Download the original Aidan MCAT Anki deck with 15,000+ cards. Learn what it covers, how it was designed, and whether the original deck is still worth using.
Original Aidan MCAT Anki Deck: Free Download, 15,282 Cards, Review, and How to Use It
The original Aidan MCAT Anki deck is one of the largest and most comprehensive free MCAT flashcard collections ever shared with the premed community. With approximately 15,282 cards covering Biology, Biochemistry, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology, it sits at the extreme end of the MCAT Anki spectrum. If MileDown is designed around efficiency and high-yield review, the original Aidan deck takes almost the opposite approach by trying to capture an enormous amount of information from content books, question banks, full-length exams, and other MCAT study resources.
I think the original deck deserves its own guide because it is now easy to confuse it with Aidan V2. Aidan V2 is a newer community revision that removes thousands of cards and makes other corrections, while this article is specifically about Aidan’s original approximately 15,000-card deck. Some students will prefer the newer revision, but others may still want the original collection because they want maximum detail, are already well into the original deck, or simply want access to the resource as Aidan originally created it.
I did not personally use the Aidan deck when I studied for my MCAT because I was not aware of it at the time, and I do not want to pretend otherwise. I primarily used MileDown and also spent some time with JackSparrow. MileDown worked well for me because the cards were manageable enough that I could consistently review them while still leaving plenty of time for practice questions, CARS, full-length exams, and detailed review of my mistakes. I appreciated the additional depth of JackSparrow, but the longer cards could become strenuous enough that I did not use it as heavily as I initially wanted.
That experience strongly shapes how I look at the original Aidan deck today. I understand why a 15,000-card deck is attractive when you are studying for an exam as broad as the MCAT, because it can be reassuring to feel as though almost every obscure fact or unfamiliar term has already been turned into a flashcard. At the same time, I learned during my own preparation that the number of facts you review matters much less than whether you can remember the important ones and apply them inside an unfamiliar MCAT passage.
The original Aidan deck can be an incredible content resource, but I would approach it as a large searchable library rather than a 15,282-item checklist that every student needs to finish. That distinction makes the deck much more useful and much less overwhelming.
Original Aidan MCAT Anki Deck Free Download
You can download the original Aidan MCAT Anki deck for free through the Google Drive file currently linked on AspiringMD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hY9mExgdKzaRV_2OXECeb7uHviARolmE/view?usp=sharing
A community mirror of the original deck is also available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CNe2hr8B-PJUh1uAnHL3bAUvVkU4-4hw/view?usp=sharing
The mirror was created after students noticed that earlier download links periodically became unavailable. The uploader explained that they exported the original deck so students would continue to have access, and discussions around that file also help explain why some students see around 8,900 notes even though the deck generates more than 15,000 individual cards.
Aidan later made an official Reddit post discussing the deck himself, its history, its limitations, and his plans for improving it. I strongly recommend reading that post if you are considering using the original deck because it provides much better context than relying only on third-party summaries:
Aidan’s original guide explaining how he recommends using the deck is available here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vN55lmEqaPIm0M87atZfdzojM2EbRm7c/view
There is also an official AnkiHub project associated with Aidan’s original deck:
https://app.ankihub.net/decks/d7f24e8e-6735-40eb-930f-ee654ccb27e8
Aidan has stated that he does not personally make money from the deck being available through AnkiHub and that the project was created so community members could help correct errors, rewrite cards, and identify material that may be unnecessarily low yield.
Looking for Aidan V2 Instead?
This article is intentionally focused on the original Aidan MCAT deck. If you are looking for the newer Aidan V2 deck, I have a completely separate guide covering its 12,016 cards, changes from the original, updated download, and study recommendations:
Keeping the two resources separate is useful because they are not identical decks. The original Aidan collection contains approximately 15,282 cards, while Aidan V2 is a later community revision that removes more than 3,000 cards and makes additional changes.
If you specifically want Aidan’s original work in its more exhaustive form, continue with this guide. If you are simply looking for the Aidan-style deck I would be more likely to recommend to someone starting from scratch today, I would compare both versions before making your decision.
What Is the Original Aidan MCAT Anki Deck?
The original Aidan deck is a comprehensive cloze-deletion Anki deck created by a student who was studying for the MCAT. Unlike a smaller resource that summarizes one review book, Aidan built the collection while working through a large number of MCAT resources and used the process of making the cards as a major part of his own studying.
