Both Sketchy and Picmonic are popular study tools for medical students. Both are similar in that both learning platforms use vivid imagery  as a way to help students have a way to remember difficult medical concepts, and both excel in the subject areas of microbiology and pharmacology. When it comes down to it however which would should medical students use? In this article I will be giving an objective comparison of the Sketchy and Picmonic Question banks

Sketchy Overview

Sketchy contains a playlist of videos and quizzes that cover the basic sciences and some of the clinical sciences. While the videos in sketchy are very good and provide very imaginative memory cues, their question bank still appears to be underdeveloped for the most part. For example, while they have all of the core science topics listed in the courses area in the create a Quiz section, many of the actual quizzes themselves say coming soon. This can be seen in the anatomy section below. The subjects that appear to have the most topics are Pathology and Microbiology.

How to use Sketchy Medical

You can use sketchy to self quiz yourself when it comes to memorizing details or small facts for certain topics. Sketchy has flexibility when it comes to self quizzing. For instance The quizzes for sketchy can be customized using the create your quiz function. This allows you to choose from any of the subjects and such as microbiology, and then choose which sub topics that you want to include.

Picmonic Overview

Picmonic contains a playlist of short colorful videos that use mnemonic devices to help aid in long term retention of the material. Every video is followed by short quizzes, and also includes a video transcript as well as additional information in section called community facts. Picmonic covers all of the basic sciences as well as all of the clinical sciences

How to use Picmonic

Picmonic allows you to not only take a daily quiz which consists of all of the questions which you have previously done, but you can also customize quizzes to include or exclude whichever sections or topics that you want. Additionally Picmonic also allows you to create your own Picmonic. Other ways to use Picmonic include just reading the video transcripts, or using it before your lectures to get your brain primed to learn the material.

Price comparison

Sketchy: Sketchy is definitely on the pricer side as it has plans of $24.00/month for 24 months, $33.00/month for 12 months, and $49.00/month for 6 months. These all have 1 time payments.

Picmonic:  Picmonic’s  subscription choices are definitely more affordable. THey offer plans of $7.99/month for life, 9.99/month for 48 months, $11.99.month for 24 months, $14.99/month annually, $19.99/month for 6 months, and $24.99/month for 1 month. Like sketchy all these plans require a 1 time payment but you can use affirm to actually split the payment in 4 segments. 

Number of videos

• Picmonic has 1600+ videos
• Sketchy contains 530+ videos

Number of quiz questions

• Picmonic has 16000 + multiple choice quiz questions
• Sketchy has 3600+ multiple choice quiz questions

Spaced Repetition

• Sketchy does not have a spaced repetition feature. The only spaced repeotion feature associated with the Sketchy platform is the Sketchy Anking Deck. 
• Picmonic on the other hand has a Daily Quiz feature which shows you certain questions from quizzes that youhave already taken.

Video Length

In general Picmonic videos are much shorter in length while Sketchy has longer videos. Personally I think having shorter videos that get right to the point is better because it eliminates all of the details and saves precious time by just making you focus on what is important

Tracking user data

Between Sketchy and Picmonic I would say that the Picmonic definitely more heavily tracks user data than Skecthy does. THis is evident by the spaced repetition feature but also by things such as the quiz history which shows you what subjects you did and what percentage correct you got every week.

The Picmonic question bank also has a Comprehensive stats section which gives you data on how youve performed on your quizzes by category over the entire time that you have had a Picmonic subscription

One of the things that I do like about Sketchy Question Bank is that it does a good job of keeping track of your quiz history, and it allows you to pick up right back from where you left off should you decide to take a break during a quiz session. This is a very good feature because you don’t have to keep starting over quizzes every time you close your browser window. It also makes it easy to retake a quiz if you want to review it again.

Question types

Sketchy’s question seem to be a bit longer than Picmonic’s, and require little more thought than the basic identification and recall of picmonic. This can be a good thing if your goal is to challenge yourself with longer questions, or if your goal is to improve your critical thinking/test taking skills. 

The downside to this is that because the questions can tend toward the longer side, this can make it a bit difficult to review

This is definitely not the case with Picmonic which has questions that are much shorter in length. The benefit of this is that it significantly shortens the study time, and makes it a lot easier to review because the short length significantly reduces reading time.

Clinical/USMLE step 2 questions

The Sketchy question bank contains videos for the more clinically related topics that show up on step 2 and shelf exams, however they are still in the process of adding more questions. Many of the topics say “coming soon.”

Picmonic on the other hand has a huge array of step 2/ clinical questions in their quiz. For instance if we compare the topics on pediatric pulmonology diseases we see that picmonic covers a significantly larger amount of topics for this section. In fact here is an (incomplete) list of the pediatric pulmonology topics covered by picmonic. 

• Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome
• Cystic fibrosis mechanisms
• Cystic fibrosis symptoms and complications
• Cystic fibrosis diagnosis and treatment
• Asthma
• Intermittent asthma
• Persistent mild asthma
• Persistent moderate asthma
• Persistent severe asthma

Compare this to the amount of pediatric pulmonary disease covered by sketchy

Although this is just one example. You can easily see that picmonic has a larger selection of clinical questions than sketchy just by free trialing both, or taking a quick visit to the respective websites.

Which one would I choose?

I would choose Picmonic personally however both are great additions. It comes down to price and I believe that Picmonic is of higher quality than sketchy and is at a much more affordable price. Additionally Piconic comes with a larger selection of questions and covers more topics