For Students from a Non-Science Background

Many students from arts, law and other non-science backgrounds attain entry to Medical school each year, so it is absolutely possible to score well in the GAMSAT® exam and get an offer!

ACER stipulates that you need science knowledge equivalent to first year university chemistry and biology, and year 12 physics to score well in S3. However, remember that the GAMSAT® exam is a test of reasoning, so it’s not about memorising a first year university syllabus. Rather, it’s about learning the basics so you can work through the question stem and apply your problem solving skills to determine the answer

Although S3 is weighted double for most medical schools, you still have S1 and S2 working in your favour so don’t forget that. Some non-science students do end up acing S3, others get through with amazing S1 and S2 scores and just ensure that S3 doesn’t pull them down, and the rest end up doing very respectably in each section. Either way, it’s your overall mark that counts (providing you don’t fail a section) so it really doesn’t matter how you pull it off.

Although our GAMSAT® materials are comprehensive, and the MCQs are grouped according to difficulty levels, you may still need to review supplement material if you’re coming to the GAMSAT® exam with only some high school chemistry that’s a decade old. The good news is there are some amazing free online resources (Khan Academy videos are great) and the Dummies series for science subjects are probably available for loan from your university library (non-student memberships are usually available for a fee).

Absolutely! Although make sure you don’t jump into them without an appropriate level of base knowledge or you’ll just end up feeling demoralised. Plan your study so that you’ve got time to learn the basics and ensure that your preparation materials contain plenty of GAMSAT® exam style MCQs that will keep you busy for the lead up to the exam.

Even if humanities is your strong suit, don’t neglect it! Make sure that you practise S1 questions to get a hang of the timed conditions and write plenty of practise essays - no matter how comfortable you are at developing arguments, churning out 2 essays in an hour is no mean feat.

We suggest that you start preparing at least 6 month prior to date of the GAMSAT® exam. The only way to get a true sense of how much extra study you need to do is to actually do some GAMSAT® exam questions and go from there. Start off by signing up to our course and going through the content. If you find the videos/context material too challenging as they are, then it means that you need to do some work on basic fundamental concepts. We provide suggested additional reading at the end of many chapters. In addition, depending on the package you have purchased, you will be able to directly ask tutors for specific additional references based on where you are struggling.