Just Doing Practice Qs Doesn’t Help Your Science Section Scores

Today we’re talking about section three and specifically, we’re talking about why doing lots of practice questions doesn’t work. It’s a common trap, so I want to talk about that today.

I was just talking to somebody on the phone and unfortunately, their priorities were all over the place but what came out of it was really interesting. What often happens with people’s section three preparation is that it’s a kind of a pendulum.

It goes one way or another, so it is it goes towards the side of doing a whole lot of practice questions and trying to figure something out or it goes the other way, where they go, and do lots of knowledge study. Study all the content and do some practice questions to apply.

It and it goes one or another, and there’s no happy medium, in fact, you’re on the wrong scale.

You need to be on a completely different scale to do well in the GAMSAT.

It’s not about either of those things.  It’s a common trap that people fall into when it comes to section three of the GAMSAT and you’ve probably often heard about the ‘smart science students’ struggling with section three or people having different kinds of techniques and recommending different things, but none of it really works for anybody.

It goes like this: because to do well in a science degree or any other degree in fact, what you do is you look at the syllabus and the topics that come up, then you, you go to lectures. You study the study of the content, make notes, study the notes and go to textbooks learn the content.

Then they do some practice questions to apply what you’ve learned and then you get into your exam and you show them what you’ve learned.

And that’s the usual recipe. So when people see section three of the GAMSAT, it looks kind of familiar to them. Same topics from uni, chemistry biology physics and so they use that same approach.

They go over the sections and they study all the content and this is a formula that most science students use.

And then they get into the GAMSAT and they shocked by what they see, because the questions are so abstract, half the things you studied aren’t in there and there are all these random questions. Random topics that you could never have prepared for and the things that you have seen before are presented in such an unusual way that you’re completely thrown. 

People often come to me and say ‘Dr Tom, it’s ironic I’m a science student and section three is my worst section!

I spent the most time on, but it was my worst one and unfortunately, that’s because they’re not testing you on the same things that you were tested on in uni. They’re not tesing you on your knowledge or logical thinking or problem solving because you have all these things. What they’re testing you on is reasoning skills.

Now if this sounds like you, then get in touch with the team. We’d love to help you apply your reasoning skills to the science section.