Introduction

GAMSAT Section 2 (S2) is called Written Communication, because that's what it's a
test of.
You put words on a page and your value as a med school candidate is
determined by how the examiner feels after reading them.
For many this is the most stressful aspect of the exam. Others love it. The
opportunity to communicate with the marking machine and influence him directly is
exciting to the student confident in his written expression.
On Sections 1 and 3 of the exam there is no room for flexibility or creativity.
Your answers are unambiguously right or wrong. But in S2 the only limits are what
you can do with a pen and paper. You may use any means you can muster to persuade
the reader to give you more marks than your competitors. And they are your
competitors.
Essays are not graded in isolation, they are marked on a curve by comparison
to one another. S2 has a very wide marking curve. That is to say the difference in
quality between the best essays and the worst ones is massive. And the mean is low.
It is a very small minority who deviate from the mean and move beyond it.
Without proper preparation it's unlikely that any given student will do exceptionally
well on Section 2, but for the same reasons a little effort expended in the right
direction can go a long way towards raising your overall GAMSAT result.

The process of producing a winning GAMSAT essay is entirely different to how you
beat Sections 1 and 3. Strict analytical processes and templates can be applied to
solving the problems of the other sections, and while demand by students has resulted
in the commercial production of many such 'templates' for producing GAMSAT
essays, the best students always make their own.
Although general rules may emerge based on what successful people have

done in the past, the best communicators do not adhere to any particular structure.
They start by openly asking the question 'What do I want my reader to understand?'
and from there they solve for the most effective and efficient method to communicate
it. If you wanna be in the top percentage of GAMSAT applicants you need to get into
the habit of thinking for yourself, and expressing those experiences in a way that
creates empathy and understanding with your readers.
The purpose of this book is not to inject your brain with the ability to produce
outstanding works of literature. It is to help you recognise that you already have the
ability to do this. You don't need to spend years in university studying communication
to master it. All you need is a little self awareness, courage and practice.
The contents of this book are based on the author's own experience of writing and
successfully sitting the GAMSAT. I scored an 88 on S2 when I sat the exam in 2012,
and have since reviewed and corrected hundreds of essays working with graduate
entry medical school applicants from all over the world. I have a great record of
predicting how a student will fare on the written portion of the exam once I've seen
their work and regularly speak with new medical students who have been through the
GAMSAT to confirm that ACER have not suddenly changed the way they mark their
papers.
The aim of this book is to help you get clear on what you need to accomplish when
you undertake GAMSAT Section 2. It contains a series of tips and instructions to help
you avoid common pitfalls and mistakes in your written communication, and to
dispel any false rumors you may have heard about how this part of the exam needs to
be done.
It is my hope that through reading this book and adopting some of its values you will
become more comfortable and confident in expressing yourself precisely, honestly
and effectively.
Devin Anderson
www.gamsatsampleessays.co.uk
www.gamsatsamplequestions.co.uk
Copyright 2016

Table Of Contents
Instructions and Objectives

Technical Details

10

Which Quote To Pick

Preparing For Unexpected Topics
Task A vs Task B
Depth of Thought And How To Disect Any Argument
How Misunderstandings Happen
Having A Big Vocabulary
Writing From Your Own Perspective
When To Use Quotes
Word Count
On Reading Around
On Taking Your Time
On Generalising
Catching The Reader's Attention

Exercises

31

Freewriting
Describing
Explaining
Transcribing
Editing

General Tips

35

Final Note

37

Part 1 - Instructions and Objectives

About every two weeks I meet a new student who is totally surprised to hear that they
can approach S2 any way they like. There seems to be an impression among a large
proportion of the GAMSAT population that there is a specific essay format that needs
to be followed in order to succeed. This is not true.
The instructions on S2 are as follows:
Consider the following comments and develop a piece of writing in response to
one or more of them. Your writing will be judged on the quality of your response
to the theme; how well you organise and present your point of view. and how
effectively you express yourself.
You will not be judged on the views or attitudes you express.

