MD When should I start Anki? Are there any recommended decks for MS1's?

[tunaktunak]

I will be starting medical school in August 2021, and I want to do whatever I can to start medical school on a good note (I haven't studied for anything in a year). Ideally, when should I start using Anki? Should I make cards from my lectures or should I use pre-made decks from the start? If the latter, are there any recommended decks for MS1's?

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[Chelseadagger]

Do not do anything before school starts. Enjoy your time off. I suppose you could start doing it right away when school starts to see if it works for you. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, just do whatever works for you. Don’t bother making cards yourself. Use a pre made one and supplement with a few cards here and there for your in-house school exams. I use Anking. There’s a whole website with instructions on how to use it along with a series of YouTube vids. Couldn’t hurt to ask older students if there’s a deck tailored to your school, but in general the popular premise decks should see you through.

 

[TakotsuboOkazaki]

Ideally, when should I start using Anki?

When you start school. You can set it up a few days before and do some reading on various decks, strategies, etc. Might help you hit the ground running.

Should I make cards from my lectures or should I use pre-made decks from the start?

I personally would not bother. Just read/annotate your school lectures and use a pre-made deck. Some exceptions might be memorizing particularly granular details like the adrenal steroid synthesis pathways, various nucleotide synthesis pathways, various biochemical pathways, etc. when they come up in your curriculum.

If the latter, are there any recommended decks for MS1's?

There is a whole subreddit for this.
ZANKI usually pairs well with Pathoma and FA
LIGHTYEAR is the companion to Boards & Beyond

There are a few others (Anking, etc.) that I am less familiar with.

 

[YCAGA]

Day 1 of M1. Anking deck is by far the best deck given the continuous updates and extensive tags. Use all the cards for a topic, excluding duplicates, during a block. Then suspend the non-“high yield” cards after a block. The Step 1 deck is around 30,000 cards without duplicates. If you do a high yield deck with all of Sketchy pharm, micro and pathoma, that is about 20k cards, add in the First Aid level anatomy cards in Anking (super basic) and cards that cross over with Step 2 (now the important test), and you’re looking at like 24k cards. That is incredibly doable if you start day one. Don’t listen to upperclassman that say to wait until second semester or even worse until M2. They almost universally regret what they did and are trying to justify it or they get behind and can’t keep up with a full deck.

Those 24k cards will be more than enough to pass Step 1 easily, but more importantly it will set you up with a strong foundation for clinical years, shelf exams, and Step 2. There are only about 8k unique cards in the Step 2 deck, so if you can do the crossover cards during preclinical, your workflow during M3 can be UWorld, minimal Anki with mostly mature cards, and then just show up well rested to rotations.

If you are keeping up with the above during M1-M2, you can add on the OME cards (the videos are free and super short) from the Step 2 deck during the relevant block. This will give you context for the clinical side of things, help you on in-house exams if your school tests clinical type questions, and further reduce your workload during M3.

The better foundation you can build during M1-2, the more time you will have during M3 to learn the clinical stuff without having to review the relevant basic science. With Step 2 being a make or break exam now, AND clerkship grades being more important than ever, any advantage you can give yourself during M3 is something you want to do.

 

[Redpancreas]

Day 1 of M1. Anking deck is by far the best deck given the continuous updates and extensive tags. Use all the cards for a topic, excluding duplicates, during a block. Then suspend the non-“high yield” cards after a block. The Step 1 deck is around 30,000 cards without duplicates. If you do a high yield deck with all of Sketchy pharm, micro and pathoma, that is about 20k cards, add in the First Aid level anatomy cards in Anking (super basic) and cards that cross over with Step 2 (now the important test), and you’re looking at like 24k cards. That is incredibly doable if you start day one. Don’t listen to upperclassman that say to wait until second semester or even worse until M2. They almost universally regret what they did and are trying to justify it or they get behind and can’t keep up with a full deck.

Those 24k cards will be more than enough to pass Step 1 easily, but more importantly it will set you up with a strong foundation for clinical years, shelf exams, and Step 2. There are only about 8k unique cards in the Step 2 deck, so if you can do the crossover cards during preclinical, your workflow during M3 can be UWorld, minimal Anki with mostly mature cards, and then just show up well rested to rotations.

