When students choose the degree they want to study for in the last year of school, they usually want to find something that is both interesting and pays well. The problem is that the two don't always go hand in hand.
One of the cases in which they do though is medicine. On the one hand, medicine is an area that is closely related to people. After your medical studies, you will meet new patients every day and find solutions to their problems, which makes the job not only inspiring but also highly rewarding.
On the other hand, medicine is one of the best-paid professions in Australia. Falling sick is unfortunately part of our life and people will always need doctors and will be ready to pay them.
So, if you decide to study medicine in the last year of school, there will certainly be a lot of challenges awaiting you but you will definitely not regret it.
However, not all students realise the benefits of medical studies in the year they graduate from school, so they may start a different degree. Even in that case, they still have a chance to switch to medicine later on.
Alongside undergraduate medical degrees, universities and medical schools also offer graduate-entry programs to which students can apply after getting their first diploma. The only problem is that to do so, they will have to pass GAMSAT (Graduate Medical School Admissions Test).
Gamsat can is a challenging test that requires not only good scientific knowledge but also general analytical and speaking skills. Yet, if you understand how the exam works, your chances to do well will be much higher.
That is why Superprof has decided to gather useful information about GAMSAT scores for you. You can find it just below and in our other articles on GAMSAT.
What's the point of GAMSAT?
Medicine is a profession that involves a lot of responsibility. To shoulder it, doctors need not only good knowledge of the human body but also strong analytical and social skills.
GAMSAT applicants are normally people who have already studied for three or four years at university and have acquired different competencies but they may or may not meet the requirements of the medical profession. The Medical School Admissions test was created precisely to check that.
So, GAMSAT is not just about knowledge of scientific disciplines but also general thinking and communication, which means that even if you studied biology or chemistry at university, your good understanding of science will not necessarily secure a high GAMSAT score for you.
At the same time, students with non-scientific backgrounds, like humanities or social science, can also try their luck and even do well in the exam.
Given the particularity of the GAMSAT exam, students shouldn't take it lightly. It is better to start preparing for the test several months in advance and try to grasp its requirements as thoroughly as possible.
One of the most important features of GAMSAT is, of course, its three sections and we are going to look at them in more detail right now.
You can read about registration for GAMSAT in our article.
Three sections of GAMSAT
Probably the most important piece of information you need to know to prepare for an exam is what kind of assignments it will consist of. So let's have a look at the GAMSAT sections and the kinds of questions they include one by one.
The first section of the medical test may seem the easiest at the first sight. It is meant to test the applicants' general thinking skills and is made up of stimuli materials, such as texts and graphs, with multiple-choice questions on their content.
Assignments in this part of the exam can focus on general academic and public issues and should be answered based on the applicants' general knowledge and logical thinking, so a lot of students don't pay a lot of attention to it in their preparation.
Nevertheless, you should be careful with the first section of GAMSAT because, as we will see later, it makes up a large part of your score and you may be caught off guard by general questions if you haven't had to deal with them for a long time.
The second part of GAMSAT is the most special one since, unlike the first and the third one, it doesn't consist of multiple-choice questions.
The objective of this section is to test medical students' communication skills and it involves two writing tasks.
The student will have to show their ability to express their ideas in a clear and well-structured way and the quality of the ideas themselves will also determine the score.
Finally, the third section of GAMSAT is made up of multiple-choice questions on scientific topics. 40% of the assignments in this part are about chemistry, another 40% about biology and 20% about physics.
They cover topics studied in the last year of school and the first year of university. This part can be especially challenging for non-science students, so they should allot enough time to it.
How are GAMSAT scores calculated?
Now that you have an idea about what the GAMSAT exam is like, it is time to try and find out how the final GAMSAT score is calculated.
Students taking the medical test have to solve all three parts of the exam and get a separate score out of 100 for each one of them.
The scores for the first and the third exam sections depend on the number of correct answers given by the student and the communication score, on the quality of their writing.
The final score will be derived from these three scores. However, they don't have the same weight. For instance, the score for the third part has the same importance as those for the first and second sections together.
This detail is essential for students because it means that scientific knowledge is more important for passing GAMSAT than the other skills it tests, so, their preparation for the exam should be organised accordingly.
It is better for applicants to start working on scientific questions earlier in the year and pay particular attention to chemistry and biology, which are covered in more questions than physics.
If you want to know how exactly difficult GAMSAT is, have a look at our article.
What is a good GAMSAT score?
Since entry to medical graduate university programs is highly competitive, the applicants should obviously try to have the highest GAMSAT score.
However, you should also be aware that getting all the GAMSAT questions right is almost impossible, so it's better to set realistic objectives when you start your preparation.
For that, it can be useful to have a look at the last-year results, which can give you a clue about what GAMSAT score could be good for you.
The average score for the March 2022 GAMSAT exam was 59, which means that half of the applicants had less than that, and the other half had more.
Being in the 50th percentile can be a good GAMSAT result for a student. Nevertheless, if you are planning to apply for a very selective graduate degree, you should better aim for a higher score to improve your chances of being accepted.
A score that would have placed you in the 75th percentile in March 2022 was 65, whereas a score of 75 or higher would have made you one of the top 2% of the applicants.
The best way to know what score would be enough for you is to check the medical university and the particular program you are interested in and inquire about the entry and cutoff scores for it.
GAMSAT is not the only selection criterion
GAMSAT is an important exam for applicants to graduate-entry medical programs but it is not the only criterion used by universities and medical schools for selection.
In most places, admissions depend on three elements: the GPA, the GAMSAT score and the interview result. Among these, the most important one is the latter, but you need to be selected for it based on the former two.
So, even though your GAMSAT score counts approximately 25% of your final ranking alongside your GPA, both your GPA and GAMSAT are crucial for getting to the interview stage in the first place.
That's why GAMSAT preparation has to be taken seriously by students even if it may be time-consuming and seem less important than the interview.
What's more, you will have time to prepare for interviews in medical schools once GAMSAT is over as there is always a delay between GAMSAT and the actual application period.
If you feel that your GAMSAT score and GPA are really good, you will be more as well, so you will study more productively and achieve a better final result.
To find out more about GAMSAT test periods, refer to our blog on the topic.
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