Academic Skills
GAMSAT preparation: resources and approach
A selective guide to preparing for the GAMSAT, including official materials, Section 1 and 3 recommendations, and a detailed approach to both Section 2 tasks.
I prepared for the GAMSAT in 2024. This guide brings together the approach I found useful, the resources I would prioritise now, and the mistakes I would avoid. It is not a prescription: preparation should respond to your own starting point, available time and pattern of errors.
Independent guidance
This resource is independently prepared. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by ACER, GEMSAS, the University of Sydney, or University of Sydney Doctor of Medicine admissions. Requirements and test arrangements can change; consult the current GAMSAT information booklet and official preparation advice before relying on any third-party guide.
The short version
You do not need to complete every resource you can find. A smaller set used deliberately is more valuable than a large folder worked through passively.
- Begin with official ACER material to understand the current task and establish a baseline.
- Identify whether your main limitation is comprehension, reasoning, written expression, scientific foundations, timing or decision-making under uncertainty.
- Select one or two supplementary sources that target that limitation.
- Review errors in detail. Record why the attractive wrong answer was wrong and what would have made the correct answer identifiable.
- Return to official material under timed conditions to judge whether the work is transferring.
Commercial preparation is not a prerequisite for an excellent result. I do not endorse a preparation company, and it is entirely possible to prepare very well using free or inexpensive resources. Paying for more material does not, by itself, produce better reasoning.
Begin with ACER
The official ACER preparation materials remain the best reference for the form and standard of the examination. They should anchor preparation because ACER writes and administers the test. Use third-party questions to develop skills or add volume, but do not let them redefine what you think the examination is.
ACER describes the GAMSAT as an assessment of reasoning in humanities, written communication, and biological and physical sciences. Its preparation guidance emphasises analysis, logical deduction and judgement rather than last-minute recall. For Section 3, some foundational knowledge is still assumed, but the purpose of that knowledge is to support reasoning from the information provided.
I would preserve at least one official practice set for later timed work. Repeatedly completing familiar questions can create confidence without giving an honest estimate of how you will respond to unfamiliar material.
Section 1: reasoning in humanities and social sciences
Section 1 rewards close reading more than the accumulation of facts. Practise identifying:
- the precise claim a passage makes;
- tone, attitude and changes in perspective;
- what follows from the text, rather than what merely sounds plausible;
- the difference between the author’s view, a character’s view and your own view;
- how individual words qualify or constrain a statement; and
- why each distractor fails.
I found Des O’Neill’s Section 1 material particularly useful. It provides a large collection of demanding questions and can make the ambiguity of the real examination feel more manageable. It is unofficial, some editions are old, and difficulty is not the same thing as representativeness. Use it as additional training rather than a substitute for current ACER material, and obtain any commercial material lawfully.
A useful review method
For every uncertain or incorrect answer, write four short notes:
| Question | What to record |
|---|---|
| What was the passage doing? | Argument, comparison, satire, narration, reflection or something else. |
| What did I miss? | A qualifier, tonal shift, relationship, definition or unstated assumption. |
| Why was my answer attractive? | It used familiar language, was generally true, or matched my opinion but not the text. |
| What is the transferable lesson? | A specific reading habit to use on the next passage. |
Do not reduce the review to “I misread it”. Name the misreading.
Section 2: written communication
Section 2 asks for two pieces of writing in response to two sets of prompts. My working distinction is:
- Task A often lends itself to examining an interpersonal, social or public issue; and
- Task B often lends itself to examining an intrapersonal question or lived experience.
This is a useful orientation, not a rule imposed by ACER. Read the actual prompts and respond to the central idea they create together.
ACER’s published guidance says assessors consider the quality and development of ideas, the structure and organisation of the response, and the clarity and precision of language. It also makes clear that candidates do not have to agree with a prompt. The value lies in what you do with the material—not in reproducing a preferred opinion or essay template.
No form has automatic priority
An argumentative essay is not intrinsically better than a reflective, discursive or narrative response. A conventional essay is not automatically safer, and an experimental form is not automatically more sophisticated. The best form is the one that lets you develop worthwhile thought coherently under time pressure.
My own tendency is to use a more analytical form for Task A and a more reflective form for Task B. That division works because it gives the two responses different intellectual textures. It should not prevent you from using another form when the prompts or your strengths suggest one.
My approach to Task A
I treat the quotations as a small argument in which several positions, assumptions or tensions are present. Before writing, I ask:
- What broader issue connects these prompts?
- Which premise is each prompt asking me to accept?
- Where do the prompts agree, and where do they pull in different directions?
- What qualified position can I defend?
- What evidence or example will make each step concrete?
A clear thesis should do more than announce a topic. It should make a contestable claim and establish the direction of the argument. Each paragraph can then operate as a premise supporting that conclusion.
One reliable paragraph logic is:
- Point — state the claim precisely.
- Example — give a concrete case, observation, text, event or idea.
- Evaluation — explain what the example shows, where its limits lie and why it matters.
- Link — connect the reasoning back to the thesis and forward to the next step.
The quality of evaluation matters more than the prestige of the example. A familiar case examined carefully is stronger than an impressive name used decoratively.
I aim for a position that is analytical but not bloodless: sceptical of easy binaries, explicit about assumptions, attentive to competing perspectives and willing to qualify its own conclusion. Fallibilism is valuable. You can argue firmly while acknowledging what would cause you to revise your view.
Precision also matters. Prefer a sentence whose meaning is difficult to misread over one that merely sounds elevated. Define the sense in which you use broad words such as freedom, progress, justice or truth. Keep examples close to the point they support, and make the inferential step explicit rather than asking the reader to supply it.
My approach to Task B
For Task B, I often begin with a concrete experience, scene or observation and use it to examine a broader human question. A useful movement is:
- Experience — establish a specific moment without over-explaining it.
- Reflection — identify what you believed, felt or failed to understand at the time.
- Perspective-taking — consider how another person might have experienced the same event.
- Broader significance — connect the experience to the theme without turning it into a slogan.
- Qualified conclusion — return to the opening image or idea with a more mature understanding.
The qualities I try to demonstrate are emotional intelligence, self-awareness, empathy, intellectual openness and the capacity to sit with ambiguity. Vulnerability can make a response humane, but it should serve reflection rather than become disclosure for its own sake. You do not need to write about trauma. An ordinary experience understood deeply can carry more weight than a dramatic event that has not been processed.
Avoid assuming another person’s interior life with certainty. Language such as “perhaps”, “I came to wonder” or “I could not know” can show mature perspective-taking when it reflects genuine uncertainty rather than evasiveness.
Task B does not have to end optimistically. It should, however, show movement in thought. A conclusion that returns unchanged to the opening position gives the reader little sense that the inquiry mattered.
What I believe strong responses have in common
Across both tasks, I think the examination rewards writing that demonstrates:
- a serious engagement with the prompts;
- ideas that develop rather than repeat;
- a coherent relationship between examples and claims;
- control of structure and pace;
- precise language appropriate to the chosen form;
- awareness of complexity without indecision; and
- an individual mind at work rather than a memorised response.
These are my interpretations of ACER’s published criteria and my own preparation experience, not inside knowledge about marking.
How to practise Section 2
Practise the whole process, not only finished essays.
- Spend short sessions generating themes, theses and paragraph sequences from prompt sets.
- Write timed responses regularly enough that planning and editing become realistic.
- After writing, identify the exact sentence in which each paragraph advances the central idea.
- Remove quotations, historical examples or vocabulary that are present only to sound impressive.
- Ask a reader to explain your thesis back to you. If their account differs from yours, revise for precision.
- Revisit an essay several days later. Distance makes structural problems easier to see.
- Keep a small bank of flexible ideas and observations, not memorised essays.
ACER provides a practice written-communication tool and recommends practising under timed conditions, seeking feedback and rereading work after an interval.
Section 3: reasoning in biological and physical sciences
Section 3 is not a competition to recall the largest number of isolated facts. Foundational biology, chemistry, physics and quantitative skills help you understand the stimulus, but the central task is to reason from unfamiliar information.
For accessible, high-quality supplementary teaching, I recommend Jesse Osbourne’s YouTube channel and GAMSAT resource site. The topic checklist, maths material, worked questions and reasoning demonstrations provide a clear route into Section 3, particularly if you need to rebuild foundations or learn how to extract a problem from a dense stem.
Jesse’s questions and walkthroughs can be more demanding than some official examples and are useful for developing stamina and flexible reasoning. As with Des O’Neill for Section 1, I would use them to stretch skills while keeping current ACER material as the calibration standard.
When reviewing Section 3, classify the cause of the error:
- missing foundational knowledge;
- failure to translate the stimulus into a model;
- algebraic or numerical error;
- missed units, scale or sign;
- incorrect graph or table interpretation;
- an unjustified assumption; or
- a time-management decision.
That classification tells you what to do next. Re-reading a chemistry chapter will not fix a graph-reading mistake, and completing more questions quickly will not fix an algebraic habit you have not identified.
A lean preparation cycle
Phase 1: diagnose
Complete enough official material to identify patterns without exhausting the supply. Establish which section and which underlying skill currently limits you.
Phase 2: build
Address foundational gaps and practise one skill at a time. Use Des O’Neill selectively for Section 1, regular planning and writing for Section 2, and Jesse Osbourne’s teaching and questions for Section 3.
Phase 3: integrate
Complete mixed, timed sets. Practise deciding when to persist with a difficult question and when to move on. Continue the error log, but increasingly focus on decisions made under time pressure.
Phase 4: calibrate
Return to unfamiliar official material. Simulate the current examination conditions described by ACER, review the result and make only targeted adjustments. Avoid replacing a stable method with a new system immediately before the test.
About my consolidated resource archive
During my 2024 preparation I assembled a large Google Drive archive from material found online, recommendations from the GAMSAT subreddit and my own notes. It contains far more than any one student needs.
I am reviewing that archive before linking it publicly because it currently includes third-party books and official practice material that may not be licensed for redistribution. Until that review is complete, the links on this page point to official sources or resources made public by their creators. A rights-cleared version of the archive can be added here later.
Tutoring and questions
I occasionally take on students for GAMSAT tutoring, particularly for Sections 1 and 2. Availability varies. If you would like to ask about tutoring or this resource, email bodhi.mcnally@gmail.com.