Going through zanki and not doing well on Step 1?

[dwmok001]

I'm just wondering if anyone has gone through a majority of the zanki (or whatever deck) and not done well on Step 1 (by well I'm saying under a 230). I've been going through this and hope to finish 20k worth of cards by March giving me 2 months to review before step 1. I'm just fearful that all this work is going to be in vain once I get to the actual exam. I already have pathoma and sketchy on board, doing Kaplan and usmle rx questions and will do uworld in the spring.

So for those who used the decks and didn't do well on the exam (again 230 or less) what would you have changed or added? Would you have stuck to doing the decks?

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[libertyyne]

From my experience the key is to expand on the topic after you answer the card. For instance, if I got a biochem card about a pathway asking for an enzyme, after answering the card I would say out loud every possible thing I could thing of regarding that topic. If this is missing it will cause a build up of X and cause Y disease, etc. My wife thought I was nuts but it worked for me. I could recall cards vividly on the exam. Much more than any UW or Rx question/explaination.

How much time per card does this take you.

 

[Spectreman]

How much time per card does this take you.

I’ll share my experience because I’m doing something similar, except I snapshot in my marked up pdf of Pathoma or a google image that helps me make sense of the topic, even if it’s a cloze card.

So the first run through cards can take quite a while, anywhere from 30-90seconds if you include typing a little line in extra portion and snapping in a grab from something...

Once that’s done though, the cloze card pops up in your due cards and you quickly refresh the whole topic in <10sec. You also don’t have to do this for every card, but if the cloze feels super random then it’s worth taking the time to do that. You’re basically building your own deck from the Zanki frame.

I highly recommend messing with your computer settings do your snapshots are the smallest file possible, also the image resized add-on in Anki is crucial for making his work.

 

[libertyyne]

I’ll share my experience because I’m doing something similar, except I snapshot in my marked up pdf of Pathoma or a google image that helps me make sense of the topic, even if it’s a cloze card.

So the first run through cards can take quite a while, anywhere from 30-90seconds if you include typing a little line in extra portion and snapping in a grab from something...

Once that’s done though, the cloze card pops up in your due cards and you quickly refresh the whole topic in <10sec. You also don’t have to do this for every card, but if the cloze feels super random then it’s worth taking the time to do that. You’re basically building your own deck from the Zanki frame.

I highly recommend messing with your computer settings do your snapshots are the smallest file possible, also the image resized add-on in Anki is crucial for making his work.

I guess my method is different, i just keep hitting the clozes until it is stuck in my head, without context or what ever. It is a line that contains a fact that is in my head now, and when I do questions i end up integrating , or when i complete the deck i end up integrating the information , or when listening to golijan. Ive been doing well on qbanks and class exams. Med school feels like a volume of information game, rarely is anything conceptually challenging, rather it relies upon disparate facts that you need to know to reason through stuff.
I do mumble answers to myself when I am anki-ing tho.

 

[TheHikingDoctor]

How much time per card does this take you.

Not that long because, as my wife says, I don’t know as much as I think I do

 

[TheHikingDoctor]

I guess my method is different, i just keep hitting the clozes until it is stuck in my head, without context or what ever. It is a line that contains a fact that is in my head now, and when I do questions i end up integrating , or when i complete the deck i end up integrating the information , or when listening to golijan. Ive been doing well on qbanks and class exams. Med school feels like a volume of information game, rarely is anything conceptually challenging, rather it relies upon disparate facts that you need to know to reason through stuff.
I do mumble answers to myself when I am anki-ing tho.

Much of that I can’t argue with but what I will say is that I try to do the integration with the card before I get to the question. So if a card comes up and let’s say it asks which chromosome for vHL for instance. I’ll answer the card but then I’ll say out loud what I might see in that pt, what is the mechanism of that disease, what test or tx is relevant, etc. Then move on to the next one. Maybe 30 seconds tops.

 

[libertyyne]

Much of that I can’t argue with but what I will say is that I try to do the integration with the card before I get to the question. So if a card comes up and let’s say it asks which chromosome for vHL for instance. I’ll answer the card but then I’ll say out loud what I might see in that pt, what is the mechanism of that disease, what test or tx is relevant, etc. Then move on to the next one. Maybe 30 seconds tops.

Ah, my average answer time is 8 seconds per card, 30 seconds would mean i cant make my daily reviews. But it sounds like an excellent way to integrate, once I do hit a card where I have no clue I will spend a little bit of time analyzing the info. I do feel like zanki takes away a lot of the reasoning that you have to do because it has another card with the reasoning in it.