7 Study Apps Help Med Students Prep for Exams

Struggling to stay on top of endless medical school information? There’s an app for that. With more medical students reinforcing their classroom lectures with virtual learning, students increasingly depend on digital study apps to help them absorb and retain vast amounts of complex medical information needed to pass licensing exams.

Medscape Medical News asked a few medical students about their online preparation for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 and Step 2 exams, among others. Students use a mix of digital learning aids, including study banks, animated cartoon videos, and flashcard databases.

Here are a few of the most popular study tools.

$319 for 30-day access; $439 for 90-day access with one self-assessment; $479 for 180-day access with two self-assessments; $559 annually with three self-assessments

UWorld is the go-to study app for students Medscape Medical News consulted. “It’s one resource I could not go without,” said Jeyrie Ramos Aponte, a third-year student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Biddeford, Maine.

The digital question bank offers thousands of practice questions to help students prepare for all the major medical school licensing exams. For Step 1 prep, for example, there are more than 3600 questions based on clinical scenarios at or above exam-level difficulty.

The questions on basic sciences such as biochemistry, genetics, and microbiology are paired with in-depth, visual explanations organized to track student performance by subject and body system. Students can create custom exams and flashcards from the practice questions. UWorld also records student progress.

Ramos Aponte said UWorld allows her to apply the information she learns clinically. The answer choices are tailored to common misconceptions, she added. “If I answer incorrectly, it goes into depth about why it’s not correct and when it might be. It helps you learn from your mistakes.” She also values the illustrations and labeled diagrams, tables, and charts, which help her visualize complex concepts.

$14.99 per month or $129 annually

AMBOSS, another question bank, compiles over 25,000 textbooks, medical journals, guidelines, and papers. The digital platform includes more than 10,000 radiographic images, videos, illustrations, and flowcharts along with interactive medical imaging and overlays. There are more than 2700 Step 1 and more than 3900 Step 2 and Shelf practice questions with explanations that link to the library. Over 1200 articles can also be used for in-depth studying on particular topics.

Maggie Hurley, a fifth-year student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Philadelphia, sees AMBOSS as a med student encyclopedia. She said she only used AMBOSS for a month or 2 before taking Step 2 “just to get more questions under my belt in a very short time period.”

Ramos Aponte said she has been using AMBOSS a lot this year during her clinicals — “when I’m in the hospital and I have a patient that might have a condition and have to look it up.” AMBOSS highlights the important clinical features and diagnostics, differential drugs, and complications, she said. “I might go to a patient’s room, and I have to refresh their meds fast.” She can consult AMBOSS for a quick summary.

$50 per month with a $300 initial payment for a 6-month plan; $33 per month with a $400 initial payment for a 12-month plan

Sketchy uses animated videos and visual learning cards to teach more than 1300 preclinical and clinical lessons. There are more than 3000 interactive review cards with visuals and reviews of symbols. In addition, more than 6300 quiz questions offer a mix of quick recall, scenario-based, and vignette-style questions.

Hurley said the cartoon videos have memory hooks, signals, symbols, and objects connected with medical concepts that helped her learn subjects, such as microbiology and pharmacology.

“It’s an interesting way to learn.” If you have to learn side effects of a drug class, the video creates a picture with a story. “It’s a good visual tool for visual learners and those who can learn that way,” Hurley told Medscape Medical News.

Dhruv Puri, a fourth-year student at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, likes Sketchy’s “mind palace” method of linking an image with a medical concept. “For example, if you have an image in your head, it will help you try to remember a medication that treats heart disease. It’s an extremely effective memory trigger.”

$89 per month or $249 annually for each product

Boards & Beyond offers on-demand video libraries and question banks to help students understand concepts, rather than just memorize them.

When preparing for the Step 1, Boards & Beyond supplements coursework in preclinical subjects. Rather than teaching buzzwords and mnemonics, it reinforces students’ knowledge of basic and clinical sciences with more than 440 videos and more than 2300 USMLE-style questions.

