The Science Section is mostly red herrings
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In 1686, a British magazine was touting an effective way to prolong a fox hunt:
Drag a dead cat across the trail, masking the fox’s scent and confusing the hounds. The author suggested using a red herring if no cats were available.
Sounds like a far less cruel approach, too!
This is based on the fact that smoked and salted herrings turn bright red in the curing process and emit a pungent, fishy smell.
Hence throwing off the hounds.
Even since that magazine was published the term “red herring” has been used to describe a clue or piece of information which is or is intended to be misleading or distracting.
I spoke to one of our PG team recently, who scored 85 in S3, and he said that in his opinion about 80-90% of the science section stimulus material is red herrings: extra information designed to distract you.
80-90%!
That’s a lot of stimulus material that is not needed to answer the question and is in fact there to lead you down the wrong path, and you’d be better off to ignore it completely.
Generally speaking, the people who struggle the most with this section do so because they’re desperately trying to understand all the stimulus material.
It takes them a long time, they have to re-read things, they don’t understand a lot of it, feel incompetent, and then go back to the textbooks to try to learn more topics in the hope that maybe next time they can understand the stimulus material.
But it still doesn’t work for them.
What if there was a better way?
What if you didn’t have to understand it all?
Even better, what if you didn’t even have to look at most of it?
Imagine how much quicker you could get through the paper then!
And how much more straightforward it would be if you could find the 10-20% of info you actually needed – which is usually not that difficult to understand if you know what you’re looking for.
That’s one of the ‘secrets’ to doing well in the GAMSAT.
And the way this 85-scoring member of my team avoided falling for the red herrings…?
Well, turns out he used the same things we teach in our Bootcamp.
But you don’t have access to that right now so a close second is what I discuss here (which you can watch without joining my program).
About halfway through this training I go over some practice questions and show you how to use a few key techniques to simplify the questions for yourself and find the relevant information from the stimulus material quickly.
Like I said,
It’s not what we cover in the Bootcamp but it may help you especially if you’re scoring less than 70% in your practice papers under timed conditions.
Enjoy!
Dr “avoid the red herrings” Tom
P.S. Now you know why they call it a ‘red herring’.
You’re welcome.
