[MedisMark?]

Hello

I'm an arts grad and before gamsat my last science study was 9 years ago in A Level Biology. I managed to scrape through the Gamsat science section with a 54 just recently and now have an interview at St Georges - so I thought I'd share some tips with any fellow arts grads out there terrified at the thought of Gamsat science...

Chemistry: For basic GCSE refresher and a bit more, I started with Barron's Review Course Series 'Let's Review: Chemistry The Physical Setting.' It's an American book aimed at 16-18 year olds and really easy to grasp.

Then I moved to Ramsden's A Level Chemistry book but found it to be insufferably dry and too full of facts and not enough explanation of concepts behind the facts, so I switched to "Chemistry: The Central Science", by Brown, LeMay and Bursten - another US book aimed at 1st year college students - excellent explanation of concepts - particularly in thermochemistry, kinetics, equilibria, acids and bases, which are all key.

I also used Ramsden's Calculations for A Level Chemistry, but not a lot.

Finally, because there is so much organic chemistry, I bought (I kid you not) Organic Chemistry for Dummies and it is brilliant! Does exactly what it says on the tin.

For Biology I covered all the animal biology from "Biology" 2nd Edition by Mike Boyle and Kathryn Senior from the Collins Advanced Science Series. Nice and easy book to understand tho it may not quite be detailed enough for some of the more complex questions at Gamsat.

Then on physics I didn't overdo it, since it is only 20% of the science section. So I used Barron's Review Course Series 'Let's Review: Physics." Again,a yank book but really gets to grips with forces, vectors and basic electricity and light geometrics that you'll be asked about.

I got the gamsat sample papers from Acer and did one immediately last March to see how I did and got about 36 on the science. From there on I got the sample papers from Ozimed and used them to practice answering the questions under time pressure. By the time the Gamsat swung around I was scoring anything from 45-65 in the science and I scraped by on the day with 54.

That's a lot of work for a 54 in science (I tend to need to study hard to do well and am annoyingly not a genius) but I am interviewing for St Georges in a few weeks so it was worth it.

I didn't do any study for section one other than the sample papers. And to spruce up my essays I signed up to the essay writing component of Des O'Neil - not the cheapest but you get great Gamsat-specific feedback on your prose, which may help especially if you've been away from academia for a few years.

Hopefully there are some useful pointers there for any non science grads looking to pass the Gamsat. And I managed to do it in my spare time while having a very demanding full time job, so its not that bad. And if you're going to pay 180 quid for a test, you'd better give it 100%, eh?

Good luck. Start now...

MM