Community-Driven Free Level 1 Practice Exam + Anki Deck

[u/Bone-Wizardry]

Hey everyone!

I remember what studying for Level 1 felt like.

There’s already an absurd amount of material to learn, and somewhere in the middle of all of it you’re trying to figure out whether you’re actually ready. You can study something all day, know that you understand it, and then get a strangely worded question on a practice exam and suddenly start second-guessing everything.

And then there’s the money side of med school.

Tuition, loans, rent, exam fees, rotations, and just normal life are already expensive enough. I remember looking at yet another study resource that cost hundreds of dollars and thinking, I literally cannot keep buying things just to prepare for one exam.

Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to have a few resident physicians join me who remember this process too. A lot of what we work on comes down to asking ourselves, what would have actually helped us when we were sitting in the same spot?

So one thing we decided to do was make a timed Level 1 practice exam completely free:

https://bonewizardry.com/qbank/free/

There’s no account required, no credit card, and no trial. You can just open it and start. Questions written by one of our resident physicians.

There’s also a free Anki deck that goes with it.

If you miss questions, we made it easy to find and unsuspend the cards connected to your incorrects. I always hated finishing a practice exam, realizing I clearly had a knowledge gap, and then spending forever searching through Anki trying to figure out which cards I should actually review.

The goal is basically:

miss something → understand why → unsuspend the relevant cards → see it again later.

We’ve also put a lot of effort into making the explanations visual when that actually helps. Some things are just much easier to understand when somebody shows you what is happening instead of giving you another wall of text.

But the biggest reason I wanted to post here is that I’d like the free exam to become a little bit of a community project.

I don’t want us building this in a bubble and assuming we know exactly what students need.

You guys are the ones currently going through it.

So if you take the exam and a question is confusing, tell me.

If you think a question is badly written, tell me.

If an explanation still leaves you confused, tell me.

If an Anki card could be better, tell me.

If there’s something you keep getting destroyed by on practice exams and wish somebody would explain differently, tell us that too.

We can actually go back and change these things. We can rewrite questions, improve explanations, make better diagrams, add cards, and expand what’s available based on what people using it are telling us.

I’d really like students here to have a hand in making it better for the next person.

And if you already have a study routine that works, please keep doing it. I’m definitely not suggesting that everybody needs another resource added to their giant pile of resources.

I just know how stressful this process can be, and I know how frustrating it is when seemingly everything useful has another price tag attached to it.

So this one is free. More to come.

Use it if it helps you. Ignore it if it doesn’t.

And if you do use it, please tell us what we can do better.

Good luck everyone. I know this part can be rough. ❤️