Is GAMSAT Difficult To Get Through?

The honours graduates, who are aspiring to be medical professionals, have a good opportunity to achieve their goal, through Graduate Australian Medical School Admission Test. Though it was started by Australian Council of education, later on it was used by UK and Ireland for admission to the medical colleges in their countries. The tests are held once in a year, but one must give sufficient preparation time. The tests are conducted similar to X Ray machine that can see your actual reasoning and problem solving abilities. So it has got to be a character moulding struggle rather than a simple study.
You are not supposed to cram data or formulae or high profile rules etc. Like in humanities section, you will be provided with stimuli like passages of personal, imaginative and argumentative writings. Sometimes ideas and information are given in visual and tabular form. These questions demand conceptual thinking, logical reasoning, objective and subjective thinking. Care is taken to minimise the discomfort of non English speaking candidates. Questions will be there to judge your understanding, plausible reasoning and critical thinking.

In writing communication two essays are to be written each in 30 minutes. You will be assessed how you have developed and made out of the given puzzle and the quality of thoughts and feelings offered. The first task deals with socio cultural issue and the second one personal and social issues. Quality of thinking and control of language will be assessed. You may be a very good writer with flowing and lucid writing. But if it is not oriented to the task and not helping the topic to its analytical and logical conclusion it is of no value.

In biological and physical science section, questions are taken in the proportion of 40% each of biology and chemistry and 20% of physics. But the questions are integrated covering the three disciplines. Stimulus materials are given in the form of text, mathematical, graphs, tables and diagrams. Questions are designed in such a way that the candidates have to recall the basic scientific fundamentals, analyse in the perspective of the task and identify the particular concept that relate with the task, translate knowledge from one form to the other, coordinate and apply a methodical approach to arrive at the result. GAMSAT expects knowledge of biology, chemistry and physics in the level of first year college from the candidates. The candidates who have mastered the fundamentals of these basic sciences should not have difficulty in solving the questions.

Taking the above into account the candidates should prepare for the test. It should be the culmination of effort over a long period. Short time preparation may not be able to find result. The best candidates are those who have seriously pursued their undergraduate level study, who did not bother for cramming and getting high ranks, rather who has toiled hard to know the fundamentals.

It needs to be kept in mind that just getting good percentile in GAMSAT does not mean admission to medical colleges. After fulfilling all the required criteria the candidates have to apply to the colleges of their choice. If he passes the cut off percentile marks, he will be called for interview. His admission is allowed only after clearing the interview.

If any candidate, after registering for the test, decides to postpone or cancel, there is a provision of refund or postponement to next year. The details regarding this can be obtained from their site.