Aidan later explained that he had not originally planned to publish the deck. He created it for himself, eventually shared it with a few friends, and it spread through the MCAT community from there. He also explained that he entered MCAT preparation without the same science background that some premed students have, which contributed to the extraordinary level of detail because he was learning some basic science concepts for the first time while creating cards.
This context helps explain why the deck feels so different from something like MileDown. Aidan was not primarily trying to create the shortest possible standardized deck for thousands of future students. He was creating the flashcards he personally needed while learning the material, which eventually produced a resource far larger than a typical MCAT deck.
Aidan reports scoring a 518 on the MCAT with scores of 130 or higher on the science sections, while his full-length average was approximately 520. He later entered medical school and, in his official update, said he was an M4 planning to pursue internal medicine.
I would not interpret that score as proof that completing the same cards will produce the same result. What I find more valuable is understanding how the deck was created, because it explains both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness.
How Many Cards Are in the Original Aidan MCAT Deck?
The original Aidan deck is generally described as containing approximately 15,282 individual cards, although the exact number you see immediately after importing it may look much smaller.
This has confused a lot of students because Anki distinguishes between notes and cards. A note is the underlying piece of information stored in Anki, while one cloze note can generate several individual cards when multiple portions of the sentence are hidden separately.
Students downloading the original Aidan deck have reported seeing roughly 8,800 to 8,900 notes even though those notes generate more than 15,000 cards. In one community discussion about the download, the uploader specifically explained that the approximately 8,891 notes produce around 15,000 cards because Aidan uses multiple cloze deletions within individual notes.
For example, imagine a note discussing an enzyme, its location, its function, and the pathway it participates in. Different cloze deletions could separately hide the enzyme name, its location, or an important relationship. Anki then creates separate review cards from the same underlying note.
This design is part of the reason the deck becomes so large. You are not necessarily dealing with 15,000 completely unrelated pieces of information, but you are still committing yourself to more than 15,000 individual review prompts if you activate everything.
Why Did Aidan Make So Many Cards?
This is one of the most interesting parts of the story because Aidan himself has now answered the question.
In his official update, he explained that creating the deck was his main way of studying for the MCAT and that he was learning some of the basic science information for the first time. He therefore created cards for material that a student with a stronger background might already know well enough to skip.
He also deliberately created cards that tested concepts from more than one direction. In some situations, he would make what were essentially reverse versions of the same information so he could not simply memorize the order in which a series of cloze deletions appeared. His intention was to force himself to actually think through the underlying relationship.
That approach has educational value, but Aidan later acknowledged that it generated a large amount of unnecessary duplication.
There was another unusual factor in his MCAT preparation. His testing plans were disrupted during the COVID era, which gave him substantially more time to study than he originally expected. He continued working through additional resources and adding cards, eventually incorporating a large amount of lower-yield information that he later said probably was not necessary for the average student.
I think knowing this makes the original deck much easier to understand. The 15,000-card total was not chosen because somebody carefully calculated that 15,000 flashcards are required to score well on the MCAT. It grew organically from one student’s unusually long and intensive study process.
What Resources Were Used to Make the Original Aidan Deck?
The original Aidan collection draws from a broad range of MCAT materials rather than a single textbook. The guide associated with the deck describes material originating from commonly used MCAT resources, including Kaplan review books, behavioral science notes, question banks, full-length examinations, and other practice resources.
That broad source base is one reason the deck became known for comprehensiveness. A fact that never appeared in one review book might have appeared in a question-bank explanation or another practice resource and then been turned into an Aidan card.
Aidan has since said that, in a perfect version of his preparation, he probably would have focused his card creation more heavily on Kaplan, UWorld, and the official AAMC resources instead of exhausting nearly every additional resource he could find. In his view, once a student has mastered those core resources, further improvement depends increasingly on test-taking strategy rather than continually adding more content.
I think that retrospective advice is especially valuable because it comes from the person who created the giant deck. Even Aidan does not argue that the average student now needs to reproduce his original 15,000-card workflow.
What Subjects Does the Original Aidan Deck Cover?
The original Aidan deck covers the major content-heavy areas of the MCAT, including Biology, Biochemistry, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology. It is therefore much broader than a section-specific resource such as Mr. Pankow, which focuses primarily on Psychology and Sociology.