If you are keeping up with the above during M1-M2, you can add on the OME cards (the videos are free and super short) from the Step 2 deck during the relevant block. This will give you context for the clinical side of things, help you on in-house exams if your school tests clinical type questions, and further reduce your workload during M3.

The better foundation you can build during M1-2, the more time you will have during M3 to learn the clinical stuff without having to review the relevant basic science. With Step 2 being a make or break exam now, AND clerkship grades being more important than ever, any advantage you can give yourself during M3 is something you want to do.

This is pretty much all you need to do about ANKI condensed (if you prefer ANKI).

 

[theendisnigh]

I admire you trying to get a headstart, but I seriously recommend that you wait until D1. The reason that studying prior to matriculation is ineffective is because the amount of information out there is just plain scary, and without following along in a module you really have no sense of direction. It's like trying to study nuclear medicine flashcards before taking nuclear medicine classes, the content that you study in medical school is so much more in-depth (with the exception of your intro foundational sciences course).

I would also strongly recommend you find an upper classman who regularly uses Anki to have them customize your Anki settings, unless you want to look on Youtube on how to set up your Anki yourself. I was not a fan of Anki until I had a friend customize my settings to make them a lot more streamlined and user-friendly.

YCAGA gave great advice on content. There will also likely be a shared google drive at your medical school where some people may drop their personal Anki cards or decks that are relevant to lecture material.

 

[Hopeful101]

For step 1? You'll be taking P/F. Don't bother.

 

[YCAGA]

For step 1? You'll be taking P/F. Don't bother.

Anki isn’t a 270 Step 1 or bust kind of thing. It’s still a good idea to have a foundation built over 1-2 years of constantly reviewing old material. Otherwise you get into the binge and purge system with each organ block. If it wasn’t for Anki, I would have to learn cardiology drugs once for the M1 block, again during Step 1 dedicated, again for the IM shelf, and then again for Step 2. I would slowly remember more between each time, but I would also forget a lot more than the 85-90% I can retain with Anki.

I also would get destroyed on rotations because it would seem like I was asleep during M1-M2. Maybe if you have a 99.9th percentile memory and remember every page of First Aid after seeing it once, you don’t need Anki. But for us mere mortals, we need scientifically proven ways to remember stuff.

 

[Hopeful101]

Anki isn’t a 270 Step 1 or bust kind of thing. It’s still a good idea to have a foundation built over 1-2 years of constantly reviewing old material. Otherwise you get into the binge and purge system with each organ block. If it wasn’t for Anki, I would have to learn cardiology drugs once for the M1 block, again during Step 1 dedicated, again for the IM shelf, and then again for Step 2. I would slowly remember more between each time, but I would also forget a lot more than the 85-90% I can retain with Anki.

I also would get destroyed on rotations because it would seem like I was asleep during M1-M2. Maybe if you have a 99.9th percentile memory and remember every page of First Aid after seeing it once, you don’t need Anki. But for us mere mortals, we need scientifically proven ways to remember stuff.

Doing the 50k Zanki cards is not worth it if the step is p/f. It's miserable, and it sucks the time out of your day. If you liked it power to you. If he wants to do flashcards to remember stuff, great! so did I. But at least for zanki so not worth...

 

[YCAGA]

Doing the 50k Zanki cards is not worth it if the step is p/f. It's miserable, and it sucks the time out of your day. If you liked it power to you. If he wants to do flashcards to remember stuff, great! so did I. But at least for zanki so not worth...

50k cards? My post specifically mentions 24k cards. That is 45 new cards/day assuming a 20 month preclinical schedule (Aug 2021-April 2023). That works out to be a maximum of 560 reps/400 reviews per day. That is at most 1.5 hours per day to keep 90% of 24k facts fresh going into Step 1 dedicated and M3. If you are okay with 85% retention, that's 480 reps/320 reviews per day at the max. In practice those reps will probably be lower if you relearn lapsed cards fairly quickly. During M3, you are looking at around 25 new cards/day and 300 reps/230 reviews. That is about 30-45 minutes. Remember Anki can be split up into 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

Also, Step 2 isn't P/F and is even higher stakes. So if anything, the time to use Anki religiously is now. There is no second chance like there used to be when Step 1 was scored (Step 2 could redeem you).

