I am using Anki to prepare for my medical school finals which are 27 days from now. Currently I have: 330 new cards, 70 in learn and 176 due. My main question is how to get through the new cards so that I have “learned” by the exam’s date. I would still have 70-80 new cards to add which I am refraining right to make sure that backlog does keep getting bigger.
For the upcoming days I have time to dedicate plenty time to Anki (>5-6hr/ day). Ideally I would do this in a way that ofc I have good retention of the information. I need advice from more experienced Anki users on how to get through this in the most efficient way/ maximise retention. (Which I appreciate would have been not to let it get to this point but alas here we are).
My current deck options are:
new cards/day: 1000
max review/ day: 9999
new cards insertion order: sequential
New/review order: mix with reviews
interlay learning/ review order: mix with reviews
review sort order: due date, then random
Should I make a custom deck with the over due card (>7 days) and one for the just due (< 7 days) and then go through the new cards from the original deck?
Will this result in a huge number of “learning” cards and overwhelming high due cards so debatable on whether I would be retaining any knowledge?
OR: should I go through the dues and overdues and then move on with the new cards?
There is plenty online re huge backlog on reviews but not much on how to work through new-cards backlog.
Any advice would be greatly greatly appreciated as rn I feel like I am wondering blind hoping for the best.
Your current settings look fine to me. And 200 due cards isn’t a huge backlog so you shouldn’t worry. (I recently recovered from around 2.5K very slow to rep cards backlog in around a week.)
I will only advise:
Turn on FSRS
Use review order descending retreivability which is better just in case you can’t recover from the backlog.
Use the built-in simulator to check how many reviews you might get in the future.
Little off-topic: Why is the descending retreivability better than easy cards first? I think the second one was suggested on Reddit as the best way to recover from a large backlog.
It depends on what you believe makes a sort order “good”. If you want to maintain the desired retention, go with descending retreivability. If you want a good knowledge/workload ratio, go with easy cards first. Well, actually easy cards first might just be the better option given that you increase the stability of those cards most by passing them. Just go with whatever you want.
You can’t really have a “backlog” of New cards – but you can fall behind schedule, when you’re heading towards a deadline. In that case, you just need to re-compute your pace of New cards so that they are all introduced with time to spare – Settings for using Anki to prepare for a large exam - Anki FAQs . And then actually use that as your New card limit (“allowance”) instead of leaving it unlimited.
Don’t forget to consider those Learn cards in your calculation. You really need to get those graduated to Review to make room for New cards to come in. You should be graduating everything in Learn/Relearn to Review every day. It doesn’t do you any good to force more New cards into your system faster than you can learn them.
Are you considering your Review cards a backlog as well? It doesn’t sound like they are, and you should be able to study all of those in one 5-6h study-day. Or are the Learn cards that a backlog? As I said above, those should be a priority.
But I wouldn’t suggest using that sort order unless you pull your Review backlog (which you don’t seem to have …) away from your main deck. It is efficient for a backlog, but it can cause younger cards with short Stability to slip behind the backlog if you let them.
I’m not sure how this question is Anki-specific. I would go through the new cards and reposition them so that the most difficult material is presented first, which will give you more time to study it.
Your new cards/day will have Anki present you with all the new cards in one day. Assuming you have more than one day before the exam, that’s definitely not ideal.