The deck is not a replacement for CARS practice. Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills depends far more on reading comprehension, argument analysis, interpretation, timing, and learning how the AAMC constructs passages and answer choices than on memorizing thousands of isolated facts.
For the science subjects, however, Aidan can function as an enormous content bank. This is one area where I think the original deck remains useful even if you never plan to complete it in full.
If you miss a question about renal physiology, electrochemistry, amino acids, metabolism, optics, laboratory techniques, or another science topic, there is a good chance you can search the original Aidan collection and find several cards related to that concept. You can then activate those specific cards without adopting the rest of the deck.
How Is the Original Aidan Deck Organized?
Much of the original deck is organized around topics and Kaplan chapters, which can make it relatively easy to pair with the Kaplan MCAT books. Aidan himself has described the existing organization as being based largely around Kaplan chapters, although he has also discussed wanting to improve the tagging and organization over time.
This chapter-based structure is the way I would use the deck if I were starting it during content review. I would not import 15,000 cards and allow Anki to randomly decide what I studied first.
Instead, I would read or review one content area, understand the larger concepts, and then activate the related Aidan cards. That way, the flashcards reinforce a mental framework you have already developed rather than becoming thousands of disconnected facts.
If you are using Kaplan, I also have a guide to the free Kaplan MCAT Quicksheets here:
Those Quicksheets can provide a much shorter overview of the major concepts before or after you work through the more detailed Anki cards.
My Personal Experience With MCAT Anki
I want to separate my personal experience from my evaluation of Aidan because I think that is important when recommending study resources. I did not use Aidan during my MCAT preparation because I was not aware of the deck at the time, so I cannot tell you that completing Aidan personally helped me reach my score.
I primarily used the MileDown deck. One of the things I liked most about MileDown was that it was manageable enough to fit into the rest of my study schedule, which allowed me to stay consistent with Anki without feeling that every free hour had to be spent completing flashcards.
I also used some JackSparrow because I wanted more detail than MileDown offered in certain areas. I liked the depth of JackSparrow, but I found the longer cards much more strenuous to work through, and I probably would have used more of the deck if the individual reviews had been easier to complete.
That experience made me realize that there is always a tradeoff between depth and efficiency with MCAT Anki decks. A bigger deck may contain more information, but every extra card also creates another review that has to fit somewhere in your day.
Looking through the original Aidan deck today, I see the most extreme version of that tradeoff. The coverage is impressive, and I can understand why students who are anxious about missing content find it reassuring. However, I would only take advantage of that comprehensiveness if I could do so without sacrificing the practice questions and full-length review that ultimately taught me how to apply what I knew.
My complete MileDown guide is here:
My JackSparrow guide is here:
Who Should Use the Original Aidan Deck?
I think the original Aidan deck makes the most sense for a student who begins MCAT preparation early, wants extremely detailed coverage, enjoys cloze-deletion cards, and is comfortable customizing a premade resource rather than feeling obligated to complete it exactly as written.
It can be particularly useful if you have noticeable content gaps. Because Aidan created many cards while learning concepts himself, some sections start at a fairly fundamental level and then progress into much more detailed information.
The original deck may also appeal to students who become frustrated when a smaller deck does not contain a concept they encounter in UWorld or another practice resource. Instead of constantly building your own cards from scratch, you can search Aidan and often find relevant material already available.
I would also continue using the original deck if I were already several thousand cards into it and making good progress. The existence of newer decks does not automatically erase the value of mature cards and months of review history.
Where I would be more hesitant is a student who has only a few months remaining before the exam and is starting Anki from zero. At that point, the size of the original collection can become a liability if you approach it as something that must be completed.
Who Should Probably Choose a Smaller Deck?
If your MCAT is approaching quickly, your content foundation is already strong, or Anki reviews tend to overwhelm you, I would consider a smaller deck.
This is not the same thing as taking MCAT preparation less seriously. In many situations, choosing a smaller deck is a strategic decision because it protects time for practice questions, CARS, full-length exams, and reviewing mistakes.
The original Aidan creator has actually given advice that points in this same direction. When a student asked whether they should begin with AnKing or immediately switch to Aidan, Aidan recommended beginning with the smaller AnKing deck and supplementing with Aidan later if the additional depth was actually needed. He specifically emphasized efficiency and noted that AnKing provides a more concise collection of high-yield material.