There is a huge amount of conflicting information online about what these

instructions mean, and how you should respond to them. Rumors are propagated in
part by commercial entities selling their own brand of solution to the problem of
Section 2, and in part by confused students discussing the topic in forums. Here I'm
going to try and break this down so we can make a bit more sense of what is actually
required of you.

Develop a piece of writing...

A 'piece of writing' does not necessarily mean an essay. It is true that the majority of
students who sit the exam resort to writing essays to get through Section 2. This is in
part due to the straightforward nature of the format, and in part because it is what all
the commercial guidebooks recommended they do.
However, just because the essay format is the most popular does not mean it is
the only way, or even the most effective method. I have worked with students in the
past who simply couldn't get their head around essay writing. They had no problem
stringing words together to make sentences, but their arguments and discussions
simply made no sense. For weeks we'd be banging our heads together trying to figure
out where and how they were getting so confused, and then it finally came out.
Do I have to write an essay?
1

No I said, you can write whatever you like

WHAT!?
Silly me for assuming they knew. Apparently all this time they had been
yearning to write a story or something a bit more personal and loose, but they had
been forcing themselves to produce essay after essay in the hope that they would
eventually find their muse. But their muse was elsewhere locked up in chains.
One such student I was working with for a long time ended up writing diary
entries on the exam. Dear Diary... Remember those? You might have done them in
primary school. Well it turns out they're still effective. The consistency with which
she could produce an insightful and interesting diary entry blew her essays out of the
water.
I'll talk more about alternate writing styles later on, but just for now bear in
mind that it is possible, and that you don't need to confine yourself to writing in one
particular style if you are naturally inclined towards another.
The definition of an essay is itself a vague one. Another word for an essay
might be an article, or a rant. An essay about something is really just 'Here's what I
think about it'.
Part of what makes the essay a popular format is its flexibility, and it's
important to retain that flexibility as you practice. Great writing starts with an open
mind. The more rules you burden your written expression with the more difficult it
will become.
Rule 1 is that there are no rules; write what you want. Say what you need to say.

... in response to one or more of them.

Rule 2 respond directly to one of the quotes.
I can't stress this enough. You absolutely must respond to at least one of the given
quotes. It tells you to do so on the paper.
The first step is to make it clear to the reader which quote you are
responding to. I normally recommend that you write your chosen quote at the top of
the page as your title to make it obvious. It is easy to briefly refer back to the speaker
in various ways once you've made it clear which author you are referring to. You
won't need to transcribe the quote again mid-essay if it's written at the top of the
page.
You don't get more marks for responding to more than one quote. And you don't get
extra marks if you somehow manage to include all of them and tie them all together
2

in a nicely wrapped summary.

Normally when students feel inclined to respond to multiple quotes it's because
they are afraid they won't have enough to say if they pick out just one. This is a
dangerous fear-trap to fall into that more often than not results in long-winded rambly
essays that don't really say much and neglect to enlighten us at all about the deeper
meanings behind any of the given quotes.
The best students I've come across generally respond to just one quote. They take
their time and explain what they think it means and what they think about it in great
detail. They may bring in a second quote to help explain the meaning of the first one
by contrast or comparison, but the intention is to use that second quote as a tool for
understanding the first not as an bridge of escape onto a different island of thought
altogether.
Depth of thought and specificity is the key. Breadth of discussion, writing a little bit
about lots of different things, will not get you as good a result as if you wrote
intensely and deeply in response to one precise idea. Which brings me to my next
point...

Your writing will be judged on the quality of your response to the

theme;
The word 'theme' is the one I want to dive onto here. To ask what is the theme of a
story is to ask what it is about. The response to this question can be either vague or
specific. The story might be about love. But equally it might be said that the story is
about what happens when a boy breaks the law to try and impress a girl, not knowing
that she is a police officer and she catches him out and he has to go to jail all alone.
Or perhaps the theme here is 'miscommunication'.
The theme can be anything, depending on your interpretation.
The trouble is that many students take the mention of this word as an excuse to speak
very generally about a topic and not actually engage with the specific meanings of the
quotes.
They look at the five quotes as a unit and then infer the existence of some
underlying general element such as 'politics' or 'the environment' or 'happiness' or
'crime', then respond to that instead.
It's not that it's incorrect to do this. The issue is that once you distil and
summarise the information on the page like this, you are drawing yourself away from
the material itself and into a separate world of your own isolated construction. I'll
explain what I mean...
3

To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace.

