How I Scored 61-75-100 in GAMSAT WITHOUT Paying For A Course | Bootstrapping Your Path To Medicine

Hey everyone! Apologies for the score baiting title 🙃
We all know that the ACER material is the best resource but then what do you do after you've used that? Well, here's a list of everything that I used and a few that I wish I had known about when I was prepping for March. Yes, it does take a lot more work to do it this way, but it proves the point that there really isn't a need to buy overpriced courses. If I can contribute to this by putting out free resources, then I'm happy!
Here's the full list of links to each of the resources:
*Section 1 Resources*
VCE GAT Papers
[www.vcaa.vic.e...]
UK BMAT - Section 1
[www.admissions...]
ReadTheory
readtheory.org](readtheory.org/
*Section 2 Resources*
Aeon
aeon.co](aeon.co/
The Conversation
theconversatio...
Crash Course KZbin Channel (Crash Course history and philosophy)
[ / crashcourse ]
Thursday Thoughts
mailchi.mp/8f6...
*Section 3 Resources*
UK BMAT - section 2
www.admissions...
VCE Chemistry, Biology MCQ questions (physics a little too specific though). Avoid any stoichiometry questions - too technical
www.vcaa.vic.e...
www.vcaa.vic.e...
Google Scholar - read random topics
scholar.google...
Chemistry worksheets
personal.utdal...
Just search the topic and then search worksheets and you'll get a bunch of freely available uni level worksheets
-This channel & my resources page
Check out my GAMSAT Section playlists!
www.notion.so/...
________________________________________________________________________
Hey, I'm Jesse, I'm a professional private tutor and founder of Simplified Study Tutoring. Since 2011, I've been helping students take a simpler approach to their studies and educating people in anything from science and maths to English and economics. In March 2021 I sat the GAMSAT and achieved an 84 including a 100 in Section 3. Hopefully, that's credentials enough to give this video a good watchin'.
Follow me:
📸 Instagram: / osbourne_jesse

[@kamaldhillon8223]

Thank you so much for all your efforts.

[@EM-mk8jk]

so helpful, thank you!!

[@jesseosbourne]

Fantastic!

[@RebeccaSmith-q5h]

Hey Jesse, thank you for all your resources! Would you mind uploading the study tracker as a spreadsheet and not just as a pdf? Thank you!

[@zahraaal-khafaji6662]

Hi Jesse! I've recently subscribed and I'm binge watching your videos, your doing an amazing job and your content is super helpful! I was looking at another one of your videos where you went through the different maths skills that can help with GAMSAT and was wondering if you had any websites or resources that will help build those maths skills? Thanks :)

[@jesseosbourne]

Hey Zahraa! Fantastic to hear that the videos have already been so helpful :) I have a few maths worksheets that I've put together on my resources page, although admittedly it's not very substantial at the moment www.notion.so/simplifiedstudytutoring/GAMSAT-Resources-f3349dbfb4ef460b9dc2bf5f01e25390 I think that for other maths resources, you're best off working from something like a senior high school maths textbook or similar and working through only questions that relate to; Rearranging equations; Logarithms & Log scales; Index Laws; Scientific Notation; arithmetic with fractions These are the only core maths topics that I see as really relevant to Section 3 but being able to practice them in isolation is the best way to be sure you understand the principles of them. If you can't get your hands on a textbook, then I'd say just googling these topics with 'worksheet pdf' at the end and you'll probably find some decent stuff eg. Index Laws worksheet pdf I'll be working to have more maths worksheets put together on the resources page very soon too

[@palomaquinn5281]

Hey Jesse, thanks for the advice! I sat the most recent September GAMSAT, but my paper was heavily 'logic' orientated, to an extent that I felt like the 8 months of content studies I did were not sufficient to answer some of the questions. In terms of reasoning skills, would you have any tips on how to tackle the questions that require mainly logic and problem solving? thanks!

[@jesseosbourne]

It’s tricky to give general advice on logical problem solving as I think a lot of the methods become more question specific. In terms of question answering, I would always choose between one of three strategies 1. Look for a mathematical relationship and Solve the missing value/variable (maths/physics based) 2. Rephrase the information or relationships presented in simpler terms that can then be extrapolated to the context given in the question (biology and chem mostly). A lot of the time they’re using jumbled language in the stem and the prompt to make interpreting the question harder (use of double and triple negatives etc) 3. Test each option (last resort) I know that’s probably not as specific as you’d like but I think anything more specific and it becomes unusable. I’ll see if I can work in some more of this kind of thing into the section 3 sample questions so that there’s more question specific advice that might help bring together a more adaptive method

[@palomaquinn5281]

@@jesseosbourne Thanks :)

[@bellalua1]

Hey Paloma and Jesse. I think this is the elephant in the room, I can’t find anyone giving it the proper attention. A very big issue for anyone who already sat GAMSAT and didn’t already had those skills within themselves. It seems that all the prep courses/ tutors at their best only touch this issue, which is just becoming more and more prominent on GAMSAT. Have you guys came across any interesting material since then?

[@palomaquinn5281]

@@bellalua1 Hey Bella, I totally agree with you on this. I basically try my best each year but with my fingers crossed every sitting, there is very little guidance on reasoning. Something interesting that someone was kind enough to share with me, is that UCAT materials do not focus on background knowledge and are guided by reasoning skills, and that going over these resources have helped them to do better in the gamsat itself, as these helped them to improve the reasoning aspect. I haven’t tried this myself so I can’t say much, but I did find it interesting that exercising reasoning reflected positively on their gamsat scores

[@bellalua1]

@@palomaquinn5281 thank you very much for the hint! I’ll look at it! Please let me know if you hear anything else. And good luck! :)

[@williamtong2120]

Hi Jesse, I've been able to get the des o neil questions for section 1 and 3 since i've heard people recomending them as a resource. Would you reccomend these also or are they too outdated and different from acer style questions? 2 months left till the exam :) Thanks!

[@jesseosbourne]

Hey William, I gave a pretty lengthy comment about the Des stuff on Reddit so I'll copy+paste my response from there but in short, yes they're a good second option if you feel you've exhausted the ACER material and understood the reasoning/skills behind them. My reddit reply: "Des is good as a second option after really working through and breaking down the ACER stuff. I sat GAMSAT back in 2012 and 2013 and nope, we did not have calculators back then either so I don't know where Des got that one from (unless they had special rules in 2014) In terms of its relevance It has its issues 1. Stems can be a little short for the most part. You're more likely to have to work with some heavier stem info 2. Lengthy maths. While algebraic manipulation is still important, there are some questions that ask you a little much in my opinion 3. Some of the questions can be phrased a little oddly or ambiguously 4. Physics questions tend to lean towards prior knowledge of formulas (less common these days) 5. Repetitive questions. Some stems don't have much question evolution so once you've unlocked question 1, the later questions can sometimes be a repeat of the same skill rather than forcing you to adapt your understanding and application of the stem info. It's also got some positives 1. Pacing and decision making under time pressure. This is still practised relatively well in these questions 2. Estimation techniques. Even though there are some troublesome questions, most of the questions can still be worked out by considering the degree of accuracy that is actually required to distinguish between the answer options. 3. Pattern recognition questions are still really good. A lot of the organic chem and reaction pathways stuff is pretty good quality 4. It beats prep company material! There's not much by way of resources available but Des is still better than paid stuff. My advice would be, use Des with some conservatism. Don't expect it to perfectly reflect the test (realistically nothing will) and don't get too caught up chasing random points of knowledge when marking your questions. It's net positive to do them if you feel you're getting nothing out of recycling ACER material repeatedly (there's also a lot of value in redoing them too though)"