I think this is one of the most important pieces of advice in the entire Aidan discussion because it comes directly from the creator of the 15,000-card deck. You do not need to assume the creator himself believes everyone should complete every card.
Original Aidan vs. MileDown
MileDown and the original Aidan deck represent very different philosophies.
MileDown contains roughly 2,900 cards and emphasizes efficient cloze-deletion review with images and linked explanations. It is much easier to incorporate into a traditional three or four month MCAT study schedule.
The original Aidan deck contains more than five times as many cards. That additional size gives you far more detail but also creates a dramatically larger review burden.
During my own preparation, I personally valued MileDown’s efficiency. I was able to consistently use the deck while preserving enough time for practice questions and full-length exams, and that balance was important to me.
If I already had a strong undergraduate science background and primarily wanted a reliable way to reinforce high-yield information, I would still lean toward MileDown.
If I had six or more months, substantial gaps in my foundation, and a strong preference for comprehensive cloze cards, I would be much more interested in Aidan.
You do not need to complete both decks in full. A very reasonable approach would be to use MileDown as your primary foundation and search Aidan selectively when practice questions expose information that MileDown does not cover deeply enough.
Original Aidan vs. JackSparrow
Aidan and JackSparrow both appeal to students looking for more comprehensive content review, but their card styles feel very different.
JackSparrow relies much more heavily on traditional question-and-answer cards where you may need to produce a larger explanation from memory. That format can be excellent for showing whether you really understand a concept, but it can also make individual cards take longer to answer.
Aidan relies heavily on cloze deletion, allowing a detailed concept to be divided into several smaller retrieval prompts. That can make each individual review faster even though the overall deck contains far more cards.
My own experience with JackSparrow is one reason I can appreciate the appeal of Aidan’s format. I liked having more detail than MileDown provided, but I found some JackSparrow cards long enough that repeatedly working through them became tiring.
If I wanted deep content review but strongly preferred shorter prompts, I would consider Aidan. If I preferred being forced to explain entire concepts in my own words and did not mind slower reviews, JackSparrow might fit me better.
Original Aidan vs. Mr. Pankow
Mr. Pankow is primarily a dedicated Psychology and Sociology resource, while Aidan covers essentially all of the content-heavy MCAT subjects.
If Psychology and Sociology were my only major content weakness, I would generally choose Mr. Pankow instead of activating the entire Aidan collection. Pankow provides extensive behavioral science review without bringing thousands of additional Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Physics cards into your schedule.
You can read my full Mr. Pankow guide here:
If you are already using the original Aidan deck for all of your science content and like its Psych/Soc style, however, there is no requirement to add another complete behavioral deck. Finishing overlapping Pankow and Aidan Psych/Soc collections may simply create unnecessary repetition.
Original Aidan vs. AnKing
The modern AnKing MCAT deck is much more concise and has the advantage of ongoing organization and community updates through AnkiHub.
Aidan offers substantially greater depth.
What makes this comparison especially interesting is that Aidan himself has recommended efficiency-first thinking. When asked about the two approaches, he suggested that beginning with AnKing and then adding Aidan material only when necessary was probably the better strategy for most students.
I agree with the logic behind that recommendation.
You can always expand a concise deck when you discover a content gap. It is much harder to recover several weeks of study time after accidentally creating an impossible backlog from a 15,000-card collection.
My guide to the latest AnKing MCAT deck is here:
Original Aidan vs. Aidan V2
Aidan V2 is a separate community revision built from the original Aidan collection. The newer version contains 12,016 cards rather than approximately 15,282 and removes thousands of cards while attempting to preserve the comprehensive style that made the original popular.
If I were beginning from zero today, I would compare the two carefully and would probably lean toward V2 for the average student because reducing several thousand cards is meaningful when your total MCAT preparation time is limited.
However, I would not automatically tell someone who has already completed thousands of original Aidan cards to abandon the deck and restart. Your accumulated review history has value, and repeatedly switching Anki decks can become its own form of procrastination.
There is also a legitimate reason some students may still prefer the original. If your priority is preserving the broadest version of Aidan’s original collection and you are comfortable personally deciding which cards are worth keeping, the original deck gives you access to that entire library.
