method. As my n=multiple I can tell you that the die-hard Zankiers at my school have apparently done pretty poorly on boards, and I would recommend continuing to make your own cards. You’ll be happy to have cards tailored to your learning style that you can use during dedicated that are testing you on material that you obviously thought you needed to remind yourself of at some point.

I heard zanki is dead and lightyear is the new meta. Is this true? Thoughts?

 

[7331poas]

I heard zanki is dead and lightyear is the new meta. Is this true? Thoughts?

Absolutely false

 

[deleted645092]

I heard zanki is dead and lightyear is the new meta. Is this true? Thoughts?

I never got into Zanki, just did a few cards here and there. What I can tell you is that a lot of the time they almost give away some of the answers and doesn’t really test you like it should. Not always but too often for my liking. NEver heard of Lightyear.

 

[mistafab]

Zanki for third year is straight up the bees knees. Never used it years 1/2 so can’t comment there.

 

[rball]

Anki is more important than your classes.

You should be doing the bare minimum in your classes to pass and instead focus your time on something more useful like zanki + research.

This is a great way to lower your ceiling and perform worse on step1.

People who are doing well on step do well in classes, period. If you arent doing well in classes, it doesnt matter what outside resources you use-you’re disadvantaging yourself for step. Do well in classes, keep up with spaced reptition in some form or another to ensure mastery of board-relevant materail, and do thousands of questions (at least 2 qbanks) prior to hittting uworld. Thats the way to kill step1. Not by being lazy and disregarding class performance-horrible advice.

Also regarding zanki producing poor scores, i believe it. Too many students just chug through and memorize cards and as a result dont really learn the material with any depth. The deck is made in such a way that the cards are very elementary and very superficial and dont really promote understanding on their own. You need to actually understand the material at a deeper level (ie from textbooks/lectures/etc) and then use zanki as a scheduling tool to reinforce that deep understanding. Just memorizing cards wont cut it.

 

[7331poas]

This is a great way to lower your ceiling and perform worse on step1.

People who are doing well on step do well in classes, period. If you arent doing well in classes, it doesnt matter what outside resources you use-you’re disadvantaging yourself for step. Do well in classes, keep up with spaced reptition in some form or another to ensure mastery of board-relevant materail, and do thousands of questions (at least 2 qbanks) prior to hittting uworld. Thats the way to kill step1. Not by being lazy and disregarding class performance-horrible advice.

Also regarding zanki producing poor scores, i believe it. Too many students just chug through and memorize cards and as a result dont really learn the material with any depth. The deck is made in such a way that the cards are very elementary and very superficial and dont really promote understanding on their own. You need to actually understand the material at a deeper level (ie from textbooks/lectures/etc) and then use zanki as a scheduling tool to reinforce that deep understanding. Just memorizing cards wont cut it.

Absolutely incorrect. I love your underlying assumption that doing well in class means that you "understand the material". Doing well in classes means you understand your professor's personal research better than the next guy.

Zanki + qbanks is better for memorizing AND learning than any class curriculum.

Why am I going to waste my time on a guy's neurology research when I could be learning about topics that are actually important for step 1 and clinical practice?

 

[Gurby]

This is a great way to lower your ceiling and perform worse on step1.

People who are doing well on step do well in classes, period.

Agree 100% with the rest of your post though:

keep up with spaced reptition in some form or another to ensure mastery of board-relevant materail, and do thousands of questions (at least 2 qbanks) prior to hittting uworld. Thats the way to kill step1.

Also regarding zanki producing poor scores, i believe it. Too many students just chug through and memorize cards and as a result dont really learn the material with any depth. The deck is made in such a way that the cards are very elementary and very superficial and dont really promote understanding on their own. You need to actually understand the material at a deeper level (ie from textbooks/lectures/etc) and then use zanki as a scheduling tool to reinforce that deep understanding. Just memorizing cards wont cut it.

 

[deleted645092]

Absolutely incorrect. I love your underlying assumption that doing well in class means that you "understand the material". Doing well in classes means you understand your professor's personal research better than the next guy.

Zanki + qbanks is better for memorizing AND learning than any class curriculum.

Why am I going to waste my time on a guy's neurology research when I could be learning about topics that are actually important for step 1 and clinical practice?

