As GAMSAT exam day approaches, the amount of study time left decreases. Trying to find the best ways to fill this steadily diminishing amount of time can feel overwhelming. While the remaining days or weeks before the exam may not be enough time to revise every single
GAMSAT Section 3 topic, there is still plenty you can do to optimise your preparation leading up to the big day. In this blog post, I will go over some high-yield actions that you can take right before the GAMSAT exam to prepare you both physically and mentally for the big day.
High Yield GAMSAT Exam Tip #1: Prepare Physically - Get your GAMSAT Schedule Sorted
By this, I mean think about what your schedule will look like on the day. Make sure you’re clear about what day and time your GAMSAT exam is, and how you will get to the venue. Then, think about the routine of your day: what time will you need to get up, what time will you need to leave, what time is the break, how will you get lunch? Having your schedule sorted and planned means that you will have one less thing that you need to think about on the day, so that you will have more brain space left to do the exam.
Once you have your schedule down, you may find it helpful to acclimatise yourself to the schedule in advance. I’m not an early riser, so for the week leading up to my GAMSAT exam, I made sure to wake up slightly earlier each day until I was waking up at the time that I would need to wake up to get to GAMSAT on time. Some people also find it helpful to do full-length practice exams using the same time schedule as the actual GAMSAT, i.e. starting and finishing at the same times and having the break at the same time. Doing full-length practice exams, even if you decide not to follow the exact schedule of GAMSAT day, is already a good way of building up the stamina that you need to sit the exam.
High Yield GAMSAT Exam Tip #2: Prepare Academically - Do Practice Questions… And Lots of Them
In the weeks leading up to the GAMSAT exam, the most high-yield way of studying is not to go over more content, but to do GAMSAT practice questions, both on their own and in the context of full-length practice exams. Doing practice questions will help you get accustomed to the GAMSAT way of thinking and will also help highlight weak areas in your content knowledge, which you can then go over later. And, as mentioned earlier, doing practice exams is a great way to build up the needed stamina to sit the exam.
When you do practice questions, make sure to do them under exam conditions. Time them according to how much time you will have per question in the GAMSAT. When you start doing questions, you may wish to give yourself a little more time, but closer to the exam date you should definitely aim to do questions under the GAMSAT time limit, if not a little faster (if you become accustomed to a faster pace, then doing questions under GAMSAT conditions will be easy by comparison!).
If you don’t have any practice questions, get some! ACER provides a free booklet of practice questions with every GAMSAT registration, as well as additional booklets available for purchase. GradReady also has a
GAMSAT question bank which you can access for free. Another suggestion is to get together a study group and write practice questions for each other (be warned, however: writing good GAMSAT-style questions is hard!).
One other thing to keep in mind is that no matter how well you prepare for the GAMSAT exam, chances are there will be questions that you won’t know how to approach. Wasting too much time on these complex questions is not a good idea because you might not have enough time to do all the other questions. Use educated guessing to bypass these difficult GAMSAT questions. Check out GradReady’s GAMSAT to Med School Podcast, and specifically the episode on
Using Educated Guessing in the GAMSAT exam, to learn more.
High Yield GAMSAT Exam Tip #3: Prepare Mentally - Have Something for Afterwards
When it comes to daunting exams like the GAMSAT, I like to have something pleasant planned for afterwards. That way, instead of dreading how the exam will go, I also have the option of looking forward to whatever it is that I have planned!
You don’t have to go too crazy or fancy for your after GAMSAT plans. Perhaps you might like to go out to dinner with some friends, or perhaps you might just want to watch a movie on Netflix with your significant other (or alone!). Whatever you decide, make sure that it is something that you can look forward to, and that will take your mind off things if things didn’t go the way you had hoped (though remember, we often remember our mistakes more than the things we did right!). We have written a blog article dedicated to helping you manage your stress levels while preparing for the GAMSAT exam. Check out our top
GAMSAT Stress Management Strategies!
Conclusion
When time is limited, it is more important than ever to use your time effectively. Throughout this blog post, I have discussed examples of high-yield actions before the GAMSAT exam that you can take to make the final preparations physically, academically, and mentally. I hope that you have found the tips in this blog post useful and that they serve you well not just in the GAMSAT, but in the (many other) exams to come once you get into medicine!
Finally, I’d just like to mention that with the exam coming up, it’s a good idea to check out our
definitive guide on GAMSAT results so you know what score you should aim for to get the best chance at being accepted to your dream medical school.
