Zanki workflow advice

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de_mon_vivant

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Hi everyone,

I just finished the last block of first year, have been trying to set up Zanki workflow.

I was wondering if I could receive some advice. I searched quite a bit, but articles on the workflow was hard to find for people entering the summer who had already finished their first year.

So I broke down my plan for summer and the start of 2nd year as follows. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Over the summer:
Watch BnB videos and/or read corresponding Constanzo-> unsuspend corresponding Zanki cards

I’m planning to review most the materials from 1st year this way.



During 2nd year:
Watch Pathoma/Sketchy on class lecture materials-> unsuspend corresponding Zanki cards, while continuing to review cards from summer



Thank you for your time to read my post!


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Sounds alright. If you still need a different take on physiology I’d try Physeo since their vids are free and their explanations stayed with me longer than other resources I had tried at the time. I assume you’re already planning to if you haven’t already but add qbank questions as as soon as you can. Best way to test whether you know the concepts from Zanki is to apply them to questions. I’d emphasize quality over quantity of questions, unless you have god-tier memory. Reading every answer option, even on questions I got correct, was something I wished I had done a lot more of. Amboss and Uworld are the two I’d stick with if I had to do it all over again since I felt like I learned the most from those two qbanks, and both felt the closest to my test.


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Are you trying to review the whole of M1 over the summer? Just the cards for that alone sounds brutal. Granted, you've already seen the material, but still. Not in your position, but if it was me, I would prioritize running through M2 stuff at an aggressive pace so that I could finish the M1 stuff immediately after that by dedicated/step. From what I can remember, people that start Zanki at the beginning of M2 have to do 100-150 cards a day, which is pretty heavy.

You could also ask this on /r/medicalschoolanki. They typically have good advice for situations like this.
 
I assume you haven't done any Zanki cards? If so, its going to be a lot to try and tackle over the summer. If it's the only thing you're doing then that might be plausible. I second the Physeo recommendation. They are very good at explaining things conceptually which will serve you better in the long run than rote memorizing anki cards. They do have their own anki cards with each video but I haven't really seen what they're like. I think a better strategy might be to start doing good quality questions and narrow down what you dont understand so that you're not trying to review everything for the sake of reviewing it. Amboss is a phenomenal qbank but might not be the best first qbank since they're on par if not harder than Uworld. You could then isolate what you truly dont understand and watch those videos/do those cards as well as make cards from questions you've missed. I would recommend going through all topics of sketchy micro and pharm that you've covered and do those cards since that is more strict memorization than conceptualization. Also just an M1 so you could take my advice with a grain of salt.

Edit: I would start with Kaplan questions if you havent done any qbank questions before. I've tried Rx, Kaplan, and Amboss. They're better than Rx but not as good as Amboss. Again, n=1.
 
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If I were you, I'd do 200 new cards a day over the summer after watching the corresponding videos. On reviews I would use the anki app timer set to 3 seconds if you're not getting atleast 300 cards an hour done. the most important thing is to start 2 question banks (i would recommend pastest and kaplan at first) and make sure you finish all the M1 questions in those banks. If you stay consistent with zanki, your step score will depend on how many qbanks you do, not on how well you understand the zanki cards. I used tutor mode and an app to set a 3 min timer for each question. 3 minutes to read the question, answer it, and read all the explanations. When you get to rx, you will have to extend to 4 minutes and do rx and amboss randomly instead of by syestem. Then with uworld take your time. These qbanks are like your step 1 textbooks. Good luck and commit to studying over anything else, it will pay off!
 
My advice is to knock out the sketchy pharm/micro decks. Assuming you've already covered the underlying physiology in 1st year then you should have no problem knocking out a good portion of those cards.

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