My Absolute Go-To GAMSAT Study Tips
6 Study Tips From Our Head of GAMSAT
How we’ve helped hundreds of GAMSAT students improve
Every year, I come across a range of students whose backgrounds differ immensely, all hoping to excel at the GAMSAT and make it into medical school. Some of them have never sat= the test before, some have, and some have sat it many times…
Many of them actually ask me for advice about how to ACE this mammoth exam. And my golden response is… I don’t know.
The reason I don’t know is because the GAMSAT is highly personal. What a lot of people won’t tell you about the exam is that it is designed to pick you apart — how you think, reason, and respond — and that a lot of this cannot be taught. What helped me get a score in the 99th percentile will not necessarily get you there, too. What I do know, however, is that how well you do on the GAMSAT has a lot to do with your approach.
Hence, a great place to begin is with some GAMSAT study tips.
Here are 6 of my tips to help you formulate an efficient, effective and meaningful approach that won’t compromise on your social life, part-time job, or university commitments.
1. Throw Away The Textbooks
A lot of the GAMSAT, particularly section 3, seems to rely on a wealth of knowledge that you just don’t have.
This is one of the major discouragement pitfalls of the exam — that you’ll never be able to accumulate enough knowledge to pass.
The GAMSAT is designed as a reasoning-based exam. It does not rely upon your ability to recall formulas or the finicky details of biological cycles…
TIP 1: Forget about those textbooks and trust in the foundational knowledge you have.
Your time will be far better spent going over reasoning-based questions than reading through old chemistry notes. If you’re really stressed about a particular topic, a crash course YouTube video should do the trick.
2. Don’t Waste Your Money
It is unfortunate, but true, that GAMSAT tuition and resource provision has become a lucrative market.
TIP 2: Be wise with how you spend your pennies and search for free resources, share content with friends, and find economic ways to prepare.
How much you invest in your GAMSAT preparation is a personal decision which should be carefully considered. Although, there is nothing wrong with signing up for a relatively expensive course which may fulfil your needs and complement your learning style well.
I can honestly relate to students who tell to me how expensive GAMSAT programs and courses are these days. Ranging from $2000 to $4000...!! WTAF!? 😱 I was completely taken back…confused and outraged at how these money-hungry companies can even begin to charge broke students. Even when it was only about $800 for me back then, I knew for a fact I wasn’t able to afford those courses studying as a full time student and working a part-time job.
However, don’t allow money-hungry companies scare you into signing up after hearing their ultimatum of “pay us thousands of dollars or you will inevitably fail and never become a doctor”. This is simply not the case, and plenty of people have excelled at the GAMSAT without emptying their pockets of every last cent (including me!).
This is why after getting into Medicine, I made it my goal to provide affordable and accessible GAMSAT Tuition Classes to students who were just like me 4 years ago.
Now leading Halad to Health’s GAMSAT Services, I’m so damn happy we have incredible tutors who can teach hundreds of students for as affordable as $10/hr. Not only that, but *all proceeds go towards giving thousands of students in rural Philippines access to proper health education.
We believe that all students deserve the equal opportunity to access economical and quality education. Truly.
-> Check out our GAMSAT Extensive Courses for students sitting the 28 May ONLINE GAMSAT, *where all of our proceeds raised will be temporarily redirected to supporting Frontline Healthcare Workers fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
-> Register for our Free Webinar for students who want to get the best preparation for the ONLINE GAMSAT.
3. If You Fail To Plan, Plan To Fail
I am a big believer in planning. And not for the sake of having a pretty Instagrammable bullet journal that never actually boosts my productivity, but properly planning.
TIP 3: Set aside blocks of time to study, and plan beforehand so you know what you will be doing in those blocks of time.
I am a big believer in efficiency, and I hate nothing more than watching people sit down to study only to find themselves mucking around 30 minutes later because they didn’t have any idea what they were actually going to be doing.
For example: If you are studying section 2, allocate a block of time during the week when you will do exactly what needs to get done, such as writing 2 essays or spending 30 minutes researching specific examples. Learn to be in control of your time.
4. Less Is Plenty
When it comes to GAMSAT preparation, I find less is more is a terrific rule of thumb. In fact, I would go as far as saying less is plenty.
TIP 4: If you are planning correctly and spending your study sessions efficiently, there is absolutely no need to treat your GAMSAT study like a full-time job.
As mentioned before, it is not a knowledge-based test, and your ability to reason is not equivalent to how much time you spend studying.
This will differ for everybody. To give some context, I spent no more than 2 hours a day studying for the GAMSAT. With the exception of sitting down to do a Section 3 practice exam, this was ample time to do what I needed to, and it paid off because I wasn’t burnt out.
5. Form An Alliance
Surely you’re not the only person you know who is sitting the GAMSAT, right?!
TIP 5: Form a study group with people who have different skills and strengths to you. Have the humility to ask for advice from your peers, and to offer up your strengths to help them improve.
I’m not talking about the study groups where you hang out with your pals and lament about how tough it is to get into medical school these days. The first GAMSAT study group I created was never going to work because it was 3 of my closest friends and we drank Boost juice while gossiping for 5 hours 😅. Have a plan of how you will use your study group sessions and the content you will go over.
It is a free resource and something that I highly recommend at least giving a try. Some of my best ideas came from working through things with my peers; they had great advice and also acted as a fantastic sounding board.
6. Find What Works For You
This is perhaps the most important tip of all. I know it is vague, but it really is essential. The GAMSAT requires your stamina.
TIP 6: You need to know yourself enough to know how you learn best, what your weaknesses are, what you’re extremely good at, and how to pick yourself up when you’re feeling discouraged and unmotivated.
What worked for me may not work for you. I am a visual learner, and am a very emotive person. I needed to focus on honing in my logical reasoning skills to balance out the emotional undertones of my thoughts.
I also love writing, so spending hours a day practising Section 2 essays would not have been a valuable use of my time. Assess where your weaknesses lie and what needs to be done to improve on them. A simple exercise could be creating a personalised weaknesses and strengths table for each of the GAMSAT sections, and addressing each one. Only you can know the answer to this, so don’t let someone convince you that there is a concrete “one size fits all” way to tackle the GAMSAT.
I know this exam can seem terrifying and, at times, unconquerable, but it really does fade into the background as just another pre-requisite step to achieving your goals. It may currently seem like a huge boulder in your path, but I promise it is achievable and that far greater things lie beyond.
Take care of yourself, good luck, and I’ll see you in Medical School!
Always feel free to reach out to us at sarah@haladtohealth.org
Sarah Broome,
Head of GAMSAT Services, Section 1 & 2 Tutor
Learn more about how we’ve helped hundreds of GAMSAT students improve
