Source
r/medicalschoolanki•
ModelMedicine

Is AnKing sufficient for medical school subject NBMEs?

Preclinical Solved

In our school, we have NBME exams for biochem/physio/neuro during MS1. Given that the NBMEs are written by the people that write the Step 1 exam, I was considering only using AnKing and AnKing related material to study for the NBMEs after each of our blocks. Basically, I'm going off the assumption that because they're written by the same people, only topics tested on Step 1 will be tested in the NBME.

I've been keeping up my in-house cards after exam 1, but I'm concerned with being inefficient since many of the cards I've been doing were school specific and not in AnKing (at least not to the same level of detail). What are you thoughts?

Posted Dec 2, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

27
zulagirl•

For me it was. My routine was to unsuspend Anki while watching lecture on 1.5-2x speed. If it wasn’t in Anki I just didn’t care. I would throw in Sketchy and BaB on any subjects I was weak on. I scored 80-95 on exams, except one time this semester I tried studying from lecture (everyone said I’d be screwed if I didn’t) and I got a 76 and studied 10x more. Lmk if you have any more questions.

11
ModelMedicineOP•

Thanks for the response. I'll look into Sketchy Biochem too!

2
Rocket699•

Yep, if it’s not in anking dw about it

https://youtu.be/Vzxyf67R6_g

Watch this video to learn how to use anking alongside classes

5
ModelMedicineOP•

Thanks!! I've been following his strats ever since I started AnKing. I was just concerned if the subject NBME's went into more specificity than Step.

2
predepression•

I've only used AnKing + BnB + Pixorize without looking at any lecture material and did well on my current class's first NBME. The only thing I could have done to better my score would have been more practice questions; make sure not to slack with applying your Anki knowledge to actual clinical scenarios

The vast majority of people at NBME exam schools pretty much just use AnKing/boards prep to study and disregard lecture content because of what you stated. A few oddballs who don't want to change their undergrad habits still use lectures, but AnKing + one good QBank is more than sufficient for NBMEs

4
ModelMedicineOP•

Thanks! I suppose I was just concerned if the NBME subject exams required more specific knowledge compared to Step. For example, in lecture we learned about the specific IRS-GRB-SOS molecules whereas AnKing barely touches on it.

3
predepression•

So as far as I’ve been told, NBME exams are made up of retired Step questions that your school chooses based on the class/content they’re going over. So while it’s possible to get a low-yield Q on the signaling mechanisms of IRS, you’re much more likely to get questions over more clinically related things covered in AnKing. I believe that schools go in more detail in lectures for those who care about understanding the whole mechanism, not necessarily because it’ll be useful for the exam. I use AnKing and Uworld as a marker for how in-depth my knowledge needs to be about any given topic for that reason and to keep my studying as efficient as possible. People who use lectures + AnKing probably do (marginally) better on exams, but I really don’t think the time commitment required to do that is worth it especially with P/F step.

3