Lowered Guaranteed Pathways at Melbourne University (including Medicine and Law)

[stonecold]

I don't have 200 000 dollars so I will still be slaving away with the books, thnx.
It didn't even change considerably though?  Aside from me still being allowed to claim it, nice touch for transfer students.

You don't have to worry mavis.

I sat GAMSAT the other day, and someone who is both good at science and arts like yourself will have no problem whatsoever with the test.

You will surely snap up a CSP!

[simpak]

I don't have 200 000 dollars so I will still be slaving away with the books, thnx.
It didn't even change considerably though?  Aside from me still being allowed to claim it, nice touch for transfer students.

You don't have to worry mavis.

I sat GAMSAT the other day, and someone who is both good at science and arts like yourself will have no problem whatsoever with the test.

You will surely snap up a CSP!

If I even decide to go for Med.
I like making my fellow students angry with my degree of indecisiveness.
Regardless, nice job on the September GAMSAT sit, starting early I see!  You will probably get a score high enough to never have to take it again.  Bet ten dollars.

[mikee65]

How did you find the UK GAMSAT stonecold? I would have applied myself if I had $300 to throw around

[stonecold]

@ mavisgibbons.  I'll be chasing you up for my $10 when results come out. :p

I'll honestly just be happy to do better than I did on the UMAT, which probably won't happen considering I did no prep.

@mikee65.  It didn't seem too bad.  The science section was relatively straight forward and doesn't look too hard to get right with practice.  It is a shame Melbourne does not double weight this section, because it would make it so much easier for us science kids to get a better score.  I would definitely say study the most for chem, as they test it a lot (almost 50% of the section I would say) and some of it is quite difficult, especially the organic pathways and reactions.  Other aspects are really easy, like identify E-Z isomers.  As for the physics stuff, a VCE textbook should more than suffice.  Don't even waste your time studying for biology.  It is unfortunately almost 100% graph interpretation, many of which are just made to confuse you.  Very little of the biology section requires prior knowledge.  That having been said, it seems that they do love testing the cardiac cycle and oxygen binding curves.  I also think a genetics question is always on there, but these aren't really that hard.

After having trawled through pagingdr threads, they certainly do seem to recycle some section three questions, apparently the harder and more senseless ones.

Section 2 will be woeful for me as I did no preparation.  I managed to complete two very bad essays.  The topics were on humour and space exploration.

Section 1 is really hard to judge.  There are some questions where I was somewhat confident, and others where I had no idea and just guessed.  This section is a little similar to UMAT, but it has a heavy focus on the humanities.  There was stuff on there about politics, history, music, poetry, psychology, cartoon analysis.  It is all just critical reading for the most part.  There was also a whack problem solving question on there, and again, you are bombarded with many words you have never heard of before in your life.

It was definitely worth the money, but annoyed that I had to miss a day of uni for it.  Will be interesting to see how I did...

If you want to see specifically what type of questions are on GAMSAT, then check out the ACER books (links are floating around here somewhere) and also the debrief threads on pagingdr give lots of info about what concepts specific questions were testing.

[Russ]

Best way to study for section 1 and 2 is to read a single classic novel a week for the next 5 months. Guarantee it will help. I say this to everybody who will listen, but sadly nobody takes my advice

I have a reading list if you're keen

[stonecold]

Best way to study for section 1 and 2 is to read a single classic novel a week for the next 5 months. Guarantee it will help. I say this to everybody who will listen, but sadly nobody takes my advice

I have a reading list if you're keen

I will try and take you're advice despite my hatred for reading anything to do with politics haha. 

I just have a question though...how do manage to stay focused early on when you really struggle to grasp what a passage or text is about?

Also, did you ever find reading speed a problem, or once it started to make sense, it just becomes second nature and you don't even notice it?

[Slumdawg]

Best way to study for section 1 and 2 is to read a single classic novel a week for the next 5 months. Guarantee it will help. I say this to everybody who will listen, but sadly nobody takes my advice

I have a reading list if you're keen

Although the idea of reading classic novels makes me feel ill the gamsat is more important. Any chance you could chuck us the list russ? I'll PM you my email

[Russ]

I just have a question though...how do manage to stay focused early on when you really struggle to grasp what a passage or text is about?
Also, did you ever find reading speed a problem, or once it started to make sense, it just becomes second nature and you don't even notice it?

This sounds kinda self aggrandizing but I've had a pretty solid background on those texts, I did classics/renaissance in year 12 and mum was an english teacher who always pushed books on me to read. So I generally don't have much of a problem with understanding the passages. A couple of times I did, I usually try to read them in individual sentences - stop at the end of each sentence to think about the meaning before going onto the next one. Same deal for reading speed, I read really fast so it wasn't a big deal. Use a pen as a trace if you're getting distracted.

