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How to Use Anki for the MCAT: A Step-by-Step Setup That Won't Bury You in Reviews

by Hawar Palani in MedSchool Tips

Everyone tells you to use Anki for the MCAT. Then you download it, import a deck with thousands of cards, hit "study," and two weeks later you're staring at 600 due reviews wondering how anyone does this and still has time for practice passages.

If that's you, you didn't fail at Anki. You just started without a plan, which is how almost everyone starts.

Anki is one of the most effective tools you can use for MCAT content, but only when it's set up to support your prep instead of becoming your prep. Here's how to do that.

How Should You Use Anki for the MCAT?

The short answer: use Anki for the facts you need to recall instantly (terms, equations, amino acids, pathways, psych/soc definitions), unlock cards only as you cover the matching content, do your reviews every single day, and cap new cards at a number you can sustain, usually somewhere in the 20–50 new cards per day range depending on your timeline. Anki is for memorization. Practice passages are for reasoning. You need both, and Anki should never eat the time meant for the second one.

The reason Anki works is spaced repetition. It shows you a card right before you're likely to forget it, so each review strengthens the memory with less total effort than rereading. The catch is that it only works if you show up daily. Skip three days, and the backlog compounds fast.

Below is the step-by-step process for how to use Anki for the MCAT, from setup to test day.

Setting Up Anki the Right Way

Step 1: Choose Premade, Custom, or a Mix

Premade community decks (MileDown's MCAT deck is one of the most widely recommended, and there are well-known psych/soc-specific decks too) save you dozens of hours of card writing and already cover the AAMC content outline in detail. Making your own cards takes longer but forces you to process the material, which helps it stick.

For most students, a mix works best: use a premade deck as your backbone, then add your own cards for concepts you miss in practice questions. Those custom cards often end up being the most valuable cards you own, because they target your specific gaps.

Step 2: Suspend Everything, Then Unsuspend as You Learn

This is the step that saves most students. When you import a big premade deck, suspend all of it. Then, as you finish each content chapter or video, find the cards that match (most premade decks are tagged by subject) and unsuspend only those. That way you're reviewing material you've actually learned, not trying to memorize facts with no context.

Step 3: Get Your Settings in Order

You don't need to obsess over settings, but a few matter:

  • New cards per day: Anki's default is 20. That's a good starting point with a longer timeline. With a shorter runway, you may need more, but raise it gradually.
  • Maximum reviews per day: Set it high enough that Anki isn't hiding due cards from you. A capped review count just pushes the backlog to tomorrow.
  • Scheduler: Recent versions of Anki include the FSRS scheduler, which lets you set a target retention (around 90% is a sensible default). It's worth turning on if you're starting fresh.

Using Anki Day to Day

Step 4: Do Reviews First, Every Day

Make Anki the first thing you do in your study day, before content or practice. Reviews are the non-negotiable part. New cards are optional on a rough day, reviews are not. A rough rule of thumb: once you're a few weeks in, daily reviews tend to settle at several times your daily new-card count, so plan your new cards around the review load you can actually handle.

Step 5: Grade Yourself Honestly

Use "Again" when you didn't truly know it, even if you were close. Hitting "Good" on a half-remembered card feels better today but leaves gaps that show up on test day. And avoid overusing "Easy," which pushes cards far into the future. When in doubt, "Again" or "Good" is all you need.

Step 6: Write Better Cards

If you make your own cards, keep each one to a single fact. Cloze deletions work great for definitions and pathway steps ("Pyruvate carboxylase requires {{c1::biotin}}"). Avoid cards that ask you to list seven things at once, since you'll keep failing them and they'll drag down your whole review session. Images help for structures, graphs, and anatomy, and Anki now includes built-in image occlusion for labeling diagrams.

Step 7: Deal With Leeches Instead of Ignoring Them

Leeches are cards you keep failing. Anki tags them automatically. Don't just keep grinding them. Rewrite the card, break it into smaller cards, or go back to the source material, because a card you keep failing usually means you never understood the concept in the first place.

How Anki Fits Into Your Full MCAT Timeline

Content Review Phase

This is when Anki does its heaviest lifting. You're unsuspending cards chapter by chapter, adding new cards daily, and building a large base of facts. Expect Anki to take a meaningful chunk of each day here, and pair it with some practice passages so you're not only memorizing.