For the Step 2 and 3 clinicals, Boards & Beyond builds upon the preclinical foundation with lessons on clinical topics, including in-depth diagnosis and treatment discussions. Students can use more than 260 videos and more than 1300 USMLE-style questions. Preclinical and clinical products include progress tracking, custom quizzes, playlists, and slide PDFs.

Hurley likes how Boards & Beyond compiles lectures from first- and second-year courses, including immunology, biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, anatomy, pathology, and the body systems.

It can offer extra practice on lessons taught in a different way than in the classroom. “I liked that it solidified my preclinical knowledge.”

A free month trial, $100 annually

Pathoma focuses on pathology with 35 hours of online videos highlighting key concepts and highly tested material. The videos pair with a 218-page color textbook on the fundamentals of pathology, covering 19 chapters and 300 often-tested color images. The program offers USMLE Step 1 and medical course review that integrates key concepts from associated pathology disciplines.

Hurley found Pathoma helpful in studying pathology right before the board exam on the subject. She said that Pathoma helps students who want to review diseases and disease states one system at a time. For instance, studying the hematologic system might include leukemia, lymphoma, or anemias and the cardio system might include heart failures.

“I liked that it was lecture-based. It comes with a book you can annotate. You can find the chapter and make side notes. I like that it’s auditory and tactile. It helps me having a textbook as a resource.”

Puri appreciates that doctors created Pathoma. “The videos are all pathology high-yield need-to-know. It doesn’t take long to get through everything. If you know everything on Pathoma, you will have a strong base for USMLE [Step] 1.”

Free to download; $24.99 for the mobile app

Anki flashcards use spaced repetition to help reinforce understanding and increase long-term memory retention and recall. Students create personalized flashcards on diseases, medications, anatomy and physiology, and clinical medicine.

The app helps students memorize medical facts, including drug names, anatomical structures, medical abbreviations, disease criteria, and treatment protocols. Students can review differential diagnosis and clinical reasoning scenarios, patient presentations, common symptoms, diagnostic workups, and management strategies.

The platform allows students to review medical images such as physical exam findings, x-rays, CT scans, and histopathologic slides to identify relevant anatomical structures, and pathologies, or interpret and diagnose medical images.

As they review flashcards, students can indicate their level of retention. Anki schedules cards for review based on performance, focusing on weaknesses.

“It has an incredibly effective algorithm to target what you know and what you are missing,” Puri said.

Anki offers subject reviews, self-tests, and supplemental lecture and textbook materials. Students can also embed audio clips, images, videos, and links to online resources and scientific markup.

$62 for each self-examination

The NBME, which develops and manages medical school testing, offers practice questions and question banks. Their self-assessments help students see how they might score if they took the exam at that moment. In other words, they can evaluate their readiness and practice for the USMLE exams or NBME subject exams.

Puri believes it’s beneficial to “practice questions written by the people who write the exam.”

Students can familiarize themselves with NBME-style questions and assess whether they are prepared to take the test by learning their probability of passing it within a week.

The assessment shows a percentage of content mastered on the overall exam and the content areas. Diagnostic feedback highlights areas of students’ strength and weakness and answers help reinforce knowledge so students can study more effectively.

The assessments for Step 1 and Step 2 each include 200 multiple-choice questions. The standard-paced option mimics a live testing environment and contains four sections of 50 questions, with 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete each section. The self-paced option allows students up to 5 hours to complete each section.

The AMA also offers USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 practice questions and case studies to help students prepare for the tests. For more information, visit AMA’s medical student exam prep resources.

Roni Robbins is a freelance journalist and former editor for Medscape Medical News Business of Medicine. She’s also a freelance health reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her writing has appeared in WebMD, HuffPost, Forbes, New York Daily News, BioPharma Dive, MNN, Adweek, Healthline, and others. She’s also the author of the multi-award–winning Hands of Gold: One Man’s Quest to Find the Silver Lining in Misfortune.