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March 29, 2024, 01:02:41 am

Author Topic: Brief GAMSAT guide from person who achieved 99th percentile:  (Read 9114 times)  Share 

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alan3152

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What is the GAMSAT?

I have just received my GAMSAT score from ACER (The same institute that administers UMAT for medicine):

My score being 75, is within 99th percentile for the cohort in 2018. I’d like to share my experiences of successfully studying for this big exam especially because courses such as Biomedicine and Science is becoming more popular amongst high performing school leavers.

No doubt there are a lot of Yr 12 students who aspire to do medicine in an Undergraduate level and Graduate level (being the most competitive course in Australia). The Gamsat is essentially a much longer exam (6.5 hours) than the UMAT (3hrs for undergraduate). It includes humanities, essay writing and reasoning in maths and sciences. Most of the content is not taught in Yr 12 or University as the test is based heavily on reasoning (skills acquired outside of class, a bit like the GAT)

The key for success in the GAMSAT or UMAT is preparation, as many people attempt these exams over multiple trials. You compete against school leavers, other health professionals seeking career change (Nurses, paramedics, and at times transfers from dentistry, optometry) and post-graduate students from many research fields.

For section 1:

I recommend reading and critiquing literature and philosophy. Passages, poems and dialogues will be from well known thinkers. Examples include: Immanuel Kant, Locke, Marx and Nietzsche. Historical context knowledge is essential: renaissance enlightenment, scientific revolution, modernism, post-modernist period passages are often used these comprehension questions. There is no doubt a degree of humanities prior knowledge helps here! But being from a science background, this meant reading and catching up on the essential concepts in Western philosophy.

Section 2:

Testing written communication and effectiveness of ideas. Includes 2 essays written in timed conditions based on social and interpersonal themes. Broad ideas such as democracy, capitalism, aesthetics, and virtue ethics related quotes are often used as stems. To perform well, I recommend preparing and synthesising well referenced examples which allow you to politicize, moralize, philosophise in your discussion. E.g. essays on capitalism might need to address specifically the failure of Laissez faire, neoliberalism, or capitalist realism. The importance here is that the essay relevantly deals with a complex social, interpersonal problem. The goal here is to display the maturity and communication of any potential medical school applicant.

Section 3:

Requires 1st year biology, chemistry and year 12 physics knowledge. This is mainly concerned about application than rote learned details. To succeed, you need to be skilled with manipulating vast arrays of diagrams, concept maps and theoretical/experiment information. There are long passages to read (so speed reading required) but not everything is necessary to answer the question. Often the data involves extrapolating, inferring and synthesising from multiple graphs and textual information. This skill is developed in undergrad studies through pracs and reading scientific reports. For physics it often involves applying formulas in novel ways, so don’t expect to just memorise formulas for the exam.

Hopefully this provides an insightful intro into what the GAMSAT is testing. Please PM me for any more information.
2015 ATAR: 99.80
English: 47
Methods: 46
Specialist: 43
Further: 46
Chemistry: 41
Chinese SLA: 39
2016-2018 Biomedicine University of Melbourne (88WAM)

GAMSAT: 99th percentile (75 Overall)
Doctor of Medicine UOM 2019-2022
Offering Tutoring Online GAMSAT ALL SECTIONS, VCE ENGLISH (4 yrs experience)
Contact: [email protected]