Practice Phase

Once content is mostly done, slow down or stop adding new premade cards. Your main source of new cards should now be the questions you miss. Keep up with reviews, but your study time should shift heavily toward passages and full-length practice exams.

The Final Weeks

In the last couple of weeks, stop adding new cards entirely. New cards create future reviews you won't need after test day. Keep doing your daily reviews to keep everything fresh, and let practice exams and their review take priority.

If you're also planning ahead to boards, a lot of this carries over. Our guide on how to use Anki for Step 1 covers how the same habits scale up in med school.

What Most Students Get Wrong About Anki

The biggest mistake students make when figuring out how to use Anki for the MCAT is treating it as studying instead of as a memory tool. Hitting a perfect review streak feels productive, but the MCAT is a passage-based reasoning exam. If Anki is taking so much of your day that you aren't doing passages, you're optimizing the wrong thing.

The second mistake is adding cards too fast. Unlocking a huge chunk of a premade deck in week one feels efficient, until the review pile arrives a few weeks later. Steady, sustainable new-card counts beat big bursts every time.

The third mistake is skipping days. One missed day is fine. Three missed days creates a backlog that feels impossible, and that's when most students quit Anki entirely. If you fall behind, pause new cards and chip away at reviews until you're caught up, rather than starting over or giving up.

Making Daily Reviews Easier to Stick With

The hardest part of learning how to use Anki for the MCAT isn't the setup, it's showing up every day for hundreds of reviews. Anything that makes those sessions less of a grind helps. The Anki Clicker from MedSchoolBro lets you flip and grade cards with a handheld clicker, so you can get through reviews without being hunched over your keyboard. And if you'd like a visual complement to your digital deck, the MCAT Flashcard Set from MedSchoolBro gives you 477 illustrated cards for high-yield concepts you can flip through away from a screen.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Anki cards should I do a day for the MCAT? Most students land somewhere around 20–50 new cards per day, depending on how much time they have before the exam. The right number is whatever keeps your daily reviews manageable alongside practice passages. If reviews start taking over your day, cut new cards first.

Should I use a premade Anki deck or make my own for the MCAT? A premade deck saves enormous time and covers the content outline thoroughly, so most students use one as a base. Adding your own cards from missed practice questions makes your deck more personalized and effective. A mix of both works best for most people.

When should I stop adding new Anki cards before the MCAT? Stop adding new cards in the last couple of weeks before your exam. Newly added cards generate reviews that pile up after test day. Use that final stretch for daily reviews, full-length practice exams, and targeted review of weak areas.

Is Anki enough to do well on the MCAT? No. Anki is excellent for memorizing facts, but the MCAT tests applying those facts in passages. You still need content review to understand concepts and plenty of practice questions and full-lengths to build test-taking skills.

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Proactive vs. retroactive interference: old information disrupting new learning vs. new information disrupting old memories. Making It Stick and Applying It Step 4: Drill Terms Daily With Spaced Repetition Psych/soc is the section where flashcards pay off most. Put terms into Anki (or another spaced repetition tool) as you learn them, and review every day. Many students use a premade psych/soc deck as a base and add cards for terms they miss in practice. Keep each card to one concept, and put your example on the back alongside the definition. Step 5: Master Research Methods and Statistics A big part of this section is reading studies. You'll need to identify independent and dependent variables, spot confounds, distinguish correlation from causation, and understand concepts like reliability, validity, and statistical significance. Know the major study designs (experimental, correlational, longitudinal, cross-sectional) and the ethical principles behind research with human participants. 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Gluconeogenesis MCAT Review: Bypass Enzymes, Substrates, and Regulation

