Prepare for the GAMSAT with the leading GAMSAT support!

Skills assessed: Comprehension, analysis, synthesising information and critical reasoning.

Section one includes a variety of graphs, poems, texts and proverbs which require you to understand concepts, interpret them in different ways and apply them to multiple questions.

A lot of students trip up on establishing the difference between what a text says, and what it means. Meaning any answer might be justifiably correct, but not always the most correct. Confused? Our GAMSAT Question Bank package includes access to our diagnostics and 2500+ questions to make sure you develop techniques to succeed.

Skills assessed: Essays, structure and content.

Section two contains 2 prompt sets of essay questions. The first essay requires you to discuss themes of a socio-cultural nature while the second is more reflective, and will require you to think critically and deeply about your own understanding and application of the topic.

If it’s been a while since you finished high school, then this is the hardest section by far, since you have to complete two 500-word essays in an hour. But the speed at which you have to write isn’t the problem. 50% of the mark is what you write, but the other 50% is how you write it. This means you don’t just have to write quickly, you have to write well and you have to think well too. It is essential to have a structure in mind, practice it and stick to it. Speak to an Advisor who can set you up with a GAMSAT tutor who scored in the top 1% to help you develop a structure that is set for success!

Skills assessed: Scientific reasoning and scientific knowledge.

Section three is entirely multiple choice, made up of 40% biology, 40% chemistry and 20% physics questions. An understanding of scientific concepts prior to your exam is essential to be successful.

To get quicker and score higher at this section, the best thing to do is practice, practice, practice! This section is three hours, it’s brain draining and most people don’t finish so you need to make sure you know what to expect, and how to tackle any question that comes your way. MedView’ Question Bank is in my opinion the perfect resource to help you practice! With over 2500+ questions and 3 full length exams you can practice all types of biology, chemistry and physics questions both in your own time and under mock exam conditions.

If you have completed a Bachelor of Honours degree, or if you are going to be in your penultimate or final year of study, then you are eligible to take the GAMSAT exam.

The GAMSAT exam can be sat twice a year - March and September. However, if you are planning on sitting the GAMSAT and using your results straight away, note the results from the 4 examination cycles prior to your May application deadlines are eligible to be used in your application. There is a strategy as too when to sit the exam.

Depending on when you take the exam, you GAMSAT results will be released in either May or November, and will consist of four scores: three section scores marked out of 100, and an overall score which is a weighted average of your section scores.

The cut-offs scores vary each year and between universities, but to give yourself the best chance of admission, you want to score in the mid to high 70s. Isabella, an Alumni of MedView, used the GAMSAT Comprehensive Package and improved her score by 30 points!

In order to sit the GAMSAT you must register on the specified dates as listed on the ACER website. It is important to note that although there are two sittings per year, the September sittings are not run in certain locations such as in New Zealand. The test occurs on both weekdays and weekends and takes approximately 9 hours to complete on the day. To sit the exam it will cost $505AUD which includes a small question book which will give you a taste of what to expect. Most students have to sit the GAMSAT more than once in order to get a score eligible for medical school, and we want to make sure you don’t have to spend $505 to register twice. Save time and money with MedView’s GAMSAT products today!

When applying for postgraduate entry medicine in Australia, there is one centralised online application portal - GEMSAS. The Graduate Entry Medical Schools Admission System. GEMSAS is run by the GAMSAT consortium, which comprises of 10 out the 13 postgraduate medical schools in Australia which include:

• Melbourne University
• Deakin University
• Australian National University
• Wollongong University
• University of Notre Dame
• Macquarie University
• Griffith University
• Queensland University
• University of Western Australia

The three universities that aren’t apart of GEMSAS include:

• Sydney University
• Flinders
• Monash

(Sydney and Flinders require the GAMSAT exam and direct application and Monash requires students to have completed their undergraduate degree at Monash).

This system allows you to choose from three to six medical schools, then uses calculations to allocate an interview and medical school offer based on your eligibility and highest preferred postgraduate medical school. You are offered a maximum of one interview. Your application to GEMSAS is a single online application form, a preference list of up medical schools, as well as your undergraduate degree transcript.

It is important to note all these aspects are considered in your overall application and they work together to bring strengths to weaker aspects.

The portfolio is only applicable to two universities, but plays an essential part in their consideration process. The University of Notre Dame and the University of Wollongong’s consider your portfolio alongside your GPA and GAMSAT score, although the weighting of the portfolio is unknown.