I'll get the reading list out when I find it

[mikee65]

@ mavisgibbons.  I'll be chasing you up for my $10 when results come out. :p

I'll honestly just be happy to do better than I did on the UMAT, which probably won't happen considering I did no prep.

@mikee65.  It didn't seem too bad.  The science section was relatively straight forward and doesn't look too hard to get right with practice.  It is a shame Melbourne does not double weight this section, because it would make it so much easier for us science kids to get a better score.  I would definitely say study the most for chem, as they test it a lot (almost 50% of the section I would say) and some of it is quite difficult, especially the organic pathways and reactions.  Other aspects are really easy, like identify E-Z isomers.  As for the physics stuff, a VCE textbook should more than suffice.  Don't even waste your time studying for biology.  It is unfortunately almost 100% graph interpretation, many of which are just made to confuse you.  Very little of the biology section requires prior knowledge.  That having been said, it seems that they do love testing the cardiac cycle and oxygen binding curves.  I also think a genetics question is always on there, but these aren't really that hard.

After having trawled through pagingdr threads, they certainly do seem to recycle some section three questions, apparently the harder and more senseless ones.

Section 2 will be woeful for me as I did no preparation.  I managed to complete two very bad essays.  The topics were on humour and space exploration.

Section 1 is really hard to judge.  There are some questions where I was somewhat confident, and others where I had no idea and just guessed.  This section is a little similar to UMAT, but it has a heavy focus on the humanities.  There was stuff on there about politics, history, music, poetry, psychology, cartoon analysis.  It is all just critical reading for the most part.  There was also a whack problem solving question on there, and again, you are bombarded with many words you have never heard of before in your life.

It was definitely worth the money, but annoyed that I had to miss a day of uni for it.  Will be interesting to see how I did...

If you want to see specifically what type of questions are on GAMSAT, then check out the ACER books (links are floating around here somewhere) and also the debrief threads on pagingdr give lots of info about what concepts specific questions were testing.

The order you listed the sections in seems to be in increasing difficulty for most students ,

I purchased a few prep materials some while ago, including the acer books, which give to some extent an indication of difficulty, paging dr members tend to agree the purple test is hardest but I didnt receive that one,

Id recommend the MCAT verbal reasoning 101 booklet, although I haven't yet done GAMSAT I feel as though Im reading and extracting relevant information better and quicker,

Probably my greatest concern is section 2 as im sure its mutual between all of us candidates, im not sure exactly how beneficial just reading a novel will be but hey, Id be interested to see the list you compiled Russ

[Russ]

Greatest challenge with section2 is to think of and develop ideas in the limited time you have - if you read widely, you'll be exposed to strong language, good examples etc. (reading the newspaper is a given..)

I had the advantage of living with a (previous) assessor for section2 and the single piece of advice I'll give you is "write with flair". There will be essays coming in from some extremely intelligent people and you want to be considered one of them. Make your ideas jump off the page, capture the imagination of the person reading it, convince them that you're capable of deep and rational thought.

Also, whilst it's not necessarily a hard and fast rule, don't write about how you want to study medicine. It's trite (I think it is). One essay I saw, the guy wrote about how it was a life goal etc. The people reading these couldn't care less about medicine; they've never studied it, they're generally older citizens who've done tertiary degrees in english etc.

readinglist:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0HZOWO98

[mikee65]

That is indeed a unique situation, more so considering you were actually able to view the essays to be marked, hopefully it helped you enough to secure a solid mark.

Yes I thought that some may choose to incorporate their hopes and dreams of medicine into their essays, I seriously doubt it would bode well with the subject matter,

Some PagingDr members remarked that structure was of paramount importance, was this one of the criteria for marking? Any insights?

EDIT: The images, are they from a particular 3rd party prep program?

[Russ]

Oh I 100% didn't see essays submitted to ACER. That essay i saw was posted on pagingdr for feedback.

Structure is important mostly because the majority of applicants won't be able to write an essay on the spot without using a structure (TEEL etc.). Don't feel confined to it, but if you're going to step outside a structure you should be confident

Yeah they are, but there's nothing proprietary about them, it's just a list of books and plays and there's nothing copyright about it

[mikee65]

No of course not, I was just curious as to which program it was from, Des O'Neill?

[simpak]

PASSAGE! <3<3<3<3<3  and Jane Eyre!
Did you read /all/ of those Russ?  I honestly don't feel I could sit through so much Dickens.

[mikee65]

I wouldnt say that around Des, and not the one from the prep course ,

sorry, been watching a lot of lost lately