Pixorize: A USMLE Resource Review

A blog post dedicated to explaining why Pixorize was one of my top five resources for USMLE Step 1. It was a long time coming, but I simply haven’t had the time to sit down and compose it until now. In this post I’ll talk about how I discovered Pixorize, what it is, and what I consider it one of my top five.

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In the beginning of my Step 1 studying, the team at Pixorize approached me to try out their mnemonic sketch videos, and I politely declined – I was using Sketchy and felt like I had my plate full of resources. But on a whim a few days later, I decided to watch one of their free videos on YouTube and I was HOOKED.

If you don’t believe me, I highly recommend you to give their free sample videos on YouTube a go. Here’s the link to their YouTube page, or you can go straight to their website at pixorize.com, make an account and watch a few of their videos for free. The first two videos in every category are free to watch, to see if you like them!

I messaged them back (probably sounding like a right idiot), saying that perhaps I would be interested in trying out their videos after all, and the team was so lovely. They set me up with a free trial account, and from that sunshiny day last summer, I was addicted to Pixorize.

Full disclosure – this post is sponsored by the team at Pixorize. This marks the FIRST sponsored blog post milestone on my blog, which is huge. I’d be nowhere without you, dear reader, so thank you so much for reading and supporting me, always! But I want you to know that these opinions are my own, and if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I’ve loved Pixorize for months. I talked about it in my blog post on the USMLE resources that I was using, linked here, and discussed it a lot in my stories.

What is Pixorize?

Enough gushing; let me start at the beginning. Pixorize is a resource that helped me learn biochemistry incredibly well. Memorizing the little details of biochem, from enzyme deficiencies to the different vitamins and their associated symptoms was all so confusing and the little distinguishing features kept getting mixed up in my head.

My experience with Sketchy Micro showed me that no memory hook is stronger than the visual ones. The power of Sketchy (as told by me) can be found here, but long story short: the mnemonic sketches that I’d watched and studied a year prior stuck with me so strongly that I was able to answer questions even years later.

Update (2021): There is no current discount code for Pixorize, unfortunately. The Pixorize team has been very generous to offer us this previously, so a huge thank you to them, and be sure to check their Instagram account for any potential discounts.

Biochemistry and what else?

Although it’s marketed as a biochemistry series, it’s actually got a ton of other topics that I found very helpful. I’ll share some of the examples of topics they cover here, but you can also see the full list on their website. These are the topics from biochemistry that helped me so much, and the ones that I would review in my final days before Step 1:

• glycogen storage diseases
• lysosomal storage diseases
• metabolic disorders
• vitamins
• chromosomal abnormalities

The non-biochem ones that I found especially helpful:

• neurological disorders (brain tumors)
• lung cancers
• toxicology videos
• mechanoreceptors (I struggled so much with those pre-Pixorize era)
• random things like insurance policies in the US

I was selective with what I watched – if I felt like I knew a disease really well, I wouldn’t watch that Pixorize. The vasculitides and autosomal dominant diseases were a good example of this; I felt like I’d learned them well enough from First Aid and thus I could save space for other mnemonic sketches. I didn’t want my brain to be overwhelmed with information and symbols, but over time I think I ended up watching about 2/3rds of their available videos (at the time).

The things I really like about Pixorize:

• their videos are short, some only a few minutes – sweet and to-the-point, no unnecessary jokes (for the most part)
• the pictures are uncluttered: they focus their images on JUST the symbols, and not much else for ‘decoration.’ It makes the picture much more clear and thus a stronger mnemonic.
• they summarized the mnemonic at the end by physically highlighting each element
• they have little dots on each picture, and if you hover over it, the feature+memory hook pops up. This made for a great way to review without rewatching the videos.
• their library is constantly expanding – since I finished Step 1, they added immunology and many other ‘misc.’ videos.
• the platform is pretty great – glitches, no lagging; you can speed up the videos and you can easily ctrl+f the appropriate videos in their main page.

How I Used Pixorize

A few words on how I utilized the videos: I picked a series/topic and watched them from beginning to end. I screenshotted (screenshat?) the images and annotated them on my iPad as I went along, because that was how I had done it for Sketchy Micro.

In retrospect, I don’t think that was the best approach. I did it for Sketchy Micro because that was what I used during my entire 3rd year of med school, but in the end it wasn’t so useful for Pixorize because I never went back and studied the annotated images as much as I had done for Sketchy. I also ended up with over 100 pages of pictures that weren’t organized that well, so it was difficult to find what I was looking for when I needed a specific disease/pathway.

Instead, as I discovered after I made all that effort to take notes: I could simply flip through the videos on the website and hover my cursor over the symbols. This was a quick, easy way to review the Pixorize images, and had I known/realized that earlier, I would never have made my own notes.

Is it just for Step 1 studies?

I would say no. While Step 1 does focus on very specific details, much of which Pixorize covers really well, biochemistry is the same no matter what test you’re preparing for. I think that it’s helpful to have an easy way to remember the vitamins, or the enzymes that are defective in each of the glycogen storage diseases, so my suggestion is that even if you’re not preparing for Step 1, check it out. You can try their free videos and see what you think.

Furthermore, maybe it’s just me, but I find it helpful for Step 2 as well. Step 2 CK doesn’t require the same knowledge of certain parts of medicine (i.e. the specific histo findings or enzyme deficiencies), but for some of the diseases it serves as a good refresher. So I’ll be reviewing some of the pertinent Pixorizes as I prepare for Step 2, and I’ve also convinced my boyfriend that he needs to watch it so I’ll be seeing a lot more of Pixorize in the coming weeks.

MCAT Prep

Besides their Step 1 biochemistry and immunology series, they also have a separate part of the website that focuses on the MCAT, the medical college admission test for the United States. I didn’t take the MCAT, so I have no personal experience with their MCAT material, but if it’s similar to the Step 1 content I can see it being really useful. They also have some free videos so you can check those out too!

Final words

Thank you for reading, I hope this was helpful. In the coming days, I’ll be hosting a giveaway of a free 1 year subscription of Pixorize on my Instagram; you can follow me on Instagram to get updates.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me (as always) or shoot me an email via the contact me part of the blog!