The University of Notre Dame is a catholic institution, meaning the university puts an emphasis on education within the context of catholic values. They welcome students of all religious backgrounds, as long as the student has an understanding for the values of ethical and service based values, such as compassion, respect and social justice. If successful, all students must complete a Bioethics paper.

The University of Wollongong on the other hand, has a strong focus around rural, regional and remote medicine, preparing doctors for a range of settings across Australia and internationally. They chose students who have diverse backgrounds and are comfortable with living in rural settings or have ties to rural communities and schooling.

The University of Notre Dame also requires a personal statement - along with your GPA, GAMSAT and portfolio - where you must outline your reasons for pursuing medicine, as well as why Notre Dame is the best choice for you. It is important to create an application that represents your character while also demonstrating the asking values.

The University of Wollongong requires a video which is similar to a UCAT situational judgement question, used to determine personal and professional traits that are suited for a career in medicine. These include empathy, communication, ethics and problem solving.

Australian National University prefers students who have completed Honours, Masters or PhD study.

The GAMSAT is the Graduate Australian Medical Schools Admissions Test. It is used in Australia, New Zealand and the UK for admission into a range of health science courses including medicine and dentistry. It was devised over a decade ago to replicate the MCAT, however has since evolved from a knowledge test into an aptitude exam, making it easier for non-science students to perform well. The GAMSAT is 6 hours long and broken down into the following sections:

1. Section One: Reasoning in the Humanities and Social Sciences
2. Section Two: Written Communication
3. Section Three:Reasoning in the Physical and Biological Sciences

The GAMSAT exam is six hours long with a one hour break between Section Two and Section Three.

75 questions designed to assess your comprehension and synthesis of complex information over 110 minutes.

75 Questions

110 Minutes

Skills assessed: Comprehension, analysis, synthesising information and critical reasoning.

Section one includes a variety of graphs, poems, texts and proverbs which require you to understand concepts, interpret them in different ways and apply them to multiple questions.

A lot of students trip up on establishing the difference between what a text says, and what it means. Meaning any answer might be justifiably correct, but not always the most correct

Example Question

The following quotes relate to the concept of justice.

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

Which of the following sets of quotes are most strongly related?

(A) 2 and 8.
(B) 6 and 7.
(C) 1 and 3.
(D) 3 and 4.

Consists of two essays - one sociocultural and one personal - responding to the general theme of 5 provided quotes and written in under an hour.

2 Essays Required

60 Minutes

Skills assessed: Essays, structure and content.

Section two contains 2 prompt sets of essay questions. The first essay requires you to discuss themes of a socio-cultural nature while the second is more reflective, and will require you to think critically and deeply about your own understanding and application of the topic.

If it’s been a while since you finished high school, then this is the hardest section by far, since you have to complete two 500-word essays in an hour. But the speed at which you have to write isn’t the problem. 50% of the mark is what you write, but the other 50% is how you write it. This means you don’t just have to write quickly, you have to write well and you have to think well too. It is essential to have a structure in mind, practice it and stick to it.

Example Question

1. Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality. (Arthur Koestler)
2. Create like a god; command like a king; work like a slave. (Constantin Brancusi)
3. Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing. (Henri Matisse)
4. You are lost the instant you know what the result will be. (Juan Gris)
5. An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. (Edwin Land)

Consists of 110 questions to assess your reasoning in the areas of physical and organic chemistry, biological physics, and pure biology, over the course of 3 hours.

110 Questions

180 Minutes

Skills assessed: Scientific reasoning and scientific knowledge.

Section three is entirely multiple choice, made up of 40% biology, 40% chemistry and 20% physics questions. An understanding of scientific concepts prior to your exam is essential to be successful.

To get quicker and score higher at this section, the best thing to do is practice, practice, practice! This section is three hours, it’s brain draining and most people don’t finish so you need to make sure you know what to expect, and how to tackle any question that comes your way. MedView’ Question Bank is in my opinion the perfect resource to help you practice! With over 2500+ questions and 3 full length exams you can practice all types of biology, chemistry and physics questions both in your own time and under mock exam conditions.