Go to a school where that isn’t an issue. Seriously. I go to a DO school that you all would consider to be “low-tier” based on stats and our professors are able to do a phenomenal job of teaching board-relevant and clinically relevant material. They all do research, but they don’t teach it. This isn’t a PhD program. I guess I need to be more grateful for the professors here if it’s really a problem nationwide that your preclinical class material is actually Holding people back.

 

[7331poas]

Go to a school where that isn’t an issue. Seriously. I go to a DO school that you all would consider to be “low-tier” based on stats and our professors are able to do a phenomenal job of teaching board-relevant and clinically relevant material. They all do research, but they don’t teach it. This isn’t a PhD program. I guess I need to be more grateful for the professors here if it’s really a problem nationwide that your preclinical class material is actually Holding people back.

....Or use a qbank

 

[Balo]

Fwiw, this is a lazy way to make cards coming from someone who really doesn't learn anything from the act of making said cards-- Open up Notability on one side of your ipad screen and anki on the other. On the "front" side of the anki card, type in the topic that is covered by your slide(s). Use the scissors tool on notability to copy and paste the slide(s) onto the back of the card. Move on to the next topic within the lecture. As you're studying the topics, if there's a small detail that you keep missing, just make a more specific card for said detail(s). I did it in this way because 1) as stated above, I want to actually study my cards asap and 2) this allowed me to keep the big picture in mind even as I was making detail-oriented cards throughout my studying.

I actually tried something like the giant whole slide-based Anki cards that you mentioned consistently for one block of physio, and ended up doing poorly. I think it either doesn't work for some subjects, like physio, where drawing is more important, or it wasn't the right method for me. Alternatively, maybe you're doing something that I wasn't that's helping you get through that way.

 

[Spectreman]

I’m all Anki and just finished 2nd year with all A’s and a couple B’s. I figured out that I needed to limit my # of the cards per lecture. 1st year I’d have 70+ cards in 1 lecture hour. They can only ask 3-5 questions! Watch the lecture and take notes on your iPad, try to focus and look for dem TQ hints, make cards and snap in your annotated slides. DO NOT SPEND A TON OF TIME ON THIS.

I was also able to get decks from upper classmen and annotate them with my notes as I clicked through, saved me TONS of time 2nd year.

Last I’ll mention is I had a separate online account for Zanki and would spend the majority of my days studying my Zanki deck and snapping in my annotated FA/Pathoma pdf.

A couple underrated tips to make Anki life easier:
1. If you have a Mac look up how to make your screen grabs small jpg files instead of the 20Mb pgn garbage it normally does, you’ll be glad you did.

2. Image resizer, set to 550 and you can do side by side ppt slides that are still easy to read.

 

[KeikoTanaka]

I'm heading into my 2nd year soon and have used nothing but Anki. I watch all my schools lectures. At the end of each powerpoint slide, I review it and go "What questions can they ask about this material?" And I turn it into an Anki card. Studying them is the hard part because I unfortunately cram 4 days out from an exam, which isn't where the value of Anki comes in - However, I am glad to have them all as I will have them to study this summer to prepare for boards

 

[Spectreman]

I'm heading into my 2nd year soon and have used nothing but Anki. I watch all my schools lectures. At the end of each powerpoint slide, I review it and go "What questions can they ask about this material?" And I turn it into an Anki card. Studying them is the hard part because I unfortunately cram 4 days out from an exam, which isn't where the value of Anki comes in - However, I am glad to have them all as I will have them to study this summer to prepare for boards

I was in the same boat, haven’t touched my decks for board prep, gotta hit the high yields, which makes Zanki or another deck WAY better. Annotate the cards as you make your first pass, your experience building decks for class will be super helpful and the process of making the cards is HUGELY beneficial. You’re doing great.

 

[flyboy3]

This is a great way to lower your ceiling and perform worse on step1.

People who are doing well on step do well in classes, period. If you arent doing well in classes, it doesnt matter what outside resources you use-you’re disadvantaging yourself for step. Do well in classes, keep up with spaced reptition in some form or another to ensure mastery of board-relevant materail, and do thousands of questions (at least 2 qbanks) prior to hittting uworld. Thats the way to kill step1. Not by being lazy and disregarding class performance-horrible advice.

Also regarding zanki producing poor scores, i believe it. Too many students just chug through and memorize cards and as a result dont really learn the material with any depth. The deck is made in such a way that the cards are very elementary and very superficial and dont really promote understanding on their own. You need to actually understand the material at a deeper level (ie from textbooks/lectures/etc) and then use zanki as a scheduling tool to reinforce that deep understanding. Just memorizing cards wont cut it.

