For medical students
Ellie for Medical Students
You have Anking. You have UWorld. You still need cards for your school's in-house exams and your own weak spots. Ellie is the fastest way to make them.
Every US medical student ends up in the same workflow: Anking as the base, UWorld for questions, First Aid and Pathoma for content. The gap is everything your specific school tests that Anking does not — the professor's obscure emphasis, the pathway you keep missing on the NBME, the in-house lecture that was never on Boards & Beyond. Making those cards by hand costs hours you should be spending on questions.
Ellie is not trying to replace Anking. It is the tool you open when a UWorld block goes badly, when the shelf exam is on Friday, or when your PBL group needs a shared deck for a case. Generate cards from any PDF, slide deck, or pasted text. Review in the same session or sync back to Anki via .apkg export.
What Ellie is built to do for med students
The core loop is: source → deck → daily review. Every part of that loop is optimized for the sources med students actually use.
- Convert First Aid or Pathoma chapters to cards in one paste
- Turn UWorld error-log explanations into cards after every block
- Image occlusion for Netter plates, histology slides, and gross specimens
- Cloze deletion for numeric ranges, cutoffs, and pathway steps
- Export decks back to .apkg for Anki users
- Share decks with your PBL group or study partners
How med students use Ellie across the four years
The workflow shifts by year but the tool stays the same.
- MS1/MS2 preclinical: block exam decks + in-house lecture cards on top of Anking
- Dedicated Step 1: UWorld error-log cards + biostats and biochem remediation
- MS3 clerkships: rotation-specific shelf decks (surgery, IM, OB, peds, psych, family)
- Dedicated Step 2 CK: next-best-step cards from UWorld and Amboss
- MS4 residency prep: specialty-specific reading (In-Training Exams for chosen field)
Why this beats making cards by hand
A single UWorld block explanation is 300–500 words. Turning that into 3–5 cards by hand takes 15 minutes. Ellie does the same in about a minute and you edit the output rather than starting blank. Across a dedicated block that is roughly 6 hours per week returned to you — enough for one extra UWorld block per day.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use Ellie instead of Anking?
No. Anking is years of community curation and thousands of image occlusions — irreplaceable. Ellie is what you use for the gap: in-house school content, UWorld error-log cards, and topics where Anking coverage is weak. Both apps in parallel is the common workflow.
Can I export back to Anki?
Yes. Ellie exports full decks as .apkg files. Cloze deletions and image occlusions survive the export. If you prefer to review everything in Anki, generate in Ellie and sync back nightly.
How do I share a deck with my PBL group?
Publish the deck to your public profile and share the link. Group members can subscribe. Updates you make propagate to everyone. Useful for weekly PBL cases where one person owns the deck and the rest review daily.
Does Ellie do image occlusion for histology and anatomy?
Yes. Upload a labeled image (Netter plate, histology slide), mark the labels to occlude, and Ellie generates the card set. Most-used image sources: Netter's Atlas, Robbins histology plates, embryology cross sections, and gross pathology specimens.
Is there a free tier?
Yes. The free tier includes deck generation with a monthly card limit that covers most preclinical block workflows. Dedicated Step 1 and Step 2 users typically upgrade for unlimited generation. Full pricing is on the sign-up page.
How does Ellie handle biostatistics for Step 1?
Biostats generates as cloze deletions for the formulas (sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, likelihood ratios) and Q/A for interpretation edge cases (changing disease prevalence). Combine with UWorld biostats questions for exam-frame practice.
Keep exploring
Made for exam season
Pass that exam.
Turn your notes into flashcards and quizzes in seconds. Study smarter — start free today.