Example Question

Within the lung, there exists a mechanical interdependence between the chest wall and the lung surface. This mechanical interdependence is mediated by the pleura, a fluid-filled, sealed cavity between the muscles of inspiration and expiration, and the lung itself. The function of the pleura is to allow are mobility of the lung, whilst still forcing it to expand upon inspiration. The pleura is a sealed cavity, and the pressure of the pleural fluid is approximately 756mmHg. This is why we refer to human respiration as ‘negative-pressure breathing’ since the body aims to equilibrate the negative pressure of the lung in response to the pull of the pleura with the pressure of outside air (760mmHg). At rest, the inward elastic recoil of the lung is balanced by the outward elastic recoil of the chest wall, expressed as the transpulmonary pressure (TP) = Alveolar pressure (A) - Intrapleural pressure (IP). Thus, at rest, transpulmonary pressure usually exists at around 4mmHg. We generally assume alveoli have pressure consistent with external air, since the movement of air is free and rapid up and down the airway.

Often, patients presenting to the emergency department with chest wounds suffer from pneumothorax, in which the pleura has been compromised and is no longer a sealed, pressurised Space. The ventilation perfusion ratio (V/Q) is the ratio between how much air enters the alveoli (ventilation), and how much alveolar oxygen enters the blood (perfusion).

Upon inspiration, Which factor(s) in the equation TP = A-IP increase(s) relative to all others?

(A) Transpulmonary pressure
(B) Alveolar pressure
(C) Intrapleural pressure
(D) Transpulmonary and alveolar pressure

Students who are in their final or final-minus-one year of an undergraduate degree, or up to ten years after completion of their undergraduate degree.

Yes, all postgraduate medicine programs require the GAMSAT.

Candidates can choose to take the GAMSAT in March or in September. For a given academic year, the GAMSAT can be taken twice.

Upon completion of the GAMSAT exam you will receive a score for each section and an overall percentage score which ranks your score in comparison to all other students sitting the exam. Your GAMSAT score is valid for two years following the test date and you can sit the exam twice per admissions cycle (March and September).

It's impossible to predict your own GAMSAT Score from test material. The score is calculated from (1x your Section One results, 1x your Section Two results and 2x your Section Three results) /4. Your score is a percentile, relative to everyone else’s score, and is thus not something you can accurately calculate yourself.

Your GAMSAT score breakdown - the score for each section is what is most important in your GEMSAS application, as different universities put different weightings on each section. For example, most universities apart from the University of Melbourne, the University of Western Sydney, and the University of Queensland use the traditional weighting system, which weighs Section Three twice as much as Section One and Two.

Hot tip: To make sure you have a strong score against this weighting system, it is important to make sure you’re disproportionately strong in Section Three, or particularly poor in either Section One or Two

To complicate things further, each university accepts different ranges of GAMSAT scores. To make sure your preference list is favourable to your skills and GAMSAT abilities, MedView’s postgraduate entry application support program can help. Specifically designed by postgraduate medical students and admissions experts, this program will help you better succeed in your application.

Your GPA is your Grade Point Average, which is the weighted mean of all your grades achieved in the final 3 years equivalent of full time undergraduate study.

Firstly, a lot of people believe that you can only apply to postgraduate medicine if you have completed a medical related degree - e.g., Nursing, Biomedical Science etc. However this is not correct, yes there are discrepancies between universities in terms of GPA cut offs, but there is no advantage or disadvantage to the degree achieved, or the university in which your degree was achieved.

However, your degree must have been completed in the last 10 years, unless postgraduate study has commenced. It is at the discretion of the university as to whether your postgraduate study is considered in the calculation of your GPA but most of the time, it is your last three years that are considered.

It would be correct to assume Honours years also add a level of complexity to your application. The University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia require your Honours to be completed by mid year of your application cycle for it to be considered in your GPA calculation. The University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Macquarie University will also only consider specific Honours subjects, not your overall Honours grade and this information will not be released to you prior to your postgraduate entry application.

To determine your GPA weighted grade the following calculation is used:

Most Recent GPA = Weighted x3

Most Recent -1 GPA = Weighted x2

Most Recent -2 GPA = Weighted x1

Your average GPA is calculated by dividing the result by 6. GEMSAS places a higher emphasis on the latter years of study which is reflected in their calculations, as they assume the level of intelligence is higher the longer you study.

However, several universities calculate the GPA differently. The University of Western Australia weighs every year the same and does not require a competitive GPA just a threshold over 5.0. UWA, also used a system called FTE which fairly evaluates all students. This means a minimum of two subjects/courses are required to be taken in the final semester/in your application semester in order to achieve a 25% FTE and be considered for a place.

Candidates must apply to the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) online registration system to register and then book a test. Registrations open in November and close at the start of February for the March exam. Registrations for the September sitting, open in April and close at the start of August.

