“I have taken the GAMSAT numerous times, most recently on the 24th March 2012, and I thought I could share my thoughts and feelings about it. I know that some people have read my previous posts about GAMSAT and liked them” – Ben

Outside the Canterbury Racetrack venue for the Sydney GAMSAT 2012. Lot's of nervous looking people.

What is the GAMSAT?

The GAMSAT is the Graduate Australia Medical School Admission Test. It is basically a 5.5/6 hour exam that is the prerequisite for applying to Medical Schools in Australia. It is a tough exam that consists of:

• Section 1: 75 MCQ’s (100 minutes), based on “Humanities and Reasoning”. It’s a complicated English comprehension exam.
• Section 2: 2 Essays (60 minutes)
• Section 3: 110 MCQ’s (170 minutes), based on Physical and Biological Sciences.

How do you study for the GAMSAT?

This is a tough thing to answer because I’m not sure what the best way is, but I can tell you what I did. I have a background in Medical Science, so my science knowledge is pretty good. I know I have some flaws in Chemistry and Physics, so I focused on revising those areas first. I summarised some basic Chemistry text books, covering basic theories and concepts. I also revised the more complicated topics (which I’ll discuss later). There isn’t a good way to study for Section 1 because it is based on your understanding and comprehension of the English language. I would suggest making sure you read a bit and build up your vocabulary. I found it EXTREMELY HELPFUL to purchase and do the practise materials provided by ACER (you can order these when you book/pay for the GAMSAT exam online). Doing those practise questions/exams was a great way to get into the habit of reading their passages and answering the MCQ’s. The essay writing again is hard to study for, I just suggest practise writing as many essays based on quotes as possible. I’ll cover the various sections in more detail.

Tips for during the exam:

• Time Management – I’m listing this first because this is the most important point to the exam. Make sure you know how much time you have, how much time you have for each question, and be aware when you are getting stuck with a question and wasting too much time on it. The last thing you want to do is run out of time and randomly mark out answers on the MCQ sheet without reading the questions!
• Bring spare pens & pencils – Have enough writing equipment to do the job. The most important things are the correct pencils and an eraser (as most of the exam is MCQ format and those computer sheets require pencil ONLY). The blue/black pens are used in Section 2 for the essay writing.
• Skip tough questions and come back to them at the end – this is a form of Time Management, make sure you realise when a question is going to take time to answer or figure out and skip it. You can’t do it for every question, but you’ll know which ones I mean (see ‘How I Prioritised Section 3/Science’).
• Go to the toilet before or during the exam NOT after – Before is the best, as you aren’t wasting any exam time. During is preferable to afterwards because there is always a mad rush to the toilet once your allowed to leave. Also, if you have to go, go quickly – they won’t allow you to use the toilet in the last 5-10 minutes of the exam.
• Bring food/snacks – Don’t rely on there being food anywhere near your exam venue.
• Leave home early and get to the venue with lots of time to spare – regardless of your mode of transport, you want to make sure you are there early and not running late or stressing about finding a parking spot.

Section 1: Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences (aka “The English Section”).

Section 1 is actually my favourite part of the the GAMSAT because I always feel confident that I’ll do ok/well without too much hassle. I have the benefit of having English as my first language and I love to read and thus have a fairly good vocabulary. I did various practise exams and questions in the week beforehand and was getting 60-70% (which is pretty good for GAMSAT standards). I actually ran out of time with this section because I got bogged down on some fairly complicated passages. I got stuck on the second last passage and missed the last passage & set of questions. This is why I will stress Time Management and give you some pointers about it. I was really angry at the fact that I had to guess the last 5 questions – doubly so because the last passage was about American Civil Rights and I would have breezed through that reading compared to the one I got stuck with.

Section 2: Essays

The essays are always a pain because you are forced to come up with a piece of writing in a very short amount of time. The way I was taught to do them was like this:

• During the reading time look at the quotes and pick which one(s) you will use and which ones you won’t.
• Spend 5 minutes coming up with a plan. Mind map, brain storm, think about what the theme and point of the authors are and come up with what you want to write about.
• Then spend the next 25 minutes writing. Try to make sure you are making sense, giving examples, and expressing yourself well.

Section 3: Reasoning in Physical and Biological Sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics).

Section 3 is the major part of the exam. It’s weighed the most and is the most complicated. Nothing like having 3 hours of straight science questions to make sure you feel brain-dead at the end. During my first attempt of the GAMSAT I made the cocky mistake of thinking that my Science degree would mean I wouldn’t need to study Science at all. Wrong. You will need to revise various topics and make sure you have the basics of them down. I’ll list the topics that I can remember from the 2012 exam as best as I can:

Biology:

• Genetics / Alleles - recessive/dominant genes etc
• Body temperature – usually reading information from a graph
• Pharmacology – drug actions, antagonistic drugs.

Physics:

• Force / Momentum
• Radiation
• Light – Refraction, lens, focus points
• Gas – Gas laws, concentrations & calculations

Chemistry:

• Organic chemistry - stereo-isomers, products, reactions, benzene rings etc.
• Physical chemistry – moles, concentrations, redox reactions etc
• pH

…Sorry, I can’t really remember more than that, but as you can see, they are the major themes & topics in each form of Science.

How I Prioritised Section 3 / Science:

So you should have gathered by now that one of the key parts of the exam is making sure you use your time wisely. Since I had problems in the first two sections during my 2012 exam I decided to have a good plan when it came to doing the last section. What I did was devise a 3-asterisk system for marking down the difficulty of questions:

• 1 asterisk - I can answer this question almost immediately, it doesn’t look that complete – I didn’t even bother to mark down these on the paper, just do them and more on to the next one.
• 2 asterisks – I can answer this question, but it will take me some time to work out the answer. These were typically Physics questions for me, which required a bit of lateral thinking and math.
• 3 asterisks – I can’t or probably won’t be able to answer this question. These are ones that I know I’ll have problems with, like Organic Chemistry or overtly complicated Genetics questions. I had about 15 out of 110 questions marked like this.

So by marking down the questions like this, I was able to complete the 1 asterisk questions ASAP then move onto the 2 asterisk questions (which required more time) and then finally try and attempt the 3 asterisk questions that I had no idea about. This system worked well with ‘How I do MCQ exams’ (next).

How I do MCQ exams:

My way of doing MCQ exams might not be the best way, but I find it to be effective and less likely to cause confusion mid-exam. Basically what I do is:

• Circle the correct answer on the exam paper itself
• Cross out any obviously wrong choices to give yourself better odds at selecting the correct one.
• If I can’t decide which answer is right out of two, mark the two choices with a dash and put a big ? next to the question number.
• Don’t fill out the actual answer sheet until near the end of the exam.

WARNING: With the last point, you need to make sure you leave yourself enough time to fill in your answer sheet or you run a serious risk of completly screwing up your exam. I left 15 minutes for Section 3 (110 questions) and that was sufficient.

Post-Exam:

Drink. Celebrate. Sleep. Do whatever you need to do to unwind. I forbid myself from playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on the PS3 for the month before the exam, so I rewarded myself with some gaming. Don’t stress about the exam once it’s over.. it’s done, you can only wait for the result now.

Hope this has been interesting.