First attempt I scored a 52, which put me well below the cutoff for every Australian medical school I was targeting. I took 8 months, working part-time, to prepare properly and retook it with a 68, which got me into two programs. The difference was almost entirely Section III — I went from a 48 to a 65 by treating it like an actual science degree review rather than just practice problems.
For Section III I spent the first 3 months on pure content review — biology, chemistry, physics, and organic chemistry from first-principles textbooks, not condensed guides. I did about 2.5 hours per day, six days a week. The GAMSAT isn't testing memorization; it's testing your ability to reason through novel problems using underlying concepts, and if those concepts aren't solid you can't reason your way through anything.
Section I improved once I started treating it like a critical reasoning exam rather than a comprehension test. I stopped highlighting passages and started identifying argument structures. Went from a 55 to a 62 using that approach over about 6 weeks of focused work.
Section II is the one people neglect most. I wrote one essay per week for five months, got feedback from a tutor four times, and that alone pushed my score from a 54 to a 60. The markers want a clear thesis and controlled evidence — they're not impressed by vocabulary.
Going from a 52 to a 68 in one sitting is genuinely impressive. That's not just study hours — that's a complete rethink of how you're approaching each section. Congrats on getting in.
Section II feedback from an actual tutor changed my scores dramatically. I was getting 54s consistently until someone told me my essays were descriptive rather than argumentative. One structural fix and I jumped to 61.
The argument structure approach for Section I is something I've been telling people for two years and almost no one listens. It feels counterintuitive but once you stop trying to remember every detail of a passage it actually gets faster.
The first-principles approach for Section III is the right call. I made the mistake of using condensed notes and could answer practice questions but completely fell apart on the novel experimental ones. Cost me at least 12 points.
This is exactly how I approached my retake and it made such a difference. I stopped treating wrong answers as things to just cross off and started asking myself "why did the test designers include this option?" because usually the wrong answers are designed to catch specific misconceptions. Once I figured out what misconception each distractor was targeting, I actually understood the underlying concept way better than if I'd just drilled the right answer a hundred times.
Section III especially rewards this because so much of it is about applying reasoning to unfamiliar contexts, not recalling facts. If you only memorize right answers you're just pattern matching, and GAMSAT is really good at breaking that. It's more work upfront but you'll notice pretty quickly that you start catching yourself before you fall into traps rather than getting burned by them.
Just wanted to jump in with a quick update since I've been following this thread. Sat a full timed practice test last weekend and pulled a 64, which honestly shocked me because I was sitting around 57-58 on most of my mocks up until now. Section III is finally clicking. I'm booked for the September sitting so there's still a bit of time to push that up.
For anyone struggling with Section II like I was, I found this really useful: gamsat/questions/written communication and essay writing. It's not the flashiest resource but it helped me stop panicking about the essays and actually have something to say. Good luck to everyone else prepping, it does get less terrifying eventually.
Working part-time honestly made scheduling harder than I expected, but I found that consistency beat long sessions every time. I did 45 minutes before work three days a week and one longer block on Sunday mornings — that's it. Section III clicked when I stopped trying to memorize content and started drilling actual reasoning through practice sets. I found resources like gamsat/questions/documentation and record keeping 5 useful for that because they forced me to slow down and actually think through the logic rather than pattern-match.
The biggest thing I'd tell anyone in the same spot is don't panic about the volume of science material. I hadn't touched chemistry in four years. What moved my score wasn't cramming reactions, it was getting comfortable sitting with a hard problem and working through it systematically. Eight months feels long but it goes fast when you've got a job eating your time, so start earlier than you think you need to.
Working part-time made the whole thing feel impossible at first, but honestly the constraints helped me get disciplined. I couldn't afford to study randomly, so I blocked out 90 minutes every morning before my shift and one longer session on Sunday. That was it. I didn't try to cram everything -- I just focused almost entirely on Section III for the first four months, grinding through chemistry and physics concepts I'd basically forgotten from undergrad. It wasn't pretty but it worked.
The thing nobody told me is that Section III rewards pattern recognition more than raw knowledge. Once I'd done enough practice passages I started seeing the same question types over and over, and that's when my scores actually moved. If you're working full-time or part-time, don't try to study like someone who has six hours a day free. Find your non-negotiable window, protect it, and just show up every single day. Consistency over volume.