Frequently Asked Questions
What exams does Ora cover?
USMLE Step 1 & 2, and all eight NBME shelf exams. We cover all 1,400+ topics on the Official USMLE Content Outline.
School-specific exam support is coming soon!
Is the content vetted by doctors?
Yes, Ora content is constantly reviewed by doctors.
Factual accuracy is our highest priority. Our content creation and validation pipeline includes:
- 22 physician-trained AI models
- 2.5 million PubMed articles and society guidelines
- 3 steps involving medical student feedback
- 10 steps involving manual quality-assurance by physicians
Is Ora better than UWorld? Any data?
A pilot study (n=45) of Step and Shelf outcomes among U.S. medical students shows:
- NBME Shelf Exams: 100% pass rate with Ora vs. 95.6% pass rate with UWorld alone
- USMLE Step 1 or 2: 100% pass rate with both Ora and UWorld
- 6.7-point student-specific Shelf score increase when adding or switching to Ora
- 1-point Shelf score increase for every 42 Ora QBank questions answered
Qualitative data also suggests that Ora questions are more similar to the real NBME than UWorld.
Important caveat: this data includes students who switched from UWorld to Ora, and students who supplemented UWorld with Ora. We're currently recruiting for a blinded RCT comparing Ora to UWorld for more robust validation.
Pros of UWorld
- More images
- 3 self-assessments
- Peer-comparison data
- Longer track record
Pros of Ora
- Higher exam scores and pass rate
- 50% more QBank questions
- Performance-based daily assignments
- Automatic flashcard assignment
- More comprehensive library
- Ian Torchia, M1 at Central Michigan University
How are the flashcards different from AnKing?
Ora flashcards are more factually accurate than the AnKing deck, because they're physician-vetted with the latest literature. We think they're a bit easier on the eye, too.
In Ora, flashcards are automatically assigned based on your QBank performance. No need to manually unsuspend content.
Ora flashcards also have dynamic difficulty. This means that flashcards morph into harder or easier variants to meet you where you're at.
Why is there only one study session per day? How is it built?
The hardest part of med school is knowing how and what to study. Ora handles that for you.
Based on your goal, exam date, and topic performance, Ora creates a personalized daily study session to make sure you know every topic by exam day.
Who is the team behind Ora?
Ora was founded by Ryan Phelps MD during neurosurgery residency at Stanford. In medical school at UCSF, he scored in the 100th percentile on the USMLE, but wanted to build a unified, data-driven platform to make studying less stressful for future med students.
He teamed up with his childhood best friends, Kevin Bastoul (an AI EdTech engineer) and Jacob Caccamo (a HealthTech UX designer) to build Ora.
Since founding, over 100 medical students and doctors have joined the team to help with content validation and product roadmap decisions.