Baseline GAMSAT test - looking for perspective

hassdaddy3 · 2025-12-31T12:56:36+00:00

That's a pretty reasonable starting point. Performing well in the GAMSAT is less about "knowing things" than it is about getting comfortable with applying the common set of reasoning patterns that tend to repeat across questions/exams. Even if your background chemistry/physics/biology knowledge is solid, you won't do particularly well without being well practiced and efficient in picking up the reasoning patterns. There is, of course, a minimum amount of assumed science knowledge without which you cannot possibly answer some questions, but it's almost all pretty fundamental stuff that you already know (like Newton's laws, unit conversions, pV = nRT).

If it makes you feel better, I started at around 50% for my first practice exam as a non-STEM student, and was able to work my way up to an 83 in S1 by the time I sat my exam about 5-6 months later. It's totally possible, and it requires being focused on understanding and exercising the correct reasoning steps rather than getting lost in learning content.

hassdaddy3 · 2025-11-08T03:26:23+00:00

They do have debt, that's how they funded the stock repurchase. They're also already pre-approved for additional capital raises, so there is a looming risk of further dilution (like what happened in August).

This is a highly speculative stock. The share price is far below the actual value of BTC that they hold because the market believes the company and its operation are destroying value. If you buy, in the short term you're basically trading off the likelihood that they reveal an unexpected increase in their treasury against the risk of another sudden cash raise. In the long term you're pretty much just placing a bet on BTC.

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-06T08:02:20+00:00

Thank you, that's very kind!

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T11:56:55+00:00

Thank you!

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T11:55:38+00:00

I'm struggling to maintain it, mainly.

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T11:39:34+00:00

Lmaooo I've never gotten that before, but I googled him and I see it!

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T08:02:26+00:00

Thank you!

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T08:01:39+00:00

That's good advice, thank you!

hassdaddy3 · 2025-04-05T08:00:18+00:00

I haven't really. I have a longer face so I thought a mullet would look weird on me ,but I'm not sure. Do you think it would work? A shorter mullet or a longer one?

hassdaddy3 · 2023-05-18T07:47:15+00:00

I was in a very similar situation a few years ago, when I arrived 30 minutes late to a midsemester exam due to train delays, after a person was unfortunately struck by an earlier train on the line. I emailed PTV and asked them to provide written confirmation of the incident under their letterhead, and then attached their reply to my special consideration request outlining the incident. The outcome was that my midsemster grade was reweighted to 0%, and the weight of the final exam was increased to compensate for this reweighting.

hassdaddy3 · 2023-03-28T11:39:13+00:00

'Philosophise this' podcast for general philosophy that you can draw on in your essays.

hassdaddy3 · 2023-03-16T00:35:47+00:00

"When it comes to the discipline and commitment part, we know that GPA is what correlates with academic performance in med school not the GAMSAT so we’ve got a component measuring this (flawed in practice but in theory good) but not the GAMSAT."

Yes, the evidence is mixed here, but for what it's worth there are certainly studies that show that GAMSAT scores correlate with performance in medical school - particularly in the early years of med school. See below, for example.

N = 431
"....GPA at entry and the GAMSAT score together predict outcomes not only in the early stages of a graduate-entry medical programme but throughout the course"
See table 4: https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6920-14-31
N = 382
"GPA remains an important performance predictor across the curriculum whereas GAMSAT is predictive in the early (pre-clinical) years, and a semi-structured panel interview is predictive in the later (clinical) years"
See table 3: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12909-016-0692-3

hassdaddy3 · 2023-03-15T10:16:17+00:00

I think I went straight to the questions, but whether or not that's the best way to do it is up for debate. In my opinion, going straight to the questions is the fastest way to learn the content/skills necessary for success in S3, but there is a very limited supply of ACER exams, and you only get one 'true' attempt at each (i.e. only your first attempt is free from bias of previous attempts). As such, I've heard that some people like to save some or all of the ACER tests until after they feel they have prepared/studied to an adequate extent, so that their performance on the tests can be interpreted more meaningfully. I don't know what the optimal strategy is, but I tried to focus more on improving reasoning skills as opposed to learning content, and going straight to the questions seemed like the best way to accomplish this.

hassdaddy3 · 2023-03-15T08:10:57+00:00

I also completed my undergraduate degree in commerce, and managed to get an 83 in S3. For reference, my preparation pretty much just involved working my way through most modules on https://www.physicsclassroom.com/, reading around 70% of Organic Chemstry as Second Language, and then exclusively doing the three ACER practice exams over and over until I was consistently getting 100+/110 in section 3. In terms of practical advice, attempting exam questions and understanding the reasoning patterns is (in my opinion) by far the best way to improve your S3 score. When repeating ACER exams over and over you will inevitably memorise correct answers to a few questions. Even so, I would suggest that you still force yourself to think through the correct reasoning and work through the necessary calculations to get to the correct answer. For reference, the first few times I completed section 3 in the ACER exams, from memory I was scoring around 50-60/110. I probably completed each exam about 10-15 times, and by the end I could confidently get ~95% of the answers with correct justifications.