 

[la flame]

Day 1 of M1. Anking deck is by far the best deck given the continuous updates and extensive tags. Use all the cards for a topic, excluding duplicates, during a block. Then suspend the non-“high yield” cards after a block. The Step 1 deck is around 30,000 cards without duplicates. If you do a high yield deck with all of Sketchy pharm, micro and pathoma, that is about 20k cards, add in the First Aid level anatomy cards in Anking (super basic) and cards that cross over with Step 2 (now the important test), and you’re looking at like 24k cards. That is incredibly doable if you start day one. Don’t listen to upperclassman that say to wait until second semester or even worse until M2. They almost universally regret what they did and are trying to justify it or they get behind and can’t keep up with a full deck.

Those 24k cards will be more than enough to pass Step 1 easily, but more importantly it will set you up with a strong foundation for clinical years, shelf exams, and Step 2. There are only about 8k unique cards in the Step 2 deck, so if you can do the crossover cards during preclinical, your workflow during M3 can be UWorld, minimal Anki with mostly mature cards, and then just show up well rested to rotations.

If you are keeping up with the above during M1-M2, you can add on the OME cards (the videos are free and super short) from the Step 2 deck during the relevant block. This will give you context for the clinical side of things, help you on in-house exams if your school tests clinical type questions, and further reduce your workload during M3.

The better foundation you can build during M1-2, the more time you will have during M3 to learn the clinical stuff without having to review the relevant basic science. With Step 2 being a make or break exam now, AND clerkship grades being more important than ever, any advantage you can give yourself during M3 is something you want to do.

so instead of doing all 32 K cards on Anking, you say it's better to just focus on Sketchy Micro/Pharm & Pathoma subdecks? I counted like 17K cards on Anking, can I ask where your getting the other 3K ~ cards from? (I'm new to Anking and probably just not using it correctly).

What about using B&B subdecks along with the B&B Videos? Is that too overboard for Step 1 P/F? My school is also using true p/f. Thank you

 

[ohmanwaddup]

The best time to start is yesterday. The second best time is today. The worst time is before medical school starts

 

[esob]

It's hard to say really without knowing how you will fare are a student. Anking is by far the most organized, but I don't think that makes it the best. Personally, if I really wanted to understand pathology to presentation, I would do the hoopla deck and use USMLE-RX religiously. I, however, also found that personally, BNB does the best job of explaining how stuff works "in order," ie, you don't need to have a working knowledge of a lot of other things to delve into any specific topic. If I could go back to the month before med school I would watch a couple BNB videos daily and do the associated light year cards. That amount of work would take a couple of hours daily and would help to close the gap between all those people who already have done an SMP or had some similar advantage (like they were an OT before coming to med school).

I do think a lot of people stick to the mantra of "don't start until day 1" but, in reality, you need to cover the material regardless of when you start, the only question is how quickly do you want it rammed down your throat?

 

[tunaktunak]

It's hard to say really without knowing how you will fare are a student. Anking is by far the most organized, but I don't think that makes it the best. Personally, if I really wanted to understand pathology to presentation, I would do the hoopla deck and use USMLE-RX religiously. I, however, also found that personally, BNB does the best job of explaining how stuff works "in order," ie, you don't need to have a working knowledge of a lot of other things to delve into any specific topic. If I could go back to the month before med school I would watch a couple BNB videos daily and do the associated light year cards. That amount of work would take a couple of hours daily and would help to close the gap between all those people who already have done an SMP or had some similar advantage (like they were an OT before coming to med school).

I do think a lot of people stick to the mantra of "don't start until day 1" but, in reality, you need to cover the material regardless of when you start, the only question is how quickly do you want it rammed down your throat?

Interesting perspective. I might actually start maybe 2 weeks before classes, just to get into the groove of studying again.

Do you think that with Step 1 going pass/fail that it's much less important to do daily Anki for the pre-clinical years?

 

[danielblank313]

I was someone who started AnKing day 1 and I think you should adopt Anki if it works for you as a study tool. This isn't just a way to prepare for Step 1, it's a strong way to actually learn the material. Many people view it as a tool of rote memorization but it becomes an incredible reference source too. For example, for biochemistry, I used Anki and BNB as my sole material and it was more than sufficient to do very well in the course and all its exams. But as I came across interesting bits of information in my schools lectures that helped me get a better understanding of some things, I put that information in my cards and now I can always reference that material in a single area. I just search the card in Anki and boom my material is there all together, first aid relevant material, BNB relevant material, and my lecture relevant material.

