Goodmorning, I have been using ankidroid as a med student for a while now,
the settings however do not suit this type of study. What are the best settings for med school?
If someone can help me, i’ll be grateful.
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If you’re looking for help adjusting your settings you should –
- Include what settings you are using.
- Say what you think isn’t working about them.
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Set new cards and reviews to 9999 (max).
Study as many new cards as you want each day. Prioritize reviews. If you feel burnt out, you don’t have to do NEW cards, but it’s best to do the due reviews every day.
Set learning steps to between 5-10 minutes. Make sure there is only 1. If you are using the new beta version/release candidate of Anki, you can just leave it blank.
Tick all 4 distractions to turn them off in preferences (I’m assuming you’re using laptop). Turn on FSRS if it isn’t on already. Optimize it every time you do a lot of reviews (1000+). Use again, hard, and good as they were intended. Never press hard/good if you get it wrong. Wrong = again. Easy is optional, for really easy cards that you get correct.
Space the answer buttons close to each other. For example, space for good (correct), n for again (incorrect) and m for hard (correct).
Set the desired retention to 0.85-0.93.
Higher = more cards correct (more motivating) but less efficient.
Lower = less cards correct (less motivating) but more efficient.
This is pretty much all you need. Now, just start grinding as much as possible. On the bus, while eating, before sleep, in the library, during workout rests, focused hour-long sessions, etc. Most of the advice online is really bad. They’ll just demotivate you. Start grinding now, and keep grinding indefinitely. The earlier you finish ALL the new cards, the better, because then you’ll only have reviews left which is easier and more rewarding.
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Though not related to official Anki, there is a subreddit for medical students who are Anki users they have more users than r/Anki so I recommend asking questions about medicine there : r/medicalschoolanki (161k users)
And wiki has instructions on how to get started with Anki for medical students : medicalschoolanki - Wiki
Medical group Anking has created tutorials and decks for medical students (They are subreddit mods), you may want to get to grips with these terms:
- Anki (program) Free and open source flash card software. 1000+ extensions available for free, the latest Spaced Repetition algorithms are comparable to the most accurate in the world (FSRS). Mobile versions: AnkiDroid(Android) & AnkiMobile (iOS).
- Anking (Organization) The medical group familiar with Anki and the mod of medicalschoolanki. Numerous tutorial videos and add-ons are available. They are not official Anki.
- Anking (Deck) This is the shared, high quality decks of Anki for medical use, maintained by Anking. (Anking has taken over development from volunteers). V11 is available for free.
- Ankihub (add-on) This is the project managed by Anking. You can get the latest Anking deck V12 and sync in real time. It requires monthly subscription to use, but if you can’t afford it, you can apply for a scholarship and it will be free.
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This video can help, I use these settings as well (basically FSRS with 90% retention): https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=OqRLqVRyIzc
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Theese are my settings, I don’t think anything wrong with them, I do however believe that I could use better ones. Thank you for your time
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Will those settings actually help me? I had used FSRS in the past, and I had problems with the revisions dates (after the fisrt revision I had to wait another 20 days).
This all depends on your retention rate you set
It’s recommended to set it to 0.90, but for example. For the AnKing deck, I have it at 0.90. For my inschool exam decks, some of them I set to 0.95. So after the first review, instead of 4-5 days, I see it in 2 days.
You can experiment but note that the closer you approach to 100, the rise in reviews is exponential so you will see the cards way way more. So play around with the settings until you find the sweet spot for you
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Those are the recommended settings, specifically for medical school, and I can attest that they do help. 
If the intervals are not to your liking you can adjust your desired retention.
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Make sure you’ve saved changes after you set it.
Try a few cards, it will range from 2-4 depending on your parameters as well after you optimized (at least for me). You can try 96, 97 if you desire closer review periods
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One graph is more than a thousand words.
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