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Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve shows retention dropping fast after you first learn something. Toggle between cramming and spaced review to see why a review at the right moment resets the curve instead of just adding more reading.
Review days: 1, 3, 7, 14, 30Encodr schedules those review points for you automatically, so retention never gets the chance to fall off the curve.
Get started freeHermann Ebbinghaus measured his own memory in the 1880s and found retention decays roughly exponentially after learning something new: steep in the first day, then leveling off. Cramming studies material once and lets it decay along that single curve. Spaced review instead reviews right as retention is fading - here, at day 1, 3, 7, 14, and 30 - and each review resets retention back up and flattens the decay that follows, because the memory is stronger each time it's successfully retrieved. That's the entire mechanism behind spaced repetition: not more total study time, just better-timed study time.
The idea is old, simple, and almost always explained badly.
Cramming isn't irrational. It optimises for the wrong exam.
The steepest part of the forgetting curve happens in the first day, not the first week.
Log your practice tests - score, breakdown, conditions, date - and get a weighted prediction of your real MCAT score.
Open tool →Calculate your cumulative GPA and BCPM science GPA on the AMCAS 4.0 scale.
Open tool →Enter your exam date, hours needed, and difficulty to see how much less time targeted review actually takes.
Open tool →Enter passages completed and minutes elapsed to see your current pace and whether you are on track to finish the CARS section on time.
Open tool →Enter a course, its credit hours, and how memorization-heavy it is to get a recommended daily and weekly study load.
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