My separate Aidan V2 guide is here:
How Long Does the Original Aidan Deck Take to Finish?
The size becomes much easier to understand when you translate 15,282 cards into a daily workload.
If you introduced 50 new cards every day, simply seeing all of the cards once would take more than ten months. At 75 new cards per day, it would take roughly seven months, while 100 new cards per day would still require approximately five months.
Those estimates are only the beginning because every new card creates future reviews. After several weeks, you are no longer completing only today’s new cards. You may be reviewing hundreds of cards from earlier study sessions while simultaneously adding another 50, 75, or 100 new ones.
This is exactly why I would not calculate your daily new-card setting simply by dividing 15,282 by the number of days remaining before your exam.
Students discussing the original deck have reported daily workloads reaching several hundred reviews, and other students have calculated that trying to finish the entire collection within a short timeline would require well over 100 new cards every day.
I would rather see you complete a smaller proportion of the deck thoughtfully while continuing to practice than race through every card and discover that you no longer have enough time to actually answer MCAT questions.
How Many New Aidan Cards Should You Do Per Day?
I would choose your daily number based on how much time your reviews actually require rather than aiming for one universal target.
If you have six months or longer, beginning around 30 to 50 new cards per day can give you time to observe what happens to your review burden before you increase the number. Someone studying full time with a particularly weak content foundation may eventually be comfortable with more, while a student balancing classes, research, clinical work, or a job may need substantially fewer.
After two or three weeks, look at your schedule honestly. If you are finishing Anki comfortably and still completing practice questions, you have room to increase the number.
If Anki is already consuming several hours per day and you keep postponing UWorld, CARS, or full-length review, the answer is probably not to add another hundred cards.
The deck should serve your MCAT preparation. Your MCAT preparation should not become a project devoted entirely to finishing the deck.
How I Would Use the Original Aidan Deck With Kaplan
If I were using Aidan today, I would pair it with structured content review instead of trying to learn every concept directly from isolated cards.
For example, I might read Kaplan Biology Chapter 1, make sure I understood the major concepts, and then activate the corresponding Aidan cards. I would continue the scheduled reviews while moving through later chapters rather than waiting until I had finished every Kaplan book before beginning Anki.
This gives each resource a specific job. Kaplan provides the organized explanation and larger conceptual framework, while Aidan reinforces the facts and relationships that are easy to forget.
Once I had a basic understanding of the topic, I would begin practice questions. The questions would tell me whether I could use the information rather than simply recognize familiar Aidan wording.
That sequence is much more important than obsessing over whether you have matured every card in a chapter.
How I Would Use the Original Aidan Deck for Psych/Soc
Aidan’s Psychology and Sociology material is extensive and draws on detailed behavioral science resources.
During my own MCAT preparation, I approached Psych/Soc somewhat differently. I initially used the detailed Khan Academy 300-page document for content review and completed related MileDown cards to reinforce the terms. Closer to my MCAT, I returned to the condensed 86-page document as a quicker refresher.
I have both of those documents and a detailed comparison here:
If I were using original Aidan for Psych/Soc, I would probably avoid also completing every card in another large behavioral deck. Instead, I would use Aidan as my main active-recall resource, consult the Khan Academy documents when I needed more explanation, and create personal cards only when practice exposed something the premade deck did not address well.
The important thing is to avoid duplicating the same information across three or four massive resources simply because each one has a good reputation.
Should You Complete Every Original Aidan Card?
I would not.
Even the creator has now said that the deck contains too many cards for the average student, unnecessary duplicates, and a substantial amount of lower-yield information accumulated during his unusually long preparation period.
That is essentially permission from the person who created the deck to stop treating every card as sacred.
If two cards test the same relationship in almost exactly the same way and one consistently wastes time without helping you learn anything new, suspend one.
If you encounter an extremely basic card covering information you mastered years ago and can consistently apply correctly, you do not necessarily need months of repeated reviews.
If a detailed card addresses a concept you continually miss, keep it even if somebody online labels the topic “low yield.”
I would make your practice performance part of the decision. The best version of the original Aidan deck is probably not the untouched version you initially download. It is the personalized collection you create after suspending unnecessary material and emphasizing the information that actually helps you.
What About Errors in the Original Aidan Deck?
Aidan himself has acknowledged that the original deck contains errors and has apologized for them. He later placed the deck on AnkiHub partly so community members could suggest corrections and help improve the resource.
