Find out the Best GAMSAT Study Tips for the Final Month of your GAMSAT Preparation
Year after year, the two GAMSAT testing windows have been traditionally set to occur in March and September. ACER releases the key dates, like opening and closing date for registrations, exam timetables and an information booklet detailing the nature of the GAMSAT and current format changes. This GAMSAT Info Booklet should essentially be the starting point for the majority of students to develop a GAMSAT study schedule that clearly maps out the utilisation of preparation materials until before the actual GAMSAT test date.
Speaking of GAMSAT preparation, each one of you has varying levels of competency and skills to tackle the GAMSAT, hence the sooner you begin your preparation, the faster you can identify your areas of weaknesses. Nevertheless, the Fraser’s faculty strongly recommends students to devote at least 3 months of time towards GAMSAT study, achieving near perfection in their final month of preparation.
One month before the GAMSAT, as we are about to dissect in this piece, is all about accomplishing the smaller gains in your preparation and allocating thorough revision intervals to precisely pin down on what the GAMSAT is all about in its essence.
So, how do you revise for GAMSAT and achieve those minor goals during the final hurdle? Let’s find out!
Know the ‘Dos and DONTs’ of Each GAMSAT Section
Assuming that the last few months were hectic and that your time was effectively spent on strengthening your scope of the GAMSAT content and implementing some learned strategies in your practice tests, we believe that now is an opportune time to zoom in on the ‘DOs’ and ‘DONTs’ of section strategies.
Studying for the GAMSAT is all about equipping yourself with a spectrum of cognitive traits that ranges from mastering something as important as time management and speed reading to adopting a multifaceted thinking style.
A golden rule in your GAMSAT study plan, that you cannot do without, is laying a solid theoretical groundwork for each GAMSAT section. After all, the GAMSAT exam structure is built on a range of question stimulus borrowed from the humanities and social sciences, socio-cultural narratives, and scientific concepts.
Therefore, it is important to utilise the last month of your preparation to fully comprehend the question-types and your applied strategies as well as omitting the most obvious mistakes.
How to Study for GAMSAT Section 1 in the Final Stage?
When we specifically discuss GAMSAT Section 1, you ought to think of Cartoons, Poetry, Prose, Technical texts and Proverbs. Although Section 1 is built on a contrasting set of themes, they demand strong problem-solving skills and interpretation of text at an implicit level to drill down onto the meaning behind literary materials.
Within a month of the GAMSAT, it is important to revisit and re-interpret some of these themes that you found challenging, or that were simply too confusing to understand to begin with. Identifying and rectifying these important segments in your Section 1 study can increase your capacity to deduce question themes on the test day. Besides, now is a good time to focus on reading classical novels, or other philosophical texts to give you that proverbial edge to provide logical reasoning towards the stimuli.
This reading habit should more or less be a hobby rather than acting as the foundation for your GAMSAT prep in the last four weeks. Your ultimate goal in Section 1 is to become a candidate who is systematic and interpretative, so indulge in GAMSAT Practice tests and mock exams with an intention to proactively apply your theoretical learnings and build suitable approaches for each literary text. But, remember to enjoy reading different types of literature rather than stressing over it!
Preparation for GAMSAT Section 2
GAMSAT Section 2 prompts are solely dedicated to bring out the writer in you. However, your essay writing style should be academic in nature and provide succinct ideas with supporting evidence. During your GAMSAT exam, you will be asked to write two, well-thought-out essays presented as two tasks on your ACER question booklet - Task A and Task B.
Both these tasks have overarching themes, where Task A is testing your reasoning skills on socio-political issues and Task B is inclined towards your lived experiences and emotions.
Considering the fact that these tasks have themes that are poles apart in their composition, it should be noted that the themes in itself are not niche topics. Generally, the Section 2 quotes are widely predictable, which makes it ever so important to know the language, vocabulary and argument you would deliver on the test day.
