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The volume is what it is. The retention is what you make it.
Med school throws impossible volumes at you. Brainback treats every case, every mechanism, every drug as a rep — with spaced recall built in and Socratic reasoning wrapped around it. Efficiency mode drafts everything non-clinical so your Learn mode focus stays on the clinical.
Add every M1 course as a Learn subject in orientation week. Trying to add it mid-semester never works.
An honest before-and-after — the specific gaps Brainback closes for a student in this stage of the arc.
Same problem. Same student. Two different definitions of “productive.”
The actual daily shape of a Brainback week for this stage. Adjust for your own load — the rhythm compounds even if the volume varies.
40 min recall AM. Learn session on Sunday's practice-question wrong answers.
Same. One explain-back on today's most confusing lecture.
Recall + one Learn session. Efficiency mode for the admin day always tries to eat.
Deep Learn session on a case-based topic. 45 min minimum.
Full recall pass. Rest evening. Do not study.
Practice question set. Every wrong answer → Learn session. Every hard concept → explain-back.
Brain score. Review. Plan the week. 30 cards.
None of these are automatic. Each is a signal that the product is working — or isn’t. If you don’t hit the week-4 milestone, revisit the plan.
Recall queue at ~150 cards. Brain score around 60. Curriculum starts to feel manageable.
Brain score in the 70s. Recall queue at ~400. Hours studied stops being the number you watch.
80+ Brain score. Recall queue caps ~800. Explain-backs almost always > 3.
Brain score 85+ across the four major systems. UWorld starts confirming this.
Every major system has been attempted, missed, carded and retrieved on schedule. No question class arrives cold.
Not a magic diet. A specific sequence of habits Brainback builds around you. The pace is designed for a student with a normal life outside coursework.
Add every course as a Learn subject. Import (soon) or manually create the Anki-equivalent decks — but do this once, in the first week.
Every lecture: one explain-back same day. Every practice question set: Learn mode on the wrong ones. Recall queue grows at ~40 cards/week.
If you're prepping for research or shadowing, use Efficiency mode heavily. Keep 10 recall cards/day going.
Same rhythm, higher volume. Recall queue caps around 800 cards; SM-2 keeps it manageable.
UWorld primary; Brainback secondary. Every wrong UWorld question triggers a Learn session. Recall queue caps at 1200 cards.
Nothing on the exam is a first encounter. Sleep. Retrieve. Trust the twelve months of compounding.
All seven product surfaces are always on. But this stage of the arc weights them differently. Below are the ones a med school student ends up leaning on hardest.
Case-based reasoning is what Step tests. Learn mode is where you train it.
SM-2 on cards generated from your specific mistakes, not a canonical deck.
The metric that catches 'I recognize this mechanism but can't teach it'.
Recall, calibration and explain-back by system — the calibration half is the one that catches you.
Personal statements, rec-letter requests, IRB drafts. Anything that isn't clinical.
Add these as Learn subjects and Brainback treats every problem inside them as academic — everything else goes to Efficiency mode. Every subject below has its own dedicated page with topics, common mistakes, and hint examples.
Recommended plan: Student — $9.99/mo (or annual $59/yr). Full curriculum + Step 1 dedicated. Annual saves the equivalent of 6 months. See all plans →
We say no to some prospects. Better to be honest here than to have you sign up and churn in week two.
Explain-back caught what my Anki reviews couldn't — that I recognized the mechanism but couldn't teach it.
For now, yes — for concepts that are pure recognition (anatomy landmarks, drug names). Move case-based and mechanism cards to Brainback so you're being asked to reason, not just recognize.
Yes, and better than for Step 1. Step 2 is more reasoning-heavy; Brainback's Socratic training was designed for exactly that shape of exam.
The same. Add the rotation subject as a Learn subject at the start; Learn mode on every UWorld shelf question; recall queue on the mechanism-heavy wrong answers.
Student $9.99/mo, or Student annual at $59/yr saves $60. There's no dedicated 'med school' tier — the Student plan is the right dose for the full curriculum.
We are building one and have no programs live yet. See /for-schools, or email hello@brainback.chat if you want to talk about being among the first.
The lines between stages are messy. If more of the day-in-the-life above sounds like someone else, follow the link.
→for med school
Student annual ($59/yr) for the M1–M2 arc. Renewed for dedicated.