This should not scare you away from community Anki decks, but it should remind you that no premade deck should become your unquestioned authority.
If an Aidan card conflicts with an official AAMC explanation, a reliable textbook, UWorld, or another well-supported source, verify the information before memorizing it.
You should do the same thing with MileDown, JackSparrow, AnKing, Pankow, Aidan V2, or any other user-generated resource.
A flashcard is a memory tool. It is not automatically a primary scientific source simply because you have reviewed it 20 times.
Use Aidan as a Searchable Library After Practice Questions
This may actually be my favorite way to use the original deck today.
Suppose you miss a UWorld question because you misunderstood the relationship between glomerular filtration and hydrostatic pressure. Instead of creating five new cards immediately, search Aidan first.
You may discover that several detailed cards already exist for the exact topic.
Activate the useful ones, add a short personal note explaining the mistake you made, and continue.
If no useful card exists, create your own.
This allows you to take advantage of Aidan’s extraordinary comprehensiveness without committing yourself to reviewing every card that has nothing to do with your weaknesses.
I think this approach becomes increasingly useful later in your MCAT preparation because your practice results should gradually become the main driver of what you review.
Do Not Let Original Aidan Replace Practice Questions
This is the biggest risk I see with any deck this large.
Anki can make you incredibly good at remembering amino acid properties, equations, enzyme names, psychological terms, metabolism pathways, laboratory techniques, and thousands of other useful facts.
The MCAT still does not present those facts to you as a stack of flashcards.
You will encounter unfamiliar experiments, graphs, figures, passages, calculations, and answer choices designed to make several options sound reasonable.
You need to practice that skill separately.
During my own preparation, this balance was one of the reasons I liked having a manageable Anki deck. I wanted flashcards to reinforce my content without preventing me from spending enough time on questions and full-length exams.
I would apply that lesson even more strongly to original Aidan.
If you reach a point where you are consistently choosing between finishing your 600 Anki reviews and reviewing yesterday’s full-length exam, something in your Anki workload probably needs to change.
How to Import the Original Aidan Deck Into Anki
Download the .apkg file using the original Aidan download link near the beginning of this guide and open it with the official Anki desktop application. Allow the import to finish completely because a file this large can take longer than a small personal deck.
After importing, do not be alarmed if the number of notes displayed is much lower than 15,282. The original deck uses cloze notes that can generate multiple separate cards, which is why roughly 8,900 notes can become more than 15,000 individual review cards.
Before learning anything, open the browser and explore how the deck is organized. I would then suspend the sections I was not currently studying so I could intentionally introduce material rather than having thousands of cards become available simultaneously.
If you are new to Anki, I have a separate beginner guide here:
Learning how suspending, tags, cloze deletions, daily reviews, and scheduling work before activating a 15,000-card deck can save you a lot of frustration later.
What I Would Do If I Were Using Original Aidan Today
If I decided to use the original Aidan deck for a new MCAT attempt, I would first give myself enough time. I would be much more comfortable beginning it six or more months before my exam than trying to force the entire collection into a traditional eight-week content review.
I would use Kaplan or another structured resource to learn each topic, then activate only the corresponding Aidan cards. I would suspend obviously redundant material as I encountered it rather than allowing duplicated cards to accumulate forever.
I would also begin practice questions early. If UWorld showed me that I understood a topic well, I would feel comfortable being more selective with the corresponding Aidan cards.
When questions exposed a genuine content gap, I would search Aidan and activate cards specifically addressing that weakness.
As my exam approached, I would gradually reduce new premade cards and shift more time toward AAMC material, full-length exams, CARS, and reviewing mistakes.
That approach would let me benefit from the original deck’s greatest strength without allowing its greatest weakness to control my entire schedule.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Original Aidan MCAT Deck
How many cards are in the original Aidan deck?
The original Aidan deck contains approximately 15,282 individual cards, although students may see roughly 8,900 notes after importing it because cloze notes can generate several cards.
Is the original Aidan deck free?
Yes. The original community deck has been distributed freely, and Aidan has stated that he does not make money from the AnkiHub version.
Who created the original Aidan deck?
The original deck was created by Reddit user u/aidan_MCAT while he was preparing for his own MCAT. He later explained publicly that making the cards was one of his primary study methods.