Gluconeogenesis has a reputation as "glycolysis, but backwards," and that reputation is exactly why students lose points on it. You learn glycolysis first, you feel pretty good about it, and then gluconeogenesis shows up with different enzymes, different compartments, and a regulation scheme that seems designed to confuse you. If you've ever stared at a pathway diagram and wondered which arrows actually matter, that's normal. Most of the pathway really is shared with glycolysis. The MCAT just cares a lot about the few places where it isn't. So let's focus on those places, plus the "why" behind them, because the why is what gets tested. What Do You Need to Know About Gluconeogenesis for the MCAT? 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Skeletal muscle and the brain don't supply glucose to the blood through gluconeogenesis. The brain and red blood cells are the main consumers that this whole pathway exists to protect. Compartments Gluconeogenesis spans three cellular locations, which the MCAT likes to test directly: pyruvate carboxylase in the mitochondria, most of the pathway in the cytosol, and glucose-6-phosphatase in the ER. If an answer choice says gluconeogenesis happens "entirely in the cytosol," it's wrong. Timing During Fasting Right after a meal, insulin is high and gluconeogenesis is low. In the hours after a meal and overnight, liver glycogen breakdown supplies much of the blood glucose while gluconeogenesis ramps up. Once liver glycogen is largely depleted, roughly a day into a fast, gluconeogenesis becomes the main source of new glucose. In prolonged starvation, the brain shifts toward ketone bodies, which reduces how much glucose the body has to make and spares muscle protein. What Gluconeogenesis Is Made From Lactate and the Cori Cycle Red blood cells (no mitochondria) and exercising muscle produce lactate. Lactate travels to the liver, where lactate dehydrogenase converts it back to pyruvate, and gluconeogenesis turns it into glucose that returns to the tissues. That loop is the Cori cycle. It costs the liver more ATP than glycolysis produces in the muscle, so it's a net energy expense for the body. Alanine and Other Glucogenic Amino Acids In the glucose-alanine cycle, muscle converts pyruvate to alanine by transamination, sends it to the liver, and the liver converts it back to pyruvate. As a bonus, this moves nitrogen to the liver for the urea cycle. Other glucogenic amino acids enter as pyruvate or as TCA intermediates that become oxaloacetate. Leucine and lysine are purely ketogenic and can't be used. Glycerol When triglycerides are broken down in adipose tissue, the glycerol backbone goes to the liver. Glycerol kinase phosphorylates it to glycerol-3-phosphate, which is oxidized to DHAP and enters the pathway at the triose phosphate level. What Can't Be Used: Even-Chain Fatty Acids This is a favorite trap. Even-chain fatty acids cannot produce a net gain of glucose. Their breakdown yields acetyl-CoA, and pyruvate dehydrogenase is irreversible, so acetyl-CoA can't become pyruvate. Acetyl-CoA entering the TCA cycle loses two carbons as CO2, so there's no net oxaloacetate gained either. The exception is odd-chain fatty acids, whose final propionyl-CoA becomes succinyl-CoA (a step that requires vitamin B12) and can feed gluconeogenesis. Fatty acid oxidation still helps indirectly by supplying ATP and the acetyl-CoA that activates pyruvate carboxylase. How Gluconeogenesis Is Regulated Hormonal Control Glucagon (and epinephrine) raise cAMP and activate protein kinase A in the liver. PKA does two important things: it lowers fructose-2,6-bisphosphate levels by phosphorylating the bifunctional enzyme PFK-2/FBPase-2, and it inactivates liver pyruvate kinase. Both changes favor gluconeogenesis over glycolysis. Cortisol increases transcription of gluconeogenic enzymes like PEPCK and mobilizes amino acids from muscle. Insulin does the opposite on every front. Fructose-2,6-Bisphosphate: The Switch Fructose-2,6-bisphosphate activates PFK-1 and inhibits fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase. High levels (fed state, insulin) push the liver toward glycolysis. Low levels (fasting, glucagon) push it toward gluconeogenesis. If you understand this one molecule, you understand reciprocal regulation. Allosteric Signals Acetyl-CoA activates pyruvate carboxylase and inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase, steering pyruvate toward glucose instead of the TCA cycle. AMP inhibits fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase while activating PFK-1. The logic is always the same: low energy favors glycolysis, high energy and low blood glucose favor gluconeogenesis. What Most Students Get Wrong About Gluconeogenesis The biggest mistake is treating it as glycolysis in reverse and stopping there. Gluconeogenesis MCAT questions rarely ask about the shared reversible steps. They ask about the bypass enzymes, where they are, and what controls them. The second mistake is the fatty acid trap. Students know fat is stored energy, so they assume it can become glucose. Even-chain fatty acids can't make net glucose, but glycerol and odd-chain fatty acids can. Expect answer choices built around that exact distinction. The third mistake is forgetting tissue differences. Muscle lacks glucose-6-phosphatase, so it can't export glucose. The liver can. When a passage mentions a muscle-specific enzyme deficiency versus a liver one, that difference usually decides the answer. 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Glycogen breakdown handles the early hours, and gluconeogenesis takes over as liver glycogen runs low. Gluconeogenesis MCAT questions often ask which source dominates at a given point in a fast, so know the general timeline.

