Anki Algorithm

Spaced Repetition 

Generally, when people study from flashcards, they review all the cards almost every single day. This is manageable when studying a few flashcards for a short period of time, but the MCAT for Victory Anki deck includes thousands of flashcards.

If you were to get all the cards from the MCAT for Victory Anki deck and stacked them on top of each other, the deck would end up being about 2 ½ feet tall. This is far too much information to review every single day. Additionally, you have other obligations while studying for the MCAT like watching the MCAT for Victory videos, reading the textbook, and answering practice questions. You will also want to get eight hours of sleep at night, and you should be giving yourself some time to take care of your physical and mental health. This means all your time cannot be spent reviewing flashcards. This means you need a smart and effective system to memorize everything on the MCAT. Fortunately, Anki has an amazing algorithm that spaces out all the facts in order to make studying for the MCAT much more manageable.

To help the user memorize everything on the MCAT, Anki uses an algorithm similar to the Leitner system. Here is how the Leitner system works:

  1. The user starts with all of their cards together in one deck. This deck includes all of the cards that the user has not seen. These cards are called “New.” Once the user sees a card, it will move to a different deck based on the interval at which they will see the card again.
  2. The user now has to decide whether they answered the flashcard right or wrong.
    • If they get the card wrong, they place the card in the second deck. This deck includes all the cards they will review again in 5 minutes.
    • If they get the card right, they place the card in the third deck. The third deck includes all the cards they will review again in 30 minutes.
    • After going through a few cards, they will have some cards in the 5-minute deck and others in the 30-minute deck.
  3. After 30 minutes of passes, the user begins to see cards from the 30-minute deck. When they pick them up, they again decide whether they got the card right or wrong. If the user got the card wrong it moves back into the 5-minute deck, but if they got it right, then it moves on to the 1-day deck.
    • All the cards on the 1-day deck will not be reviewed until tomorrow.
  4. On the next day of studying, once the cards graduate from the 1-day deck they will move on to the 3-day deck. After the 3-day deck, they go into the 5-day deck and so on.
  5. However, if at any point the user gets the card wrong, the card goes all the way back to the beginning into the 5-minute deck. Then, the user must restart the system back from the beginning for that card.


The reason the Leitner system works so well is because it uses Spaced Repetition. In the 1880s, a psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus ran a study on himself where he wanted to see how long it would take for him to forget 100 words. He realized that he recalled fewer words as more time passed between studying the words and being quizzed. He was then able to make an equation for what he would call the Forgetting Curve. He realized the rate at which he would forget the words was relatively consistent. Later, researchers studied the best ways to fight the forgetting curve. They found that the best way to remember information was to review it right before it would have been forgotten. The harder it is to remember the answer, the longer a person would retain that information after recalling it.


Ease Factor

Given this information, Anki uses the Leitner system with an additional algorithm called Ease Factor. As a student studies, different cards have different levels of difficulty. While one student may find all the cards from mitosis and meiosis easy, another student may think those cards are incredibly difficult. Therefore, the Anki algorithm changes the code of every card to reflect which cards are difficult for the user to remember compared to which cards are easy for the user to remember.

With a larger ease factor, easier cards will have a longer interval between reviews, this means that the user will not see those cards as often. Meanwhile, harder cards will have a lower ease factor meaning the user will see those cards more often.

The way Anki decides how easy or how difficult a card is will be based on how the user responds. In order to filter the cards into different decks, Anki will ask the user to evaluate their answer. There are generally four choices:

  • Again is selected when the user is unable to guess the correct answer
  • Hard is selected if the user happened to guess the correct answer
  • Good is selected if the user answers correctly
  • Easy is selected if the user knew the answer cold and could get it correct in their sleep


Selecting Again or Hard will lower the ease factor meaning the user will see that card more often. Selecting Good will not affect the ease factor. Finally, selecting Easy will raise the ease factor meaning the user will see that card less often.

The great thing about Anki is that it does all of the organizing for you. Your job is to simply answer the flashcards when they are due and state how difficult you thought the card was. Most of the time, you should answer Good. Please do not answer Again or Hard to see the card more often. Only select those choices if you got the card wrong, or if you happened to have guessed correctly.

By selecting your answer, Anki will take care of the ease factor and will properly space out the cards to make sure you see them right before you were about to forget them. Anki is set up so that you will recall around 85% of the cards correctly.


Learning Process 

It is incredibly important for you to learn the material before you use Anki because it will significantly improve your efficiency. If you do not properly learn the information before starting the flashcards, the ease factor for all of your cards will be very low. This means you will see the cards over and over again, which will be a huge waste of time. If on the other hand, you learn the cards properly before seeing them, you will be better at answering the cards correctly, which will therefore increase their ease factor meaning you can spend less time reviewing flashcards and more time learning new information or applying that information to practice question. In other words, make sure you first watch the respective MCAT for Victory video before going through the new cards.

I know Anki can be very intimidating, but it is a marvelous application that is worth learning. The algorithm is extraordinarily effective at helping you learn a large amount of information. There is a good reason why many people choose Anki to learn a new language and a lot of medical students are using it as their main study tool. Based on research, those who use Anki tend to score better on their board exams for medical school. So, it is worth taking the time to learn how to use the application properly now so that you come into medical school with a huge advantage. Not only that, but Anki will also help you get an incredible MCAT score. Just note that Anki is not magic. It is a tool that will make studying more efficient, but it takes a lot of work and perseverance to use it consistently.

Overall, the best way to study for the MCAT is by first learning the material by watching videos like those available in the MCAT for Victory course, then reviewing the material to make sure you understand everything properly, then memorizing that material through the use of flashcards like Anki, and finally answering questions to see how good you are at applying everything you learned.