What did the Aidan creator score on the MCAT?
Aidan reports scoring a 518 overall, with scores of at least 130 in the science sections and a full-length average around 520.
Is original Aidan only a Psych/Soc deck?
No. The original deck covers Biology, Biochemistry, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology.
Is the original Aidan deck organized by Kaplan?
Much of the deck is organized around Kaplan chapters and topics. Aidan has also discussed improving the organization and tagging through later community work.
Does original Aidan contain errors?
Yes. Aidan himself has acknowledged that the original deck contains some errors, which is one reason community correction efforts were started.
Does original Aidan contain low-yield cards?
Yes. Aidan has explained that he added a large amount of lower-yield material because his test date was delayed and he continued working through additional resources.
Do I need to complete all 15,282 cards?
No. I think most students should customize the deck and suspend cards that are unnecessarily repetitive or do not justify their review time.
Is the original Aidan deck better than MileDown?
Aidan is dramatically more comprehensive, while MileDown is much easier to complete and was the deck I personally used most during my own preparation. I would choose based on your timeline, content foundation, and how large a role you want Anki to play in your schedule.
Is original Aidan better than JackSparrow?
They emphasize different card styles. Aidan relies much more heavily on cloze deletion, while JackSparrow uses more traditional recall cards that can require longer explanations.
Should I use original Aidan or Aidan V2?
If you are starting from scratch, I would compare both and would probably lean toward V2 for many students because it retains extensive coverage while reducing the total card count. If you specifically want Aidan’s original comprehensive collection or are already far into it, the original deck remains useful.
My Aidan V2 guide is here:
Can I finish original Aidan in three months?
Finishing all 15,282 cards in three months would require an extremely aggressive number of daily new cards before even accounting for accumulated reviews. I would use selected sections or choose a smaller primary deck rather than allowing Anki to displace most of your question-bank and full-length time.
Can I use original Aidan with UWorld?
Yes, and I think combining the two makes much more sense than relying on the deck alone. Use Aidan to retain content and UWorld to determine whether you can actually apply that content.
Should I make my own cards if I use Aidan?
Yes, but I would search Aidan first because such a comprehensive deck may already contain what you need. Create personal cards when the existing material does not address the exact mistake or relationship you struggled with.
Final Thoughts: Should You Still Use the Original Aidan MCAT Deck?
I think the original Aidan deck still deserves to be available because it is one of the most comprehensive MCAT Anki resources ever created, and understanding how it was made gives you a much better appreciation for both its strengths and its limitations.
What makes this deck especially interesting is that we now have direct hindsight from Aidan himself. He has explained that creating the cards was a major part of how he learned the material, that his unusually long preparation led him to add a large amount of lower-yield information, that reverse and duplicate cards inflated the total, and that there are errors he would like to correct. He has even recommended that many students begin with a smaller deck and use Aidan selectively when they need more depth.
I actually find that more reassuring than if the creator insisted every card was essential.
It means you can use the original Aidan deck for what it does exceptionally well without feeling guilty about ignoring what does not help you.
I did not personally have Aidan available in my own MCAT study system. I used MileDown much more heavily because its smaller size allowed me to consistently complete Anki while still preserving time for practice, and I used some JackSparrow when I wanted additional detail. Looking back at the original Aidan collection now, I can see why I would have appreciated having it as a reference when a smaller deck did not explain something thoroughly enough.
If I were using it today, that is probably how I would approach it. I would not make “finish all 15,282 cards” my goal. I would make the goal understanding the MCAT content, remembering what I needed to remember, and answering more questions correctly.
For a student with a long timeline, a weaker content foundation, and a preference for detailed cloze cards, the original Aidan deck can still be an excellent primary resource. For a student with less time, I think it can be even more valuable as a searchable supplement that you pull from whenever practice exposes a weakness.
Either way, do not let the size intimidate you into thinking you have to complete everything. Aidan built the original deck around his own unusual preparation experience, and your study plan should be built around yours.
You can download the original Aidan deck here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hY9mExgdKzaRV_2OXECeb7uHviARolmE/view?usp=sharing
You can read Aidan’s official post here:
You can read Aidan’s original usage guide here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vN55lmEqaPIm0M87atZfdzojM2EbRm7c/view
If you want the newer Aidan V2 instead, my separate guide is here: