GAMSAT 2008, can anyone help?

[jennybean]

Dear all,

I have a couple of questions about GAMSAT 08 which for some reason, I haven't been able to find the answers for on the net! I've tried looking at the GAMSAT UK, UCAS and ACER websites but to no avail. This may be because I was browsing at work, haha!

1) Does anyone know where we can find information on the location of the London test centre? I'm hoping to book a hostel or something for the night before but just can't seem to find the address anywhere.

2) I have bought the Griffith's Review for some pointers (hopefully it'll help! Seems to be talking good sense). However, I just wondered whether anyone has taken GAMSAT before - I want to confirm whether or not it is true that we can look through the whole paper in the 5 or 10minutes preparation time and whether this time is given before the start of each of the three sections?

Thanks a lot if you're able to help! All the best with your applications!!!

[ciderfinder]

Jennybean,

Gamsat sent me my exam ticket only ten days before the date of my exam. This has all the details of where and when to be. I think that they leave it till quite late before they actually book a venue (prob cheaper that way). You would be better placed to leave your accomodation booking untill you know where the exam is. Bit of a pain I know. I was stressing quite a bit about my venue - just one of those things.

Each of the sections is preceded by a five minutes of "checking" time. You are supposed to check for possible errors in the printing etc nof the question and answer booklets. During this time there will be someone dribbling on about the rules, what you should find in your question papers blah blah blah. This makes it very difficult to use as actual planning/assessing time. Some of mine were even less than five minutes. Don't consider this time in your practise runs at home. If you can squeeze a few minutes to look over the paper then that will be a bonus in the real thing.

Best of luck.

[jennysynergy]

Hi Jennybean,

The GAMSAT in London has been in the Royal Horticultural Society Hall for the past 2 years, so chances are it will be there again this year (though nothing is certain until they send you out your ticket and details)

You get the paper in 3 sections, so you cannot read through the whole thing at once. I found in Section III that even 10 minutes is not enough time to go through all q's as thoroughly as you would like - you will need every single minute of your time to answer the bloody things.

Best of luck,

Jenny

[jennybean]

Thanks very much guys for your help. So, it boils down to the fact that we probably won't be able to skim through the paper/decide which questions we want to answer first? That was the advice given by Griffiths.. to pick out the ones you feel confident about first. Did either of u do this/recommend it?

Thanks again!

[auden]

I've never read the Griffiths' review thing but it strikes me you'd be hard pushed to really do this (though to my knowledge he's sat the exam at least three times so perhaps he has some secret the rest of us don't know!).

There are a lot of questions in the third section and the thing with most of them is they look really hard but have the answer hidden within them. I cannot see how you could 'skim read' them and have any idea of which would be easiest to answer first.

I would agree that you should be strict about how long you spend on each question - work out how long you have for each and then only spend that time, moving on if you haven't worked it out by then and coming back if you have time. But I can't see that you could possibly use that 5-10 mins before the start of the paper to plan which ones to answer, except in the essays. I just started at the beginning and worked through - and got 85 in the science and 81 overall so it can be done!

[Sarah G]

I followed quite a lot of the Griffiths review (but not all, e.g not the tip about marking your answers in groups rather than individually - that was too time-wasting for me). I did use the reading time to skim over and see if any questions looked easier for me and marked them as ones to tackle first. This system worked for me as I did some of the Gradmed revision courses and so had a sense of what topics and themes were likely to come up and which I understood best. For example I'd grasped things like chiral centres and went to those first. Anything with 'capacitors' in it went to the bottom of the pile to guess at later! While its true that many of the questions have the answers within them its not the same as saying each question is therefore equally easy/difficult. Applying learned information is just as important in my view and some information I learned better than others!

You will have heard this already (and Griffiths really emphasises it) but doing one or two full practice tests is vital to work out the strategies that suit you, in my opinion. Different methods suit different people.

Hope that makes sense!

Sarah G

[ciderfinder]

In each of the sections (I and III) i just started going through the questions sequntially (after a quick flick through to check for printing errors) without writing anything down but coming up with an answer(s). Then when the time officially starts i went back to the beginning with a head start on the questions i had already covered.

I didn't bother checking out which questions were easier than others or more suited to my studying - it takes too long to really grasp a question to find out. Just go through the questions sequentially - if one gives you any trouble move on. They tend to be themed around one topic in bunches of 1 to even 7. Read each one even if the first on the theme looks like it will take a long time or will be tricky - they are not always pitched at the same difficulty.

This worked for me however as already mentioned the best way to find your perfect approach is practice, practice.........................

[jennybean]

Hey, a big thank you to all of you for your feedback on this!! I'll bear it all in mind. Good luck if you're still trying to get in but hopefully you've already all been successful!

Cheers again, the jennybean!