A crucial point to refine and work on in the final month is to see the big picture rather than settling for brushstrokes. What this essentially means is that students tend to either focus entirely on the individual themes and neglect the overall significance of the prompt or at times divert their full attention to only one overbearing topic. This practice may cost you in producing a good essay to the GAMSAT examiner. Our course focuses on expanding on the individual topics to then lead the examiner along to the bigger argument or in this case, the overall theme.
What is the Best Way to Prepare for GAMSAT Section 3?
Having a sound strategy for GAMSAT Section 3 can have a significant end result on your GAMSAT score.
As you may know by now, Section 3 is the longest and most daunting GAMSAT section, with three core components of Science blended to form the very foundation of the GAMSAT as well as medical practice.
GAMSAT Section 3 is often known as the section that causes unnecessary stress in students due to the heavy influence of Physics, Chemistry and Biology. It is for this reason that we at Fraser’s advocate students to take a few hours out of their day to build viable strategies for each of the GAMSAT Science sections. We believe that if you have devoted reasonable time to attempt practice tests over the past months, it is now an optimal time to get into the thick of it and figure out strategy is best suited for a specific question style.
Be certain to make notes of the questions and the most suited GAMSAT strategy for it. In other words, maintain a Section 3 Question log that you can refer to at any point during your prep.
Decide the ‘Right’ GAMSAT Prep Materials
A month before the GAMSAT exam is of timely essence but it shouldn’t also be seen as your final chance at improving your skills and knowledge necessary for the GAMSAT. Rushing and pressuring yourself in the last month can drastically affect your GAMSAT study productivity to a large extent. This is exactly why planning and setting important goals should be your primary approach in the final run.
Planning your GAMSAT study timetable is not merely focused on improving your study approaches but also the GAMSAT prep materials you utilise to bring your preparation to its full potential. So what if you are one month away from the GAMSAT, you are never too late to gain external feedback to improve your GAMSAT score. And what better way to achieve this than with our mock exams!
GAMSAT mock exams are ideally the bread and butter of your GAMSAT study. Therefore, after sorting through the ‘DOs and DONTs’ of the GAMSAT approaches, you really ought to undertake mock exams to understand how the section timings can impact your exam pace and interfere with your concentration. Additionally, mock exams have a great role to play in your GAMSAT preparation to ensure that you are not taken on exam day by surprise.
The mock exams at Fraser’s have a built-in score generator that provides you with a predicted GAMSAT score, calculated using the same formula as ACER to highlight your weak areas.
As mentioned earlier, it is never too late to rectify your mistakes when it comes to psychometric tests like the GAMSAT, because it is your cognitive skills are what matters most. Hence, the last four weeks in your GAMSAT study are meant for you to narrow down the reasons for your errors, which you can easily obtain in our mock exam courses. For students enrolled in our mock exam packages, they automatically receive a detailed analysis of their performance as well as have access to ‘Review Days’ with our leading GAMSAT experts to discuss the challenging exam questions.
Visualising Your Routine on the ‘GAMSAT Day’
As silly and far-fetched as this may sound, playing out the tasks in your mind and the potential hurdles you could encounter on the GAMSAT test day is essential.
Your GAMSAT test day is your opportunity to demonstrate the skills and knowledge you learned throughout the past months. Therefore, pre-strategising your ‘on the day’ activities and ensuring it progresses in a positive direction is to an extent under your control, although we can never correctly predict any unforeseen incidents that may occur.
Given the defined amount of power you have over the course of your GAMSAT test day, one of the primary things you must certainly engage in is double checking your documentation, identity proofs and other essential documents that are necessary to present at the test centre.
Another important role you have is to visit the ACER website and check your ‘inbox’ and ‘spam’ folders to be on par with any eleventh hour announcements to test changes. These minor, yet significant, tasks can reduce the degree of tension on the test day, giving you ample time to focus on what is truly important - your exam.
On that note, we would like to conclude this article by wishing you the very best of luck for your forthcoming GAMSAT exam. If you have any questions or require help with your GAMSAT, remember that the Fraser’s staff are ready to offer any kind of assistance that can elevate your odds of success in the test.