-Malcolm X
If I want I can look at this quote and say the theme is 'crime'. I can then respond to
the theme of crime with a candid or pre-written essay on the subject.
The core problem is this: Vague writing prompts stimulate vague outcomes.
Typically, when a student responds to a general statement, like 'crime', rather than a
specific statement, like the above, they end up lost for what to say.
Crime! I say, Tell me everything you know on the subject in 30 minutes or
less!
How do you react to that? What do you say? How do you determine what is
valuable and worth writing about and what is uninteresting? In responding to such a
vague and open request you are left with no specific goal. No objective. The reader
cannot help but pick up on this as it will be reflected in your writing. He will be left
at the end of your essay wondering what, if anything, was your point. What was this
student trying to communicate? I don't know, and it looks like she didn't know either.
I have no choice but to mark her down for haphazard communication.
Instead of falling into this trap, look at the quote itself. The quote is your theme.
Now, in this case, I have a very specific target to talk about. I have some very
specific questions to answer in order to make sense of what Malcolm X said.
What is the difference between being a criminal and remaining a criminal?
If crime is not a disgraceful act, then what about the continuation of it is so
disgraceful?
Is it disgraceful that a man should wish to continue living as he always had?
Does the nature of the crime matter, or is the law the standard of grace?
Ideas start to flow once you provide your mind with a specific writing prompt.
Imagination and creativity does not work in a vacuum. It is a reactive process that
relies as much on the stimuli that kick it off as on the writer that enables its
expression.

... how well you organise ...

Organisation and presentation are listed as part of what determine the 'quality' of your
essay. Again, there is no particular structure or order implied by this request.
4

Organisation is not about adhering to a predetermined pattern, it's about enabling the
reader to easily make sense of your writing and follow a linear circuit of logic.
Have you ever had a parent walk into your room and declare that it's a mess and that
you need to tidy it up and organise? It's frustrating to hear, especially when you know
exactly where everything is. To an observer it appears disorganised, but to you it
makes perfect sense.
If you asked your parent as you went along tidying, where should I put my red
jumper? Where should I keep my pens? Where does this chair go? They would
quickly lose patience. In asking you to tidy they're not asking you to fit your room to
an IKEA template, they're asking you to present it in a way that is easy to look at.
Appealing to the eye.
This is what organisation in writing is about. Enabling the reader to observe a
pattern and make sense of it.
The trick is not to worry about it. If you try too hard to fit your expression into a rigid
structure you can end up hamstringing yourself and leaving out important points
because you didn't know where to put them.
Get clear on what it is you want to communicate. Set a heading, identify your
purpose, then take the reader along for the ride. If you know what you want to say,
and seek to communicate that as efficiently as possible, then the pattern will be
obvious. The reader wants to understand. If you focus on making understanding easy
for him then he will naturally observe a method in your madness.

... and present your point of view ...

Present your point of view.
Don't generalise on behalf of others or tell me what other people think. Speak for
yourself. It's your opinion the reader is interested in. Not anyone else's. Speak for
yourself and write from your own perspective. Explain what you think and how you
came to associate with those ideas. Tell us what you believe, and explain how we
might understand those beliefs to be true. Give us context and examples to show how
you came to think this way. Guide us towards understanding and adopting your
perspective.
Don't be afraid to use the personal pronoun 'I', as in 'I think' or 'I believe'. This is
5

generally easier and more accurate than making claims like 'it is widely thought
that...' or 'some people might think that...'
As a writer you are under no requirement to defer to what other 'experts' say. While
writing or explaining a thing, there is no need to mention what someone else has said
on the topic, unless it's helpful to borrow their words for the purposes of
communication.
For the next half hour yours is the most authoritative voice in the universe. Whatever
you say goes. Every definition you make we shall assume, for a time, to be true.
If you say, 'Let's assume for a moment that rabbits are secretly in control of the
US government', the reader will agree with you for the sake of argument to see where
this goes. Just be aware that everything you say beyond this point relies on whether
or not this assumption is actually the case.
Your success in Section 2 hinges on your ability to enable your reader to understand
the perspective you present.
Your opinion can never be wrong, only misunderstood.