This is pretty important. I am currently trying to grind through as much of Zanki as I can (I pick / choose cards within systems to study, leave many unsuspended) but I still keep up with class lectures. I don't watch all of them online, but I do watch the ones that don't explain everything well in the ppt, or a good lecturer. I get good scores in class and I also keep up with my zanki cards. Some days I won't do new cards, but almost every day I will, as well as all my reviews. I'm not hitting like 1000s of reviews like some zanki diehards who spend a majority of the day on it, but lecture and zanki supplement each other. Applying the cards is the important thing, and I can do that in lecture, and with q banks. Only problem is I have no life.

 

[rball]

This is pretty important. I am currently trying to grind through as much of Zanki as I can (I pick / choose cards within systems to study, leave many unsuspended) but I still keep up with class lectures. I don't watch all of them online, but I do watch the ones that don't explain everything well in the ppt, or a good lecturer. I get good scores in class and I also keep up with my zanki cards. Some days I won't do new cards, but almost every day I will, as well as all my reviews. I'm not hitting like 1000s of reviews like some zanki diehards who spend a majority of the day on it, but lecture and zanki supplement each other. Applying the cards is the important thing, and I can do that in lecture, and with q banks. Only problem is I have no life.

Maybe you won’t have a life now, but it will all be worth it when you get a score that allows you to live the type of life you want to live in the future. Best of luck on the grind, it will pay off big time.

 

[Coltuna]

I actually tried something like the giant whole slide-based Anki cards that you mentioned consistently for one block of physio, and ended up doing poorly. I think it either doesn't work for some subjects, like physio, where drawing is more important, or it wasn't the right method for me. Alternatively, maybe you're doing something that I wasn't that's helping you get through that way.

I actually found that this worked especially well for physiology where memorizing discrete facts isn't always great haha. I drew quite a bit while I was doing my cards too. I agree though, to each their own!

 

[rball]

Absolutely incorrect. I love your underlying assumption that doing well in class means that you "understand the material". Doing well in classes means you understand your professor's personal research better than the next guy.

Zanki + qbanks is better for memorizing AND learning than any class curriculum.

Why am I going to waste my time on a guy's neurology research when I could be learning about topics that are actually important for step 1 and clinical practice?

I think we're kind of talking about 2 different things here. I absolutely agree that memorizing class slides to get a 100% on class exams is a waste of time and will often be detrimental to your success on step because it will leave you little time to keep up with high yield material for boards. So I agree if your prof is lecturing on "random neurology research" don't bother.

However, if you do it correctly with zanki/qbanks, you should be doing well in classes. Maybe not top of class, but certainly above average. Class gives you foundational material to help understand the HY stuff, and if you aren't doing well in classes (e.g. significantly below average), that suggests that you aren't truly understanding the material but rather memorizing zanki & qbank factoids, which will come back to bite you.

I def agree that understanding low yield random PhD minutae lectures is not helpful. But keep in mind most med schools are accredited and thus are forced to teach to step to at least some degree, so doing well in class is a good marker that you are on track to do well on step. Few people who do poorly in class do well on step, regardless of what outside resources they've used.

 

[aldol16]

However, if you do it correctly with zanki/qbanks, you should be doing well in classes. Maybe not top of class, but certainly above average. Class gives you foundational material to help understand the HY stuff, and if you aren't doing well in classes (e.g. significantly below average), that suggests that you aren't truly understanding the material but rather memorizing zanki & qbank factoids, which will come back to bite you.

100% agree with this statement. Understanding concepts rather than just memorizing them is how one does well on Step. I see a lot of people saying that they feel like they're just forgetting all the material and that the more they stuff in during dedicated, the more falls out. This is true when you're memorizing a series of very long facts that aren't connected to one another in your head. If you can't connect the physiology of CKD with hypocalcemia, for instance, it becomes very hard to keep that connection salient in your mind.

So doing well in class is preparing for Step. Obviously if your class material has nothing to do with Step, then find another resource to learn the material well. The key is learning it well the first time. But since US med schools have to undergo accreditation, none of them will completely veer off course from what you need to know. There will necessarily be extraneous material that may not be relevant for Step but may be clinically relevant or that may be scientifically relevant. While it's extraneous, it's also good to understand for your future. But it's understandable if you just want to focus on Step 1 at this point. You just have to understand that learning the material well the first time instead of just memorizing facts goes a long way towards doing well on Step 1.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't memorize everything during dedicated and score 250+ on Step 1. I'm sure people have done it before. But if you hear people talking about how they feel like they're losing material from memory, it's because they focused too much on memorizing and not enough on understanding the basic principles and concepts.

