Students told us three things: the Booster should have the newest form, Anki takes too long, and checking First Aid for every card is a chore. We fixed all three.
Everything below runs on the same two decks. Know which one does which job:
| Foundation Anki | 2,481 cards, First Aid page by page. It teaches you the book. Run each system’s deck right after you read it — before UWorld (the RPSR method). |
| NBME Booster | 4,374 cards, every topic from NBME forms 20 to 34, sorted by system. It teaches you the exam. Final 1–2 weeks before your attempt (the Booster guide). |
The full comparison is in Foundation versus Booster.
The newest form is now harvested the same way as the rest: 200 new cards, each a one-line recall point, filed into 17 system decks. You don’t open a new deck — the cards are already inside the system decks you run.
Why it matters: the NBME retires forms, not logic. The more recent the form, the closer its patterns are to your exam. The Booster now covers forms 20 through 34 — the argument is in The Exam Is Already Published.
Every card now has a switch at the top: Tutored | Timed. The app remembers your choice.
Tutored is the old way: no clock, take as long as you need. Timed is new, and it is the one most of you should be using.
| Question side | 60 seconds. If you haven’t flipped by then, the answer shows itself. |
| Answer side | 60 seconds to rate it. Run out, and the card counts as “Forgot it” — it comes back about 8 cards later, in the same session. |
| Most per card | 2 minutes. Never more. |
| The clock | turns amber at 20 seconds, red at 10. A thin bar across the card shrinks as you go. |
| End of session | a Pacing line: “Every card answered in time”, or how many hit the limit. |
The commonest Anki complaint we hear isn’t “I forget the cards”. It is “my reviews eat my whole evening”. Look at where the time goes and it is never the easy cards. It is the 5 hard ones you stare at for 4 minutes each, re-reading the answer, half-reviewing First Aid in your head.
Timed mode stops that. The easy cards still take 10 seconds. The hard ones can’t take more than 2 minutes — and if you can’t pull it out in 60 seconds, that is not a card you know. It goes back in the pile and comes round again, which is exactly what spaced repetition is for.
It also trains the skill the exam actually tests: recall under a clock. Nobody on test day lets you stare.
Three plain-word buttons, and each shows when the card comes back:
| Forgot it | returns in this session, about 8 cards later |
| Shaky | comes back a little sooner than last time’s gap |
| Knew it | the normal spaced-repetition step — Space bar does this |
You no longer open First Aid separately to check a card. Flip it, and under the answer is “Study this in First Aid” — 1 to 3 chips, each with the page number, its title and the system (“p603 · Renal”).
Tap a chip and the page opens beside the card: its Focus on and Key takeaways, straight from the First Aid Guide. Need more? “Open full page in FA Guide” — and a “Back to Anki” pill brings you back to the exact card you left.
The links stay hidden until you flip — a page title would give the answer away.
| Foundation Anki | all 2,481 cards linked |
| NBME Booster | 3,993 cards linked — to the page where the answer is taught |
| Not linked | the 200 new NBME 34 cards (coming), and the few cards whose answer First Aid never teaches |
Spot a card linked to the wrong page? “Wrong page for this card?” sends it to us.
The clock pauses while the First Aid panel is open — and while the tutor is open. So in Timed mode you can check the page without losing the card: read the Focus on, close the panel, rate. The clock carries on from where it stopped.
If the page still doesn’t make it click, the tutor is on the Anki screen too — ask it right there, and nothing you type moves the deck.
| Per system, before UWorld | FA Guide + Test Yourself → Mehlman → Foundation Anki, Timed → UWorld (RPSR) |
| Revision of First Aid | Foundation Anki — the whole book by active recall (the 6-day revision) |
| Final 1–2 weeks | NBME Booster, system by system to completion (the final 14 days) |
| Stuck at 62–65% | Booster is the move marked most important (the plateau guide) |
Your schedule already puts each deck on the right day — see the road to exam day.
Foundation versus Booster — which deck does which job
The NBME Booster — why forms 20–34 are the syllabus
The tutor — a teacher on every page, the Anki screen included
ELI5, Test Yourself and Rule out — what you’re linked to when you tap a card
The RPSR method — where Foundation Anki goes before UWorld