7 Best MCAT Anki Decks [2022 Update] (Free & Fast Flashcards!) – willpeachMD (2024)

Performing well on the MCAT is no joke. There’s a lot of material covered and feeling comfortable with it all can take a serious amount of time.

One way of speeding that up is with flashcards. A staple of active recall and evidence-based learning techniques.

What’s even better however are pre-made Anki flashcards. Delivered and packaged by some of the highest-scoring MCAT’ers around…

The Best MCAT Anki Decks

We’ll only be looking at the most popular and most used decks to save you the extra time of reading. Anything too out of date, or not considered as “gold standard”, will not be covered in this article.

The 7 decks we’ll be looking at are:

• MCAT for Victory Anki Deck (best follow-along deck)
• Bouras’ MCAT Anki Deck (the most comprehensive deck)
• MileDown’s MCAT Deck (the most tried and tested)
• Ortho528’s MCAT Deck (best beginner-friendly)
• NextLevelColor’s MCAT Anki Deck (best UWorld MCAT deck)
• RebopBebop’s MCAT Deck (best Kaplan MCAT deck)
• Jacksparrow2048’s MCAT Deck (best alternative MCAT deck)

As a med student myself, and someone who uses Anki every day to reinforce all related med school content, I know what makes up a good premade deck.

MCAT for Victory Anki Deck

• Deck Type: Comprehensive MCAT preparatory course
• Cards:3800
• Year of Upload:2021
• Required Plugins: N/A
• Size: 147 Mb

MCAT for Victory Anki is revolutionizing MCAT preparatory courses by providing an all-in-one course for MCAT preppers that rivals Kaplan, Princeton, and all other well-established courses.

This deck, designed to run alongside their video lectures and explainers, is comprehensive enough to cover the core content of the MCAT without having you grind for hours learning unnecessary flashcards.

Here’s how this deck stacks up against some of the other popular options on this list.

Its use of the minimal information principle ensures only the core conceptual facts are placed onto single cards. This minimizes the hours you’d spend grinding with larger decks and allow for faster recall and memorization. It also ensures you’re not heavily dependent on context (something you won’t get a whole lot of in the actual exam) in applying key information that you see both “forwards and backward”.

Here’s how MCAT for Victory styles its cards…

Its heavy use of color and categorical tagging makes using the deck simple and fast. You’ll also see its high-quality images are an important feature too…

One of the best things about this deck is the way its neatly organized into Chemistry and Physics (1,100 cards), Biology and Biochemistry (1,600+ cards), and Psychology and Sociology (1,000 cards). There’s also a tag for key equations and constants too (170 cards).

Another cool thing about MCAT for Victory is their free 30 minute Anki course. Head on over to their main website to take that course yourself and figure out how to get the most out of the tool.

Download MCAT for Victory deck here

Bouras’ MCAT Anki Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:13,333
• Year of Upload:2020
• Required Plugins: Hierarchical Tags 2
• Size: 963 Mb

Let’s move to the next most comprehensive of all MCAT Anki Deck’s currently available; Bouras’ Deck.

This deck is huge and has absolutely everything you need. It’s cloze (fill-in-the-gap) format for most cards too, meaning you can zip through it a bit faster than decks that lean more on the basic card format.

It’s sources are listed as:

1. Psych/Social (P/S): 300 page Khan Academy resource (JackSparrow (more on this later) and Khan Academy)
2. Bio/Biochem (B/B): MileDown (more on this later) PDF, Memorangapp, JackSparrow
3. Chem/Phys (C/P): MileDown PDF and Physics Equations
4. Lab Techniques
5. ScienceSimplified’s YouTube channel
6. 1018 cards from u/PsychAnswer4U’s MCAT Behavioral Sciences Anki deck
7. 101 cards from Ortho528 MCAT Anki deck
8. 1112 cards from MileDown’s MCAT deck
9. u/Tiramiwho’s entire Anki deck

The deck is divided into subdecks so you can pull topics out as and when you need. Here’s how it all looks…

See Also

⚡️ Top 3 Anki MCAT Decks

Also Andrew Bouras’ message next to the download link is absolutely gold. I love it!

Download Bourat’s MCAT deck here

P.S. Make sure you do the survey too. It’ll help make this deck even better for future users. You’ll find a link to it when you go to download the deck.

MileDown’s MCAT Anki Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:2900
• Year of Upload:2018
• Required Plugins: Hierarchical Tags 2
• Size: 227 Mb

The cards are primarily in the cloze style format, linking out to Khan Academy or YouTube where possible.

This makes it incredibly useful to contextualize any flashcard and make sure you clarify each concept.

Another awesome feature is that this deck includes all the equations you’ll need for the MCAT too.

The only potential downside of this deck is age. MileDown took the MCAT in 2018 and made this deck during his gap year – so there may be a couple of things missing.

One Reddit user suggests the following tip to tackle these potential cons…

Add any missing information you see on UEarth (see UWorld) while doing it.

But users still rave about it nonetheless!

Download MileDown’s MCAT deck here

Ortho528’s MCAT Anki Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:4351
• Year of Upload:2017
• Required Plugins: Image Occlusion
• Size: 116 Mb

Put together by Ortho528, who scored a 132 on all of the content sections of the MCAT, this deck is perfect for students studying for the MCAT from scratch.