...and how effectively you express yourself

You can express yourself in many ways. What makes expression 'effective' is when it
results in you achieving your goals. In S2, that goal is communication.
Perfect communication is achieved when an idea passes unchanged from your mind
into the mind of the reader. When two people accept the same idea in their minds they
are said to be in agreement or understanding.
The outcome of effective communication is understanding.
The next question is the interesting one: how do I know when I've been understood?
Since words and sentences may be interpreted in different ways, how do you know
that your words have been received as intended? The answer is you don't know. And
you can never know. Without feedback (which you won't get on the GAMSAT) the
writer can never know if he has been understood correctly. The reader is the one who
experiences the understanding.

After reading these words you will have constructed an idea of what they mean. You
don't necessarily know that that idea is what I intended to communicate, but if I ask
you if you understand you will still be able to say yes or no. Logically you have no
basis to claim you have understood, and yet it's one of the easiest questions to answer.
Do you understand? Think about it.
The root of understanding is the feeling that you have understood. When you
don't understand something you feel confused by it. Understanding, on the other
hand, has a certain clarity to it. You know what it feels like. And that's what you need
to make the examiner feel.
The examiner can't know for sure if he has correctly appropriated the meaning of
your essay. You may have intended to communicate one particular idea, and yet he
has drawn an entirely different conclusion from it. What pervades, however, is the
feeling that he has understood. Without this feeling he has no other basis for
determining whether or not your essay makes sense to him. Everything depends on
the creation of this feeling in the reader. Make him feel this and you win. Confuse
him and you lose.

Instructions and Objectives - Summary

If I was to summarise my entire method for S2 in a single sentence it would be this:
Focus on explaining what you think the quote means.
Demonstrating that you've understood your chosen quote is an important part of the
response process. The easiest way to show that you've understood something is to
explain it. Explain how it could be true, and discuss any implications that come from
assuming it to be so. i.e. If this statement is true, what else is true? What else is not
true?
This is how arguments are born. This therefore that.
So if the statement is All dogs are brown, we ask, what are the implications of
assuming this to be true?
One implication is that, if all dogs are brown, then any animal that is not at
least a little bit brown is not a dog. That is not to say that all brown animals are dogs,
however. Ants are also brown, but they could hardly said to be very similar to dogs
for it. Colour is only one quality, of which these animals have many.

Another probing question to ask is 'in what context might I understand this
comment to be true?' Can you think of one?
If All Dogs Are Brown how do I explain those times when I have seen black or grey
dogs? I am sure they were dogs. They had all the qualities of being a dog, except that
they were a different colour. Nonetheless, if all dogs are truly brown, then there must
be an explanation for my misperception.
Perhaps I imagined the different colour of the dog. Perhaps it was a trick my
brain played by changing the colours to help me distinguish between animals. I know
in painting, you can make an object appear to be further away by tinting it in lighter
colours. For sure colours are a helpful distinguishing feature.
But maybe I hallucinated the difference of colours in accordance with coloured
images of dogs I've seen on tv and in cartoons. I saw what I expected to see.
Likely or unlikely explanations aside, it seems my own perception and
experience of dogs is in conflict with the stated truth. If I am to accept that all dogs
are brown I must, to a large extent, discount and distrust my own perceptions of
them.
It may be true to say that all dogs can be brown, if the situation is right, but to
say they are all brown is certainly not a rule that reflects my experience of the way
things are.
You see where I'm going with this? Draw on your own experiences to make sense of
the quote and explain for yourself how it could be possibly true. There's no need to
rely on foreknowledge of the subject (dogs) in order to write about your experience
of it. You can always bring in stuff you do know about to reframe the discussion. In
the above example the writer mentions painting as an example. Your favourite
hobbies can be a helpful lens through which you make sense of the story you've been
given.
Once again. Your instructions are to pick a quote and respond to it in depth. Your goal
is to have your reader feel like he has understood something. In order to make this
happen you need to have a specific message in mind that you wish to send to him.
The message is what you think the quote means. Focusing on explaining this
serves a dual purpose:
1) It keeps you on-theme and forces you to think deeply and specifically
2) It demonstrates to the examiner that you have understood the quote
You can't be wrong this way. Your interpretation of the quote is as good as any.
Now all you have to do is explain that interpretation in detail to the reader. The
process of explaining what is true will require you to go into detail on your subject. It
may draw you into constructing examples or describing contexts in which your
8

