Hey Kieran, I’m sitting again in March (first GAMSAT was in September 2020). Really looking forward to having a browse through the channel and suggested resources!! Thanks for the upload!
Hi Kieran, thank you for this extremely informative video. Just wondering, did you only use Klein's "Organic Chemistry as a Second Language: First Semester Topics" or did you use Klein's Organic Chemistry Second Semester Book as well? Thanks!
Hi Kieran, Great video, thank you for sharing! I was wondering what the difference was between your approaches for the second time you sat it and the third time? Thanks again!
Hi Denise. In my second and third sitting I did a lot of practice questions in order to improve my section 3 score. Though, i think the biggest difference between the 2nd and third time was that in my final sitting I just got better at identifying whether there was gaps in my knowledge for a certain topic and whether I completely understood a topic. For example, in my second sitting, I knew Archimedes principle and how it applied to buoyancy - though in my third sitting I understood a bit better that buoyancy was just an upward force which counter acts the weight of that object, so you can then calculate net forces on an object in water and if it’s tied to a rock on the bottom of the water, how I can use those net forces to calculate tension on the rope. So I just got better at 1) identifying gaps in my understanding, 2) through that I had a much better understanding of various chemical and physical concepts and 3) how to apply these concepts in various situations. I hope that helps clear things up a bit 🙂
@@kieranrichardson4344 Thank you Kieran that makes a lot of sense! I don’t have a science background except for Bio in high school and did a bridging course for the last “March” GAMSAT (first sit). I got 50 in S3 but I was not too disappointed as it was the first time sitting the exam and I never studied physics or chemistry before. I definitely feel like I still have a long way to go, especially to reach that “understanding” level but I guess I already came quite far if I look back. Thank you for sharing this, I will use your strategy for the March GAMSAT 2021!
@@denise9941 I’m glad to hear your not dishearten! You seem to have a great outlook on it, and I hope your next sitting goes well for you 🙂. I know some people, and this also includes myself initially, get discouraged by their first Gamsat sitting - but it’s a large learning curve, and I think even just having the experience of sitting gamsat better prepares you for the next time you sit it. Just keep at it with practice questions and keep consistent and really, before you know it, you’ll be getting far more questions right than wrong 🙂
@@kieranrichardson4344 Thanks so much, I appreciate it! I'm starting my GAMSAT study for March next week, would you suggest timed practice right from the start or maybe from January onwards? (which was my original plan to start timed practice then haha). Thanks again!
@@denise9941 For me personally, I didn't worry about timing practice questions unless I was doing a practice test (i.e., the ACER practice exams) - I mainly worked on understanding the questions and accuracy. Overtime, when you become more familiar and comfortable with the style of questions, you'll notice you'll start to become much more accurate and faster with doing questions - this is especially true if you're starting early (which you are). In my opinion, with the practice tests (ACER and if you have the 2014 Des which has 7 S3 practice tests), you'll just want to try and aim to progressively improve your score each time and get to a point in which you are getting a decent majority of the questions right, from there onwards, I think it would be useful to work on timing. Hope this helps! :)
Hi Kieran, thank you for the video! How long do you think a non-science candidate should take for getting up to speed with the background knowledge (chem, bio and physics)?
@@aneeqa7284 hi, For s1, I practiced a lot of reading comprehension. There’s a website called Read theory that I religiously used and it really helped. In the actual exam, the answers are all very similar so it can get confusing. Also I made sure to learn how to read and understand poetry. There will be plenty of poetry questions. It’s important that you read a wide range of material such as old texts and also you need to learn how to infer! I remember that there was a lot of photo imagery where they’d give a picture and you have to try and work out the meaning. It is not easy and often the text in the picture can make it more tricky to understand. I also used the practice questions by Des O’Neill. For s2, I researched online and found a list of topics. I made sure that I read plenty of articles and watched TH-cam videos about those topics and it really helped me. For the first essay, i used a PEEAL essay structure and for the second essay it was more of a self-reflective style. For the 2nd essay, I practiced by learning how to write with emotion, and showed how I’ve matured as I’ve become older. It should have hyperbole, imagination and should be creative. For S3 i used all of the Des O’Neill resources and Khan academy. The exam board likes to ask similar questions so I made a spreadsheet with the topics I was getting wrong so I could go over it and learn it on Khan academy. If you go to the Reddit page, you will find people giving the GAMSAT resources for free but you might have to look as their comments get deleted quite quickly. If you can’t find it then I might have it, you can send me your email or a fake email address if you don’t want your email public. If I find the resources then I’ll send it to you. Hope this helps and good luck !
Sure thing, I was more of a "throw all my eggs into the one basket" kind of guy for GAMSAT (i.e., S3), but I can for sure post a video of how I prepared for S1 and S2
Hi Kensington, it’s more of a guesstimate really. I’m making the assumption that the percentile curve for individual scores (I.e., S1, S2 or S3) match the percentile curve for the overall score, as ACER don’t give the breakdown for individual sections. But it is possible that it’s off by a certain degree 🙂
To be honest, I didn't do any study for Biology. A lot of the biology questions are graph interpretation and/or figure analysis and rarely require in-depth biology knowledge. :)
Hey Kieran, I’m sitting again in March (first GAMSAT was in September 2020). Really looking forward to having a browse through the channel and suggested resources!! Thanks for the upload!
how was the paper?
Hi Kieran, thank you for this extremely informative video. Just wondering, did you only use Klein's "Organic Chemistry as a Second Language: First Semester Topics" or did you use Klein's Organic Chemistry Second Semester Book as well? Thanks!
