Learning Medicine

Learning Medicine
The Ultimate Guide to Study Skills in Medical School

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Step 1 Post-Mortem - The Very Short Version

Hi all,

Several people have asked me to comment on the outcome of my Step 1 adventure. I want to give it a more full treatment when I get time, but right now, I'll give the short and sweet version.


First, my score.
I am hesitant to blast my Step 1 score on the interwebz for all to see. I think you can appreciate. But I also know that that result is important for judging whether my Anki strategy is worthwhile. I will give a qualitative result:  I was extremely pleased with my outcome, and I couldn't have asked for more. Take that as you will.

Short story:
1. Anki works really really.  Many questions, both in qbanks and on the real test would jump out at me as an Anki card, and that would enable me to answer them quickly and correctly.
2. UWorld is amazing. Many real q's looked very similar. Putting qbanks above content review was a good strategy for me. Because Anki started me off with a very solid base, I could take full advantage of UWorld and USMLERx from day 1.
3. 7 weeks was too long.  I should have done 5 or 6 weeks. I had to work very hard to get marginal gains in my performance compared to my initial NBME test. Diminishing returns. The silver-lining of that story, however, is that that means I was already poised to do well on Step 1 from day 1 b/c of Anki. So its conceivable that someone might use Anki and do qbanks during their normal class schedule, and then not even have to use dedicated time for Step 1. So that means a 1+ month vacation for someone with the courage to try that.
4. If I had done Anki for subjects like biochem, behavioral science, etc. early on, I probably would have done no content review at all. Maybe like 2-3 days at max. So for the future, students who use Anki from day 1 of med school may not need to do much content review at all.


I promise I'll come give more detail at another time. But the take-away now is that the Anki-Step 1 strategy I've described on this blog works. If you use good cards and are dedicated and disciplined in using them, you be set for success (however you define that). And, best of all, your learning efforts are not for naught. The knowledge will not be fleeting. The stuff I studied in the preclinical years is now burned in my head, and I hope that some of it will be useful to me in the future.

Good luck to you all on your Step 1 journeys. And thanks for following my own path here on this blog. I hope I've helped some of you.

Now it's time to start doing (and writing about) other exciting things.

9 comments:

  1. It is quite a rewarding method of learning. It seems one month after you "learn" a card, the facts on it feel like "common sense" as opposed to learned knowledge. Having completed biochem through it, I can attest to it's power. Being able to effortlessly bring up complete pathways, interlink them and experimentally "remove" enzymes during pathology lends such a great power of understanding.

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    1. Well put! I'm glad you're a believer :) Tell your friends. We need to share this awesome tool.

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  2. I've just started using Anki and making my own cards.

    Do you change any of Anki's default settings (fx new cards per day - or anything), or do you just use it 'out of the box'?

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  3. Hello
    I am wondering how to reset your deck to get a complete clear and new copy??
    I have exported the file, and then imported it, but still count the amount of hours you spent and some other statistics!!

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    1. Hey. I'm happy to help, but if you need urgent answers, google is your friend. Not to be snarky, but it's true. There is a ton of Anki information on google. And you can go to the anki google group (ankisrs.net) and there are answers to everything there. Good luck,

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    2. Go to the browser -> select all the cards -> file -> reschedule

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  4. Hi,

    Great blog, thank you. I'm an MS2 who is starting in the clinics in January. Do you recommend using your internal medicine cards to study for the Medicine Shelf exam? I was just wondering what your experience was.

    Thanks for sharing Anki with everyone, I think it is a wonderful program.

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    1. Hey. Thanks for the kind words. I used my medicine deck for that purpose. That's when I built it - when I was on IM. It worked for me. It's not my finest deck, but it's good. It has a lot of pocket medicine, Step Up to Medicine and UWorld Step2CK.

      Make sure you read all the usual resources, but use this to keep it in your head.

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