perspective may be considered to be true. The organisation and structure of your

essay will come naturally to you since you have a specific goal in mind. You will not
be lost for things to say, or find yourself wandering off theme, since you know what
your conclusion will be.
The rest of the book will be focused on helping you to get out of your own way and
enabling you to achieve this goal.

Part 2 - Technical Details

Over the past few years my role as a GAMSAT tutor has been less about teaching
students new skills as it has been about enabling them to express abilities they
already had.
Every student is different. Each have their own personal reasons for wanting to
be doctors, and each have their own hangups and unhelpful patterns of thinking that
they need to resolve. Without seeing someone's work it's impossible for me to make
helpful statements about how they should write or what they need to change.
Nonetheless, I've noticed that the same questions keep coming at me again and
again.
The funny thing is that so often, after I've answered these familiar questions
and allayed the concerns of the students, they go away and come back with awesome
pieces of writing without me ever having to instruct them on the process of writing.
The fact is you've already had years of practice communicating. Explaining things,
describing things, making sense of things... The digital nature of communications
these days means you've also had lots of practice communicating in writing. The key
to succeeding in S2 is just allowing yourself to communicate with the same fluency
and ease that you would with your best friend.
The task at hand could not be simpler. And yet it seems complicated by the
importance of the mission.
This part of the book is about removing the blocks that sit in your way and stop you
from doing what you were born to do communicate.

Which Quote To Pick

The first instruction in S2 requires you to make a choice.
Consider the following comments and develop a piece of writing in response to one or more of
them.

You will be provided with 5 different quotes and you have to pick one to respond to.
You don't get extra marks for responding to multiple quotes, and I recommend you
10

stick to just one. Very rarely does the inclusion of an additional quote-response
actually improve the essay. More often it makes the whole thing appear as two
separate disjointed ranbles.
Which quote should you choose? The one you feel you understand most
clearly. The one you understand will be the easiest one to explain.
Don't fall into the trap of picking a quote just because you feel like you have
the most to say about it. Volume of expression is not an indicator of success.
Precision and clarity is more important.
A clue that you understand a quote is feeling inclined to agree with it. If you
disagree with a quote it's probable that you don't fully understand it. The authors that
get featured on the GAMSAT are not stupid people. In many cases the comments
displayed on the paper for your selection have been thought about and developed
extensively by their authors over a long period of time. It's inadvisable that you
should question the validity of the statements unless you are certain you can
demonstrate that they are talking out their holes. Rather try to explain how these
statements might be understood to be true. Under what context might this comment
be true? When is this statement most relevant, and to who might it apply?
Brilliant essays may come from disagreeing and do go that way if you feel so
inclined but more often it is easier just to pick the quote you agree with.
If you have questions in your mind about the meaning of the quote, work it out
on the scrap paper before writing. Translate or redefine any words you don't know.
You don't need to be held back by a lack of vocabulary at this point. If you don't
know, for example, what the word 'eccentric' means, you may redefine it. Break it
down and have a go at expressing what you think it means.
To me, an eccentric person is one who runs in circles a lot. Again and again they find
themselves struck by the same experiences and ideas that they can't seem to get away
from. To be eccentric is to be gripped by recurring ideas.
That's not what eccentric normally means, but it doesn't matter. From now on the
reader will understand what I mean when I use the word, and he will not be confused
so long as I maintain a consistency in my use of it.
If you don't understand a quote you are free to translate it. The important thing is that
you get clear in your head about what the quote means before attempting to
communicate your understanding of it to the examiner.