Thank you! This was helpful :)
I’m glad to hear it ! 😄
Very insightful, thank you so much!!!
Hey, thanks so much for these videos! Do you still have your copy of General Chem as a Second Language? It's proving hard to find in libraries.
Hi Kieran,
When do you think it is time to start doing S3 questions timed? Thanks :)
Hi Kieran,
Great video, thank you for sharing! I was wondering what the difference was between your approaches for the second time you sat it and the third time? Thanks again!
Hi Denise. In my second and third sitting I did a lot of practice questions in order to improve my section 3 score. Though, i think the biggest difference between the 2nd and third time was that in my final sitting I just got better at identifying whether there was gaps in my knowledge for a certain topic and whether I completely understood a topic. For example, in my second sitting, I knew Archimedes principle and how it applied to buoyancy - though in my third sitting I understood a bit better that buoyancy was just an upward force which counter acts the weight of that object, so you can then calculate net forces on an object in water and if it’s tied to a rock on the bottom of the water, how I can use those net forces to calculate tension on the rope.
So I just got better at 1) identifying gaps in my understanding, 2) through that I had a much better understanding of various chemical and physical concepts and 3) how to apply these concepts in various situations.
I hope that helps clear things up a bit 🙂
@@kieranrichardson4344 Thank you Kieran that makes a lot of sense! I don’t have a science background except for Bio in high school and did a bridging course for the last “March” GAMSAT (first sit). I got 50 in S3 but I was not too disappointed as it was the first time sitting the exam and I never studied physics or chemistry before. I definitely feel like I still have a long way to go, especially to reach that “understanding” level but I guess I already came quite far if I look back. Thank you for sharing this, I will use your strategy for the March GAMSAT 2021!
@@denise9941 I’m glad to hear your not dishearten! You seem to have a great outlook on it, and I hope your next sitting goes well for you 🙂. I know some people, and this also includes myself initially, get discouraged by their first Gamsat sitting - but it’s a large learning curve, and I think even just having the experience of sitting gamsat better prepares you for the next time you sit it.
Just keep at it with practice questions and keep consistent and really, before you know it, you’ll be getting far more questions right than wrong 🙂
@@kieranrichardson4344 Thanks so much, I appreciate it! I'm starting my GAMSAT study for March next week, would you suggest timed practice right from the start or maybe from January onwards? (which was my original plan to start timed practice then haha). Thanks again!
@@denise9941 For me personally, I didn't worry about timing practice questions unless I was doing a practice test (i.e., the ACER practice exams) - I mainly worked on understanding the questions and accuracy. Overtime, when you become more familiar and comfortable with the style of questions, you'll notice you'll start to become much more accurate and faster with doing questions - this is especially true if you're starting early (which you are). In my opinion, with the practice tests (ACER and if you have the 2014 Des which has 7 S3 practice tests), you'll just want to try and aim to progressively improve your score each time and get to a point in which you are getting a decent majority of the questions right, from there onwards, I think it would be useful to work on timing. Hope this helps! :)
Hi Kieran, thank you for the video! How long do you think a non-science candidate should take for getting up to speed with the background knowledge (chem, bio and physics)?
roughly 3-4 months! I took the paper last autumn and scored 82 for S3. i come from a non science background like u
@@AM-mv6ro Hi, what resources did you use to study?
@@aneeqa7284 hi,
For s1, I practiced a lot of reading comprehension. There’s a website called Read theory that I religiously used and it really helped. In the actual exam, the answers are all very similar so it can get confusing. Also I made sure to learn how to read and understand poetry. There will be plenty of poetry questions. It’s important that you read a wide range of material such as old texts and also you need to learn how to infer! I remember that there was a lot of photo imagery where they’d give a picture and you have to try and work out the meaning. It is not easy and often the text in the picture can make it more tricky to understand. I also used the practice questions by Des O’Neill.
For s2, I researched online and found a list of topics. I made sure that I read plenty of articles and watched TH-cam videos about those topics and it really helped me. For the first essay, i used a PEEAL essay structure and for the second essay it was more of a self-reflective style. For the 2nd essay, I practiced by learning how to write with emotion, and showed how I’ve matured as I’ve become older. It should have hyperbole, imagination and should be creative.
For S3 i used all of the Des O’Neill resources and Khan academy. The exam board likes to ask similar questions so I made a spreadsheet with the topics I was getting wrong so I could go over it and learn it on Khan academy.
If you go to the Reddit page, you will find people giving the GAMSAT resources for free but you might have to look as their comments get deleted quite quickly. If you can’t find it then I might have it, you can send me your email or a fake email address if you don’t want your email public. If I find the resources then I’ll send it to you.
Hope this helps and good luck !
Thanks for the video man
No worries at all Thomas. Please let me know if there is anything else I can cover that may be of use 🙂
@@kieranrichardson4344 Some videos for the other sections would be awesome
Sure thing, I was more of a "throw all my eggs into the one basket" kind of guy for GAMSAT (i.e., S3), but I can for sure post a video of how I prepared for S1 and S2
Hello Sir, thank you for sharing. I have one question, how do you know an 81 is the 99th percentile and that a 52 is the 20th percentile?
Hi Kensington, it’s more of a guesstimate really. I’m making the assumption that the percentile curve for individual scores (I.e., S1, S2 or S3) match the percentile curve for the overall score, as ACER don’t give the breakdown for individual sections. But it is possible that it’s off by a certain degree 🙂
Hi, what did you do for biology?
To be honest, I didn't do any study for Biology. A lot of the biology questions are graph interpretation and/or figure analysis and rarely require in-depth biology knowledge. :)
@@kieranrichardson4344 Thank you