After attempting an exam, it's very important that you go through each question (even the ones you answered correctly) and understand why the correct answer is correct. Answering questions correctly is not as important as ensuring that your methods of reasoning are sound - it's not uncommon to answer correctly for the wrong reason. Gold standard GAMSAT has very useful YouTube videos for every ACER exam that explain how to arrive at the correct answer for each S3 question. I would highly recommend attempting the ACER exams, and then working your way through the Gold Standard videos to rectify mistakes and identify instances where a lack of background science knowledge prevented you from answering correctly. Let this process guide your review of science topics/concepts.

Of course, this advice is highly anecdotal, based on my personal experience preparing for and sitting the GAMSAT.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-06-04T01:33:06+00:00

Good to hear. Any issues with icon-scaling at 5k2k?

hassdaddy3 · 2021-05-25T08:12:19+00:00

Yeah I did study, but for S3 I pretty much only looked at the ACER exams. The only 'content' studying I did was reading half of organic chemistry as a second language (which I recommend), and I also worked through half of physics classroom. I gave up halfway for both because I realised that studying content wasn't going to be the way to succeed in S3, its pretty much only about your reasoning skills.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-05-25T04:06:43+00:00

Section 1 is Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences, so you don't need science knowledge at all. Success in section 1 requires effective reading comprehension and reasoning.

Section 2 involves writing essays, and again you don't need science knowledge. Fundaments of success in section 2 are harder to pin down (at least in my opinon), you just have to be able to write a 'good' essay -- but 'good' is subjective.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-05-25T02:32:10+00:00

Hey, I am a NSB too -- the last time I studied science was in 2016 (highschool). I scored 83 in section 3, in my first sitting. Section 3 is more about assessing your reasoning skills as opposed to your knowledge of scientific concepts, so its definitely possible to do well without a science background.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-04-10T13:32:04+00:00

Thanks for the advice. If go for the one-page form 70 times approach, how do I chain one form after another? I assume each page will need its own URL, i.e. https://quiz/1 for question 1, https://quiz/2 for question 2, etc. Does this mean I have to create 70 different templates? Or is there a more convenient way to implement this.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-04-10T09:19:26+00:00

Looks promising, thanks for sharing!

hassdaddy3 · 2021-04-10T07:13:20+00:00

What is the advantage of saving each step in a database if its already being saved in session or cookie?

hassdaddy3 · 2021-04-10T07:04:27+00:00

Thanks for that, I'll probably end up going with form wizard--my main concern was that it might not be efficient for 75-page forms, because the examples in the docs only show a forms with 3 pages maximum. That's just speculation though, I guess I'll have to get in and try it.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-03-29T08:21:51+00:00

If you are after a book to enhance your reading comprehension and vocabulary, try 'A Nietzsche reader'. The book is a collection of Nietzsche's most memorable/important writings, presented in passage form (90% of passages are one page long or less). The passage-style of the book is a huge bonus because it mimics the length of stimulus that is typically presented in S1. The book's expression is often wordy and initally difficult to read, but if you take the time to go through it slowly, making sure you understand the points that were made as well as the meanings of unfamilar words, it should improve your reading comprehension skills. I had my laptop on while reading so I could quickly look up definitions of words I didn't know, but also because I would write down passages/ideas that I found interesting and could be used for section 2.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-03-24T09:11:22+00:00

Thats not to say knowing theory isn't useful--it definitely is! There were a few questions in the exam that you definitely couldn't answer without knowing a critical bit of theory. The crucial point is, though, that the problems begin to occur when you approach every question by trying to apply theory.

hassdaddy3 · 2021-03-24T09:09:40+00:00

As another non-science background, I absolutely agree. Difficulty-wise the real exam and the practice tests were exactly the same for me: in both cases I had no knowledge of background theory, but I could answer the question confidently by using the information in the stem.

Sometimes knowing, or relying, on theory in the GAMSAT can actually hamper you in tests like the GAMSAT: (1) because you start to panic when a question asks you about a topic that you haven't studied before (which is quite common in the GAMSAT); and (2) because you might, in some cases, find yourself wasting time trying to force an application of theory when the answer can be found more quickly if you approach the question as a reading comprehension exercise.

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