Anki for Med School

How to use Anki for Step 1 or 2 (or shelf prep!)

I love Anki for Med School, but there is definitely a learning curve particularly with review settings.

To help you get started, I wanted to share my settings I used for my last month of dedicated CK review as a starting point. As most clinical rotations also fall around the time period of dedicated Step study period, this guide is also helpful on how to use Anki for dedicated shelf prep. If you find you are seeing old cards too often, are seeing too many new cards, then make adjustments as you see fit.  If you are wondering how to make Anki cards more quickly, check out our post on dictating your Anki cards.

How to change settings for a deck

Click the cogwheel (the top right above) and then select “options”

New cards/day
50 new cards a day should get you through 1.4k cards during your dedicated if you keep up with prep which is about how many cards I had from my deck from missed UW questions. If you are using one of the larger premade decks like Zanki with 3000k+ cards, I would recommend either using these settings and starting two months in advance (rather than one) or, less ideally in my opinion, bumping it up to 100 new cards a day. 100 cards a day is a lot when you also have previous reviews.

Bury related cards
I have this unchecked because it will bury image occlusion cards or cards from tables you’ve made.

Reviews/day
To change the maximum number of reviews per day, toggle over to the “Review” tab. I set my maximum number of reviews to 300 which I was able to get through in an hour.

If you have a card “down” and don’t want to review it again
The “suspend” feature (aka “@” on your keyboard) was an incredibly useful tool on Anki, particularly during my last week of review when I only wanted to see my “higher yield” cards.

What makes “suspend” different than “bury” is that bury you will see this card again later, where suspend locks it in some Anki vault until you go to “Browse” and unsuspend it. I also used suspend over delete just in case I wanted to use the deck later (as I did with my shelf cards during CK prep).

 

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⇉ Other helpful resources

• Step 2 CK Study Guide
• Step 2 CS Study Guide
• Shelf Resources (by subject)
• Anki Settings Help for Shelf or Step Prep
• How to make Anki Cards Efficiently
• Biostatistics for Step 2

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The study resources featured on this blog such as the study schedules and Anki tips are free to use, as I know what it is like to be a student living on a fixed budget. To support this blog, please consider using the links above to make any Amazon purchases you may find yourself needing during your prep to support our blog. Step 2 CK Study guide is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. 

If you would like to support the blog and its content, please press share below!

Note: Everything on this blog is for informational purposes only and reflects solely my individual views and opinions. 

Quickly Make Anki Cards

How to Quickly Make Anki Cards (or notes in general) Through Dictation

Dictating notes in my own words for review for Step 2 CK was a game changer that I discovered way too late. It allowed me to make Anki cards quickly, which gave me the time to actually review the cards I was making.

The best part is you can dictate even without expensive software, just the (unfortunately expensive) smartphone or computer you already own. I used my internal dictation feature on my MacBook or iPhone into the Anki app. There would often be frequent errors with medical terms, but it only took several seconds to manually fix these errors and as a result was still faster than typing.  I found dictating with headphones with a built in microphone also helped minimize errors.

It is an imperfect, but, time saving technique. Regardless, it is best to only make flashcards or notes of the main points of a text and not redictate the entire thing. This will make your notes easier to review and also force you to be a more active learner.

If you need help with setting the right Anki settings for targeted review (<1 month), see this post on Anki settings for a starting point.

Dictating on an iPhone
1. Apple Guide to How to Dictate text on an Iphone
2. I would select my desired text field in AnkiMobile (you can also use OneNote, Evernote, or any flashcard app) and press the dictation button on my keyboard (see below)

 

Dictating on a Mac

1. Apple Guide on How to Set up Voice Dictation on your Laptop or Desktop
2. Once Dictation is set up, I would hit the short cut (Fn Fn) in the text field in Anki
3. To end dictation, you simply press “done” on the icon below.
   

Dictating on Windows 10 or a Windows Tablet

1. Microsoft Guide to Dictation on a Windows Device
2. Select your desired text field, press the windows key + H to reveal the dictation tool bar and select the microphone.

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⇉ Other helpful resources

• Step 2 CK Study Guide
• Step 2 CS Study Guide
• Shelf Resources (by subject)
• Anki Settings Help for Shelf or Step Prep
• How to make Anki Cards Efficiently

The study resources featured on this blog such as the study schedules and Anki tips are free to use, as I know what it is like to be a student living on a fixed budget. To support this blog, please consider using the links above to make any Amazon purchases you may find yourself needing during your prep to support our blog. Step 2 CK Study guide is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon. 

If you would like to support the blog and its content, please press share below!

Note: Everything on this blog is for informational purposes only and reflects solely my individual views and opinions.