Evidenced by Ortho themselves, who was a career changer into med, at 4000 plus cards this is as comprehensive a resource you’ll get.

The cards a mix of cloze-format and images taken from prep resources…

The content is based on the following:

• Khan Academy (psych)
• Kaplan Biochem
• The Princeton Review series
• Examkrackers

So could be a good fit for anyone using these resources!

Ortho recommends using this deck alongside the practice tests in some of these prep materials, as well as the AAMC samples and section packs.

Download Ortho528’s MCAT deck here

NextLevelColor’s MCAT Anki Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:5950
• Year of Upload:2018
• Required Plugins: Image Occlusion, Hierarchical Tags
• Size: 3.71 Mb

NextLevelColor scored an impressive 519 with this deck, another based off of Kaplan’s 2018 content. Their total study time was about 2.5 months.

The main pro of this deck is organization. With the hierarchial tags plugin it works beautifully and you can lock and unlock topics as you go. It’s tagged by the relevant Kaplan chapter.

Cards are a mix between basic and clozed-deletion.

It’s worth checking out NextLevelColor’s write-up for the MCAT in the original thread for this deck. They talk about all the materials they used to score well including NextStep exams, the AAMC online practice content resources and UWorld.

And there’s an excellent breakdown on how best to use this deck too.

Download NextLevelColor’s MCAT deck here

RebopBebop’s MCAT Anki Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:4438
• Year of Upload:2016
• Required Plugins: N/A
• Size: 172 Mb

RebopBebop is the creator of another popular MCAT anki deck favorited by the r/Mcat student community. They scored 518 on the test (going in with a 3.8 GPA).

The deck is another based off the Kaplan MCAT book series and is widely used for its bio and biochem cards more specifically.

Again these are in a basic (back-to-front) style format.

One, the MCAT does not tell you how smart you are. I scored a 518 (97^th percentile) and I will be the first one to say that there are plenty of times where I am the dumbest person in the room. The MCAT only tests how well you prepared for the MCAT. I have seen plenty of posts online describing people who have 3.2 GPA’s but scored 525 on the MCAT. Anyone can do it, including me. Including you.

How’s that for inspiration?

Download RebopBebop’s MCAT deck here

Jacksparrow2048’s MCAT Deck

• Deck Type:Comprehensive MCAT
• Cards:6289
• Year of Upload:2020
• Required Plugins: N/A
• Size: 172 Mb

One of the more recent MCAT Anki decks out there on the web, Jacksparrow2048’s deck wasn’t actually intended for release so is a bit rough around the edges.

Here’s how it’s organized…

And here’s an example card…

Despite the rough organization the popularity of this deck is booming among the r/AnkiMCAT community.

A big reason for that is the deck’s inclusion of AAMC spoilers – as well as Jack’s own success, scoring 527 on the exam.

Cards are mainly of basic (back to front) format with a few cloze-style sprinkled in. Compared to the other decks on this list it’s a bit more slow moving but also more comprehensive.

The content of the deck borrows from:

1. Kaplan
2. Things he thought were missing from rebopbebop’s (everything except pysch) and cubene’s decks (for Behavioral Sciences)

Jack recommends you go through the books first before grinding these cards for maximum effect. And that you keep practice consistent.

3 months is the time he took to prepare. After maturing 60% of the deck and logging 300 hours.

Download Jacksparrow’s MCAT deck here

Additional Information On MCAT Anki Decks

Comparing Best MCAT Anki Decks

Related MCAT Flashcard Questions

How to Use MCAT Anki Decks

Download each of these decks for free at the links above. Once downloaded, head to Anki > file > import and then select the deck you wish to start studying from.

My general recommendation is to first suspend all cards (use the browser, select all and suspend option) and unlock relevant cards after you first study them.

Top Tips For Using Anki MCAT Flashcard Decks

• Visit the original threads of the creators who made the decks and read the comments for best practices, errata, and updates
• Consider adding your own notes and edits to cards. Coming up with your own mnemonics can be powerful!
• Stay consistent with the reviews
• Don’t rely on flashcards alone: do plenty of practice questions from various MCAT resources
• Persevere with Anki if you’re new to it: head to YouTube for simple explainers

Why Use An Anki MCAT Deck?

• Completely free to download and use
• Speed: save time creating your own
• Built to be used alongside popular resources (Kaplan, TBR, etc.)
• Community-based (share tips and hints on how best to get through decks etc.)

Is Anki Good for the MCAT?

Anki is one of the best study tools period. It has a built-in spaced repetition algorithm that ensures you use science-backed methods of active recall to help your long-term retention of key MCAT facts and concepts.

I go into the exact pros and cons in heavy detail in the following article…

Where to Find More Anki MCAT Decks

The absolute best place to go to find more MCAT decks – both for all and individual topics – is the r/AnkiMCAT/wiki page.

Here you’ll find all the most popular decks listed with basic information (card count, sample cards, resources used as the base, etc.) given for each.

You’ll also find the download links too.

As these have all been vetted by the community, with feedback given in real-time, you know they’re worth using.

For extra discussion on the success rate of these decks make sure you check out the popular MCAT discord channel too!

Final Thoughts: Best Anki Decks For MCAT

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Image Credit: @mari at Unsplash