Last thought - some things you do have to just memorize because there's no relevant physiology behind it, i.e. which drugs interact with P450s. But if you've done a good job with understanding basic concepts during the year, you'll find that the amount of material that you need to just brute force memorize is a lot less and very manageable.

 

[watermelon master]

If you can't connect the physiology of CKD with hypercalcemia, for instance, it becomes very hard to keep that connection salient in your mind

Lol don’t you mean hypOcalcemia?

 

[Gurby]

Lol don’t you mean hypOcalcemia?

UpToDate

Patients with secondary hyperparathyroidism associated with severe chronic kidney disease usually have parathyroid hyperplasia and frankly low or low-normal serum calcium concentrations. However, with prolonged disease, some patients may develop hypercalcemia. The rise in plasma calcium may be due to concomitant adynamic bone disease and markedly reduced bone turnover, which results in marked reduction in the skeletal uptake of calcium after a calcium load; this situation may arise when calcium carbonate is used as a phosphate binder to treat hyperphosphatemia [1]

I didn't know this either, rip.

 

[watermelon master]

UpToDate


I didn't know this either, rip.

yeah i'm still going with the hypOcalcemia answer but I can see how you would get hypercalcemia

 

[aldol16]

Lol don’t you mean hypOcalcemia?

lolol
So ironic.

 

[Ho0v-man]

Just do it everyday. I use zanki. By second semester you can feel out which faculty have worthless info and which will help you go further. Add cards on the good people’s slides.

For the other classes my attitude for the whole block is like “Whatever I’ll just memorize zanki. The rest can eff off.”

Until the week before the exam when my attitude changes to “Why did I blow this off!? I’m a freaking *****! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail!”

*takes test*

“Hey cool, that worked out. New block starts today? Whatever I’ll just memorize zanki. The rest can eff off.”

 

[Spectreman]

Just do it everyday. I use zanki. By second semester you can feel out which faculty have worthless info and which will help you go further. Add cards on the good people’s slides.

For the other classes my attitude for the whole block is like “Whatever I’ll just memorize zanki. The rest can eff off.”

Until the week before the exam when my attitude changes to “Why did I blow this off!? I’m a freaking *****! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail! I’m gonna fail!”

*takes test*

“Hey cool, that worked out. New block starts today? Whatever I’ll just memorize zanki. The rest can eff off.”

My entire 2nd year. Honestly now that I’ve taken some non-uworld stuff I feel like I can confirm that Zanki is for real if you do it correctly. My biggest pitfall is I didn’t finish it, I’m tempted to delay Step (I’m a DO student) because I’m fairly certain I’d crack MUCH higher scores if I matured the rest of that muther.

For those on the Zanki/Anki fence, whatever you do - do something that will help retain and fine tune as you go. My buddy failed his step after doing pretty darn well his first 2 years and honestly it’s just that he didn’t do anything to hold onto the info.

 

[Gilakend]

Zanki for third year is straight up the bees knees. Never used it years 1/2 so can’t comment there.

You use Zanki for M3? I've heard of a lot of people on reddit completely stopping after step 1 thinking it won't help them on rotations, is that not a good idea?

 

[Spectreman]

You use Zanki for M3? I've heard of a lot of people on reddit completely stopping after step 1 thinking it won't help them on rotations, is that not a good idea?

There is a Zanki for Step 2 (and 3), but the step 1 Zanki is worth maintaining if you can because you’ll be ready for all the pimping that comes your way (so I’m told)

 

[mistafab]

Zanki step 2

You use Zanki for M3? I've heard of a lot of people on reddit completely stopping after step 1 thinking it won't help them on rotations, is that not a good idea?

 

[Balo]

I actually found that this worked especially well for physiology where memorizing discrete facts isn't always great haha. I drew quite a bit while I was doing my cards too. I agree though, to each their own!

Actually, in that block of physio, memorizing was essential to survive, and the broad Anki cards just didn't help me since I could gloss over images without actually remembering them exactly. Graphs and ECGs that block were very important. I did find drawing to be more helpful for physio, so I agree with that being almost a necessity.