Looking for Best Anki Decks for Medical Students?

šŸ“– AnkiHub Decks
1

Hey everyone,

I am a med student looking to optimize my Anki workflow. I have heard a lot about different decks like AnKing, Zanki, and Pepperā€¦, but I am not sure which one to go with. My main focus is high-yield content for USMLE and efficient long-term retention.

A few questions :-

Which deck do you personally use, and why: ??
How do you integrate pre-made decks with your class notes: ??
Any tips on customizing cards without breaking future updates from AnkiHub: ??

I would love to hear your thoughts, especially if you have tried multiple decks and found one to be the most effective. Also, if there are any hidden gems outside of the popular ones, let me know !!

Thanks in advance for your help !! I have also gone through this thread https://community.ankihub.net/t/the-best-deck-for-neet-pg-workday-training but still looking for some more suggestions.

With Regards,
Derek Theler

2

Hello, :slight_smile:

The overwhelming answer here is going to be the AnKing Step Deck. A few details:

  • Zanki is a much older deck, that has largely not been updated in years. It was long ago folded into and incorporated within the Anking deck. Thus, having Zanki would be heavily redundant (and outdated).
  • Pepper is largely similar. Itā€™s quite an old deck at this point (I think 8+ years old).

The AnKing Step Deck is going to be hands-down the most common, most used, and by far the most updated Step deck (and the only one that is actively maintained). You can find more information about some of the ongoing updates within that deck here: šŸ‘‘ AnKing Step Deck Update #14ā€¦

AnKing. Easy answer

This will vary widely amongst individuals. Not all schools have the same curricula, nor the same amount of emphasis on in-house materials, so itā€™s hard to give a one-size-fits all answer here.

But, a very broad overview sense would be that many (most?) students use the AnKing deck and then supplement with in-house decks and/or self-made cards to cover any gaps necessary for school-specific material or just stuff that you need to focus on for personal gaps or weaknesses. This is a pretty commonplace workflow.

Thus, you might have something like the following:

  • AnKing deck for Step-related stuff.
  • An in-house deck (if one exists for your school) for school-related stuff.
  • Self-made cards to emphasize important details or personal weaknesses.

You can edit just about anything in an AnKing card. In order to preserve those edits youā€™ll want to ā€˜protectā€™ them. This can be done in two ways:

You can protect a given field for all notes in your collection: Managing Protected Fields

You can protect a given field for one specific note in your collection: Protect Field for Individual Note

Hopefully that gives at least a cursory answer to some of your questions though if Iā€™ve missed anything, or if you have additional questions, feel free to fire them off and Iā€™ll do my best to be of help. :slight_smile: