What fraction of time do you spend reviewing?

[JonQ]

There is constantly new information being added and yet its necessary to review old material. I find that as med school progresses, it gets more difficult to achieve balance since there is always more info added to the pile that needs to be reviewed.

For example, I'm doing "Interpreting EKGs" now but went back and reviewed physiology/anatomy (Ventricular/SA electrophysiology, anatomy of the conducting system) for 20 minutes and now alloted 1 hour for learning the new info.

How much time do you spend reviewing old topics each day? What method of review do you find highest yield and in what proportion?
(Anki, making notes from review books, doing practice questions, videos)

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[lagbydesign]

It's Anki. Anki does it for you. Currently (2 weeks from exams), I do about 100 new cards, 100 learning cards, and 100 review cards. It takes me about 30 to 40 minutes to get through the review cards. As a last minute review pre-exam, I cram all the high yield student made lecture notes, which has been absolutely critical.

 

[Atom612]

It's Anki. Anki does it for you. Currently (2 weeks from exam), I do about 100 new cards, 100 learning cards, and 100 review cards. It takes me about 30 to 40 minutes to get through the review cards. As a last minute review pre-exam, I cram all the high yield student notes, which has been absolutely critical.

What do you do when you haven't been diligent about keeping up with/weeding out old cards and now have 1000s of cards if you wanna catch up? I wanna review old material but I don't have time to go into each subject and delete hundreds of useless cards...

 

[Jojos]

i do it with anki and a good amount. Enough to feel that I reviewed the basic stuff so the pathology will make sense instead of memorizing it.

also, i spend less time studying a new topic and a lot more reviewing. I condense the info enough and put it into anki.

 

[Save a life]

I use Anki. I am committed to one hour every morning, even on weekends and holidays. That’s one hour without getting up, checking Facebook, etc. you can actually get through hundreds of cards in that time. I first review the material for my current test and I also have a deck for step 1 review.

As for the 1000’s of old cards issue, you’ll simply have to whittle it down to “high yield” material only and start cranking every day. My rule is FA material only. It keeps me from adding low yield material from my decks and getting overwhelmed. You can also up the algorithm so there are less reviews, I did this and it has helped so much and I’m still retaining the material. Try making your steps way higher (I do 1440 and 2880 minutes which is one day and two days) and increasing the easy bonus.

 

[lagbydesign]

What do you do when you haven't been diligent about keeping up with/weeding out old cards and now have 1000s of cards if you wanna catch up? I wanna review old material but I don't have time to go into each subject and delete hundreds of useless cards...

I agree with Save a life. It's a solid plan. You just have to do as much as you can in the time you have.

 

[MD-2021]

Are you talking about reviewing stuff from old blocks? I wasn't aware we were supposed to be doing that..