Not all my classes first year had great concordance with boards material, but if my course did I would use Anki as my primary source and it's been incredible reflecting on how much I can recall from the first lectures I've watched in medical school now that I'm finishing up the first year. No matter what strategy you use to prepare yourself for school or boards, you MUST use some form of active recall. That can take the form of Anki, reviewing your notes and interacting with them every so often, or destroying practice questions whenever you can. Just do your best and the rest will follow.

 

[deleted966164]

You're starting school in August and asking just now when to start Anki?!?!?! You're late to the game...

jk

 

[bGMx]

50k cards? My post specifically mentions 24k cards. That is 45 new cards/day assuming a 20 month preclinical schedule (Aug 2021-April 2023). That works out to be a maximum of 560 reps/400 reviews per day. That is at most 1.5 hours per day to keep 90% of 24k facts fresh going into Step 1 dedicated and M3. If you are okay with 85% retention, that's 480 reps/320 reviews per day at the max. In practice those reps will probably be lower if you relearn lapsed cards fairly quickly. During M3, you are looking at around 25 new cards/day and 300 reps/230 reviews. That is about 30-45 minutes. Remember Anki can be split up into 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.

Also, Step 2 isn't P/F and is even higher stakes. So if anything, the time to use Anki religiously is now. There is no second chance like there used to be when Step 1 was scored (Step 2 could redeem you).

I'm possibly inefficient here but I find that for me, an M1 at the end of M1, I do about 800 cards a day (new + reviews) and I have to add +100 cards a day... takes me about 4-6 hours each day. Not sure about your 1.5 hour time, you must be a fast thinker.

 

[esob]

Interesting perspective. I might actually start maybe 2 weeks before classes, just to get into the groove of studying again.

Do you think that with Step 1 going pass/fail that it's much less important to do daily Anki for the pre-clinical years?

It is, of course, impossible to predict what programs are going to use as the dominant screening tool in the era of P/F step, but I think most bets are on Step 2. That said, there is a significant amount of stuff that you will learn for step 1 that will be relevant for step 2. For example, a step 1 question might ask you about a CF patient with the intention of trying to get to the point that the pt is absent in some fat-soluble vitamin and then want you to pick some pathophys mechanism related to that vitamin. Step 2, instead might just ask you to select all the vitamins that the pt is deficient in. If you already know CF inside and out, it stands to reason that you will perform better on step 2 than if you had simply "passing" knowledge.

The TLDR is that just because step 1 is going P/F, doesn't mean that all of the strategies that have been employed until now (ie, myopic focus on step 1) won't simply be utilized for the same purpose on Step 2, and I wouldn't want to be staring down step 2 without a good foundation.

How you use anki though, is really a personal preference. I've always done significantly fewer cards than my peers but still performed at the top of my class because I spend a lot of time filling out my cards with little notes, and mnemonics, and explanations to myself. Some students crank 1000 cards per day and can't explain basic physiology without the cloze deletion to guide them, lol. But, that's how I learn, and it might not work for someone else, which is my final point of why I advocate for starting early: because if you realize what you are doing isn't working, there is still time to right the ship.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Interesting perspective. I might actually start maybe 2 weeks before classes, just to get into the groove of studying again.

Do you think that with Step 1 going pass/fail that it's much less important to do daily Anki for the pre-clinical years?

No. Anking is still one of the best resources to learn for medical school. With step being pass fail, there really isn’t a reason to keep up the reviews after each block. This makes it much, much more manageable. I don’t know what that user above is talking about with 50k cards. Anking has like 24k. And if you only do the cards for the block you’re in, there’s no reason you should have to do more than a few hundred per day. That’s literally like 45-60 mins of anki a day.

But please don’t start before med school starts. There is no point, and you should be using that time to do as many fun things as possible and make sure all your stuff is in order.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I noticed you mentioned that you don't keep up with the reviews after your blocks a few times now. Aren't you worried you might forget the content that would overlap with Step 2? Have you considered being liberal with the easy button but still hitting those reviews from your older blocks?

I definitely plan on using Zanki, but am still trying to figure out the best way to go about it. I want to dedicate 1-2 hours for anki per day.

I haven’t done anki for step 1 since I started rotations (we take step 1 halfway through M3). I honestly don’t think there’s a big reason to do those cards for step 2. Everyone I know who’s taken it said prepping for shelf exams all year was enough to do well.