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Which content resource is "best" depends on three things: how much time you have, how strong your science foundation already is, and whether you learn better from dense text or from visual, condensed review. The best MCAT prep books for a biology major with six months are not the same as the best ones for a career-changer with three months and a full-time job. And no matter which book you pick, the official AAMC materials are non-negotiable. They're written by the people who write the test, and nothing else simulates the real exam's reasoning style as closely. The Main Types of MCAT Prep Books Multi-Volume Subject Review Sets These are the big box sets you've seen recommended everywhere, with a separate book for each subject (biology, biochemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, psychology/sociology, and CARS). Kaplan, The Princeton Review, and Examkrackers are the names you'll see most often. They're thorough and detailed, which makes them great as a reference. 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Make sure anything you buy, especially used, is written for the current exam. A cheap pre-2015 set will be missing psych/soc entirely and will spend time on content that's no longer tested in the same way. How to Actually Use Your Prep Books Buying the right book is only half the battle. How you use it matters just as much. Read actively, not passively. After each chapter, close the book and explain the key ideas out loud or on paper. If you can't, you didn't learn it, you just read it. Turn what you read into review. Make flashcards (or use a premade set) for terms, equations, and pathways as you go, so content from week two doesn't fade by week eight. Do questions alongside content, not after it. Even a handful of passages per chapter helps you see how the MCAT actually tests what you just read. Waiting until you've "finished content" to start practice is one of the most common timeline mistakes. Use the book as a reference later. Once you shift into heavy practice, your book becomes the place you go to patch specific gaps exposed by missed questions. That's where a well-organized resource really earns its price. If you're wondering how many full-lengths to plan for once content is done, our guide on how many practice tests to take before the MCAT breaks it down. What Most Students Get Wrong About MCAT Prep Books The biggest mistake is buying too much. More books feel like more preparation, but every extra set splits your attention and your time. Students with two full content sets often finish neither. One resource you know inside and out beats three you've skimmed. The second mistake is treating reading as studying. Content review feels productive because you're turning pages and highlighting. But the MCAT is a reasoning test built around passages, and the score gains come from practice and careful review of mistakes, not from a fourth read-through of the same chapter. The third mistake is ignoring the official materials until the very end, then discovering that the AAMC's question style feels different from everything else you've practiced. Work AAMC questions into your schedule early enough that you have time to adjust. A Prep Book Built to Be Finished If you want one content resource that covers what matters without burying you in a box set, The Complete MCAT Guide from MedSchoolBro is a 225-page hardcover with an interactive eBook, built to condense high-yield MCAT content into something you can actually get through and come back to as a reference. It pairs naturally with AAMC practice and a question bank, so your content review stays focused and your time goes where the points are.   Frequently Asked Questions Do I need a full multi-book MCAT set? Not necessarily. Full sets are helpful if you have big content gaps and plenty of time. If you have a solid science foundation or a shorter timeline, a single comprehensive guide plus heavy practice is often a better use of your hours. Are used or older MCAT prep books okay? Used books can save a lot of money, as long as they're written for the current exam format that launched in 2015. Avoid anything older, since it won't cover psychology and sociology properly. Minor differences between recent editions usually don't matter much. Are prep books enough to do well on the MCAT? Books handle content, but the MCAT tests applying that content to unfamiliar passages. You'll also want a solid question bank and the official AAMC practice materials. Think of books as the foundation and practice as the part that actually moves your score. What's the best MCAT prep book for CARS? CARS improves more from practice passages than from any book. Use official AAMC CARS practice and a steady volume of passages, and spend real time reviewing why the right answer is right and each wrong answer is wrong.

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