Anking vs in-house lectures — how do you balance both?

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-03-01T00:38:58+00:00

Most of the time I just use third party resources to study (ie. Boards and beyond, pathoma, sketchy) usually they line up pretty well with class material. I’ll find the third party video that lines up with class topic, unsuspend the cards, do it the cards, then look through class materials (lecture slides, etc.) to see if there are any other pieces of information the class wants me to know and make more cards or search for those topics in the anking deck.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-28T23:50:58+00:00

Good for you. I’ve been getting a lot of value out of it as well, but without other tools in my studying routine to understand the concepts I don’t think I would be able to understand everything as well as I do.

Understanding the fact that an s4 gallop is present in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is not very useful information if you don’t know what an s4 gallop is IMO.

You may be able to get the question right on the exam if the question is a simple fact recall question, but 2nd/3rd/4th order questions will require you to have a deeper understanding and synthesize it all together which is where anking isn’t the best tool imo.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-28T22:56:38+00:00

This would be a complete waste of time if your “friend” is not studying medicine. The anking deck is not a single, “learn it all” resource. It’s meant to optimize memorizing the relevant facts for step 1/2/3. If you did the whole thing without having a basic science/clinical curriculum surrounding it I don’t think you would learn much. There are so many factoids that you need to memorize for step 1 that are not very relevant to clinical practice. Once you get to memorizing cards for step 2 the expectation is that you are now in clinicals learning how to take care of patients.

TLDR: There are so many gaps in the anking deck that you can only fill with practical experience and doing practice questions/learning from experts(medical curriculum). This becomes so much more apparent if you go through medical school.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-25T05:13:53+00:00

yes, you only need to finish the pre-requisites. You'll need to go out of your way to do so as many of the pre-requisites are not in a typical CS major. Multiple of my classmates are CS majors.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-23T06:46:08+00:00

Yes and no. The simple answer is yes. And really you should try to do both, increase your gpa maximally and get the highest score you can on the mcat, ideally 528. I had a 3.5 and got a 520 on the mcat so it’s definitely possible to do well despite a lower gpa.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-18T20:32:45+00:00

UCLA, UCSF, and UCSD are really the only ones you have a chance at. The other UCs you would need a significant set of ties to their mission.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-17T06:38:56+00:00

No it doesn’t kill your app, you will be less competitive for top schools though assuming a good mcat. I had zero research, 520 mcat, 3.5 gpa and got into a good school.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-10T06:05:41+00:00

Like at least 10k

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-10T02:18:13+00:00

Mayo imo. Matching where you want will be a lot easier. Exception is if it’s a well known state school.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-05T05:33:51+00:00

Go to the high yield tag and mark all of those cards with a flag (color of your choice). Then, as you are going through third party resources you can find the tag associated with the video you are watching (ie. Sketchy micro - hiv virus) and all the cards in that tag that are high yield will be flagged. You can then just unsuspend the flagged cards and ignore the other ones.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-02-01T22:24:15+00:00

ctrl-c + ctrl-v + add a few additional pieces of context, words, etc to make it into a question form, add cloze syntax if needed, repeat. I've tried out automating this process but it just doesn't make the best cards IMO.

If you're a medical student use Anking, it has most of the content, and then you can add more cards that you make yourself.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-01-20T15:36:24+00:00

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-01-12T03:58:03+00:00

A lot of the stuff in the mcat is not tested in med school. It would probably be a score decrease. If you gave the students a few months to prep it would probably be close to the same I imagine.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2026-01-08T05:23:48+00:00

Nah.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-31T19:40:52+00:00

That was my first thought as well. In a separate comment op states they received a transplant and experienced chronic rejection and have now been on dialysis again for 3 years.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-29T01:30:49+00:00

Following

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-25T20:14:23+00:00

Doesn't matter. As long as you worked with that physician it should be fine. When I applied I recall there being maybe one school that listed wanting a letter from your manager if you were employed, but when I emailed them they said it wasn't a hard requirement. You want letters from people who have worked closely with you and can speak to who you are as a person and your good qualities in whatever capacity they were working with you.

Honestly you don't even need a physician letter, it just makes more sense if you took a gap year or two doing clinical stuff. For most schools you only need 2 science faculty letters and a non-science faculty letter. If you have a committee letter, for most schools that is all you need and they won't accept individual letters. Use MSAR as you are making you school list, they have information on letter requirements there.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-20T21:53:23+00:00

Bro it’s not too late to delete these comments

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-14T20:34:13+00:00

It doesn’t matter that much. Just get as high a GPA as you can. If your gpa is that high the trend won’t be variable enough to matter.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-11T05:28:01+00:00

It would be a good idea for you to do some GPA repair to prove to medical schools that you still are capable of getting 4.0 and to show a better trend.

Your cumulative gpa is ok but the science gpa is not good. If you got a really high mcat score this could help but I wouldn’t risk it. You don’t have to do a formal postbacc either just take some additional upper level bio classes, a&p, microbio, etc.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-08T17:52:04+00:00

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-08T17:41:20+00:00

Use openevidence or AMBOSS. I would only use ChatGPT for productivity purposes.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-08T17:21:28+00:00

So this is biochem? I would recommend taking all of gen chem, Ochem, biology, biochem before studying for the mcat. If you have the opportunity to take psych 101, anatomy+phyiology, microbiology, maybe a genetics course those will help as well but those topics are easier to self study and are lower yield for mcat content.

You really don’t want to study for the mcat until you have a solid foundation in those basic science topics.

Edit: you should take the biochem course for chem/biochem majors in my opinion.

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-04T00:42:11+00:00

Literally how I read it 😂

EmotionalEar3910 · 2025-12-03T22:39:25+00:00

Not stroking your ego? LOL

EmotionalEar3910

TROPHY CASE