When applying for postgraduate entry medicine in Australia, there is one centralised online application portal - GEMSAS. The Graduate Entry Medical Schools Admission System. GEMSAS is run by the GAMSAT consortium, which comprises of 10 out the 13 postgraduate medical schools in Australia which include:

• Melbourne University
• Deakin University
• Australian National University
• Wollongong University
• University of Notre Dame
• Macquarie University
• Griffith University
• Queensland University
• University of Western Australia

The three universities that aren’t apart of GEMSAS include:

• Sydney University
• Flinders
• Monash

(Sydney and Flinders require the GAMSAT exam and direct application and Monash requires students to have completed their undergraduate degree at Monash).

This system allows you to choose from three to six medical schools, then uses calculations to allocate an interview and medical school offer based on your eligibility and highest preferred postgraduate medical school. You are offered a maximum of one interview. Your application to GEMSAS is a single online application form, a preference list of up medical schools, as well as your undergraduate degree transcript.

GEMSAS is the Graduate Education Medical Schools Admissions Systems consortium responsible for GAMSAT admissions which includes a combination of almost all universities - excluding Flinders, Bond, Monash and Sydney

If you apply through GEMSAS you list your 6 preferred universities and you will be offered a maximum of one interview, which is an interview at your highest preferenced university that you are eligible for.

Candidates can choose to sit the GAMSAT in major metropolitan and regional sites.

Australia
Major Testing Centres:
Canberra
Sydney
Darwin
Brisbane
Townsville
Adelaide
Melbourne
Perth
Hobart

Ireland
Cork
Dublin
Limerick

United Kingdom
Liverpool
London

Singapore

United States
Washington DC

New Zealand
Wellington - Only available for March

Results are received mid-May for the March GAMSAT and November for the September GAMSAT. The results hold currency for one year.

AU$510.00

If you have completed a Bachelor of honours degree, or if you are going to be in your penultimate or final year of study, then you are eligible to take the GAMSAT exam.

The GAMSAT exam can be sat twice a year - March and September. However, if you are planning on sitting the GAMSAT and using your results straight away, note the results from the 4 examination cycles prior to your May application deadlines are eligible to be used in your application. There is a strategy as too when to sit the exam.

The GAMSAT can be sat in March or September. The March sitting corresponds to a quiet period in Semester One of University. The September sitting corresponds to a much more busy period towards the end of Semester Two.

Another element of admission into postgraduate medical school is the GPA hurdle. Your GPA is your Grade Point Average, which is the weighted mean of all your grades achieved in the final 3 years equivalent of full time undergraduate study.

Firstly, a lot of people believe that you can only apply to postgraduate medicine if you have completed a medical related degree - e.g., Nursing, Biomedical Science etc. However this is not correct, yes there are discrepancies between universities in terms of GPA cut offs, but there is no advantage or disadvantage to the degree achieved, or the university in which your degree was achieved.

However, your degree must have been completed in the last 10 years, unless postgraduate study has commenced. It is at the discretion of the university as to whether your postgraduate study is considered in the calculation of your GPA but most of the time, it is your last three years that are considered.

It would be correct to assume Honours years also add a level of complexity to your application. The University of Melbourne and the University of Western Australia require your Honours to be completed by mid year of your application cycle for it to be considered in your GPA calculation. The University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Macquarie University will also only consider specific Honours subjects, not your overall Honours grade and this information will not be released to you prior to your postgraduate entry application.

To determine your GPA weighted grade the following calculation is used:

Most Recent GPA = Weighted x3

Most Recent -1 GPA = Weighted x2

Most Recent -2 GPA = Weighted x1

Your average GPA is calculated by dividing the result by 6. GEMSAS places a higher emphasis on the latter years of study which is reflected in their calculations, as they assume the level of intelligence is higher the longer you study.

However, several universities calculate the GPA differently. The University of Western Australia weighs every year the same and does not require a competitive GPA just a threshold over 5.0. UWA, also used a system called FTE which fairly evaluates all students. This means a minimum of two subjects/courses are required to be taken in the final semester/in your application semester in order to achieve a 25% FTE and be considered for a place.

On exam day make sure you have a huge breakfast because you have a big day ahead. Also pack lunch, because it takes the stress away of having to find a cafe on the day. You will be required to report to your selected test centre by 8.15am but make sure to check your admission ticket beforehand to make sure.

You will need to also bring photo identification. This can include a passport, drivers licence.

You will be sitting the exam for a total of 5.5 hours, 25 minutes of reading time and 1 hour for lunch between section two and three.

The GAMSAT is not a problem solving exam like the UCAT. It requires you to study in the areas of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and requires you to develop your essay-writing skills.