So from my understanding reaching level 60 doesn’t mean you’ve burned all the items.
Looking at my current projection after reaching level 60 it’s going to take me another 6 months to burn everything.
Just curious, how did you level 60 peeps proceed when reaching max level? Or you 60 wannabes (i’m one of them), how are you going to do?
Leechlessness is more worthy than being in Level 60. Burn count is more important than level. So, let’s slow down and Leech Squashing and take time to learn vocab more than English translation.
Also, unusual reading is a thing, but if someone have heard it somewhere or have read it in a text, it is de-leeched.
So, I studied more grammar for a better quality immersion… Immersion still continues.
Rather than 60, someone who actually reached All Burned is truly commendable.
Another easy measure for leeches would be, Guru count… how low is your Guru?
I’ll likely burn almost everything from level 1-50 before I even start the last 10 levels (another few months – shooting for after December JLPT).
Just like it was 2015 again.
Once I finish all the intermediate grammar and start reading lots more native material, I’ll start those last 10 levels – at that point I’ll have more chance of reinforcing those kanji by seeing them in the wild.
This is exactly why I reset back to 01. I could’ve reached level 60 by the end of this year at the rate I was going, but I didn’t feel like I knew the items as well as I should have. This time, I’m going to learn/study everything properly while ALSO studying grammar.
Basically I said, “Now I know Japanese”, then I left this site forever and immediately came across Kanji I didn’t know.
Oh, hey, I actually thought you HAD left. How ya doin’?
I did, but not everything on this site is burned so I come back every now and then and go, “I should do that.” Other than that I’m fine.
Yes, At the same time leveling up is just so satisfying 
Lol
Well I guess that’s unavoidable.
Just hit 60 a couple days ago, but I’ll still continue doing reviews daily as normal for the next 6 months-ish…or more if i continue to fail my burn reviews, as @polv says, leech squashing is important.
Other than that, since my review count should drop significantly in the next couple weeks, I’ll use the newly freed up time to start learning all the grammar than I’ve been neglecting for the last year.
When I get to the point where I feel like I’m reading pretty easily (I’m a far ways off, grammar and vocab wise) I’ll probably tackle one the Level 61-70 lists that others have created…
The burning is kind of the point of using an SRS program. That said, I’m not going to burn all the items here – I’ll be satisfied with most of the kanji burnt.
I will say, even words I never thought I’d use on this site, most of them I’ve come across at least once.
Actually, I continued to study more Kanji outside WaniKani which includes Joyo, N1 list, some common Jinmeiyo and other common Kanji outside those lists. It is around 20 levels.
Done in Anki, I don’t plan to burn those things, though. Initial recognition only.
At least, I don’t have to do 300+ reviews per day. (Currently around 100 per day.) So, I have a plenty of time to study grammar. Still, I am better at study vocab along with new Kanji; better than studying grammar. That’s why I continue to study new Kanji.
I might plan to resurrect lower level burns, for Vocab, to ensure that I understand the meaning of the vocab well, beyond English interpretation. You see, when I understand more grammar, the sense of vocab usage should be deeper.
Whether I should resurrect Kanji, I am not sure. But there is indeed a deeper meaning of Kanji, that is, Japanese meaning – Kanji meaning (not in English)
After some time, I wonder if I should get a 4-month interval for stuff outside WaniKani, that is, Burning. It can be hard to do in Anki. Maybe I should try Houhou 1.2 - Dictionary and SRS application for Windows?
So, I’ve been studying Japanese for like 8 years seriously (10 years in total but without academic instruction and study) but my kanji has always been terrible. I can’t remember how to write it. I can’t remember the exact pronunciation. I sometime can’t even remember the meanings of some pretty basic stuff. My grammar and vocabulary is decent, so now that I’ve started on here I feel like I’ve been going through pretty easily.
There are loads of times when I get a new radical or something and it occurs to be how super, ultra hard remembering any of the kanji on here would be if I didn’t know the grammar and vocabulary I do. Like, I’m pretty sure if I just started without anything else I would give up during level 1. I really commend anyone who has gotten far at all without more immersion because that must be crazy hard.
I started WaniKani almost completely on a whim december 2015, after having learned the kana a few weeks prior on a similar whim. The first maybe 10 levels I treated it almost like a game; a fun distraction that also happened to help me read funny Chinese symbols.
Then, after a while, I realized that maybe it’d be fun to actually learn the language itself, but I didn’t start seriously studying grammar until maybe level 15, and started trying to trudge through simple manga and NHK News Easy at like level…25-ish maybe. It was actually around here I actually started gaining an apprecation for Japanese media outside of games, believe it or not.
Basically, you can definitely get far without immersion if you have some sort of reason for trying to (a fun, gamified distraction in my case), but now I’m addicted to learning more Japanese, so I can consume more of this wonderful media they produce. I should register with Japanophiles Anonymous or something…
I would not put much stock in “immersion”, especially for a native English Speaker. I have a degree in Japanese, I live in Japan, I use Japanese at work, my wife is Japanese (she doesn’t speak English); but, I found that my Japanese test scores went down after I moved to Japan and relied only on “immersion” and not dedicated studying. Most people in daily life in Japan use a limited vocabulary, so while you get very good at basic conversations, you definitely are not learning more Kanji (and therefor vocabulary) by being “immersed”. Additionally, spoken Japanese (or whatever local Hogen is spoken) can very extremely from prefecture to prefecture. I learn more doing WaniKani than I do at work/home/day-to-day, even though I rarely use English anymore.
It would be interesting to come up with a formula to calculate a “true WK level” based on SRS item distribution, where for example lots of apprentice or guru would lower the level, and all burned = level 60.
Even after you burn everything, you will still regularly see kanji that you don’t know. At least I see a few everyday when I do reading, some are not even joyo or jinmeiyo. Learning never stops
Wow, how did you manage to get through 8 years of academic instruction and study without at least the basic set of kanji? Didn’t you have to write kanji on blackboards and tests? Were all the professors just okay with kana?
Yeah, I definitely feel I have a much better grasp on HOW to learn now. I had to learn how to learn before I did any actual learning. 
I can already read a lot better. I feel much better about my progress at this point.