11

Preparing For Unexpected Topics

There's an extract of a sample GAMSAT paper floating around online that's been
scaring the shit out of students for years. It's a set of 5 Section 2 quotes, of which the
common theme is 'Modern Art'.
The very existence of this as a sample paper is misleading, because ACER
would never publish such a topic on the GAMSAT. It's too restrictive and it skews the
curve by giving an advantage to a very small minority.
ACER's goal is to provide a balanced and fair means of enabling students to
compete for entry to graduate med school.
At no point in the GAMSAT are you required to know things that are not written on
the paper in some way or other. In Section 3, all the maths formulas you need are
provided. All the scientific facts on which the answers depend are written on the
page. While knowing some of them in advance and understanding the expressions
used is very helpful, it is theoretically possible to get all the questions right without
'knowing' anything beforehand.
Section 1 is the same. In fact the less knowledge a student brings to Section 1,
the better. Apart from misreading the questions, the next biggest cause of mistakes on
Section 1 is projecting your own knowledge onto the page; using information and
knowledge of the subject that wasn't mentioned on the paper to answer the question.
For example, if the passage is about golf and mentions Tiger Woods. Then the
question asks what kind of personality he seems to have. If you happen to know loads
about golf and be a big Woods fan you might get excited and answer the question
straight away from memory. This causes you to get it wrong while being so sure you
were right.
Even though, in the real world you might have been right in your description of
Tiger's personality, there was no evidence for your answer in the passage provided.
The answer to the question is based on the information that's on the page, not the
information that's off it.
Now obviously I've diverged a bit from talking about S2, but the point is that
you are not required to know anything on the GAMSAT.
The nature of the 5 quotes on modern art made it impossible to understand or
respond to any of them without having some idea of what modern art is, or having
some experience of it. It is an unrealistic set because it demands knowledge of the
student.
Also. modern art is a niche topic, and art students are a very rare minority
among GAMSAT applicants. There's probably only one or two in any given exam
hall. You can be sure those two guys would be delighted to see such a topic come up,
but everyone else in the hall would be forced to waffle. This has the dual effect of
producing a slew of incredibly boring, repetitive and meaningless essays for the
examiners to distinguish between, as well as producing two winning students who,
12

under normal circumstances, would not be miles ahead of everyone else.

It is in ACER's interest to keep the topics as open as possible. The purpose of the
quotes is to enable you to write, not to restrict you. The specificity of the quotes
provided is a creative stimulus. It is the hope of the examiners that everyone be given
a fair shot, and that nobody should have an unfair advantage due to the luck of having
read the autobiography of Barack Obama or whoever in the weeks beforehand.
And, of course, if something twisted like Modern Art does come up, as always you
are free to redefine the meaning of those two words however you see fit.
In my mind, modern art is just another phrase for technology...
Just make sure you make sense of the rest of the quote in the context of your cheeky
new definition!

Task A vs Task B
There are two writing tasks on GAMSAT Section 2, but the marking scheme is the
same for both. It is widely supposed that Task A should be an argumentative essay
and Task B is supposed to be a reflective one. You don't actually have to do it this
way, it's just that's often the easiest way to go about it.
This popular tradition of doing one argumentative and one discursive/reflective essay
goes back to the quotes themselves.
Task A quotes tend to be statements of fact. Eg. Dogs are bad
Task B quotes tend to be statements of opinion or experience. Eg. I hate dogs
The general theme of 'dogs' may appear in either column, but it's the way the
statements are presented and expressed that defines them as either Task A or Task B.
The nature of the Task A quotes are such that they tend to lend themselves towards
argumentative confrontations. It is easy to come up with reasons to support or
contradict a Task A statement. The comment almost seems to be inviting it.
Task B, however, is usually more subjective. If I say I hate dogs you can't
really argue with me. In a similar way, if I describe my experience of football as
'boring' who are you to tell me I perceive it any other way? All you can do to engage
with these quotes is reflect on whether or not the statement is true for you, and in
13

what way it is so.

If I say something like love is a flower that dies too quickly you're hardly
gonna feel inspired to fight with me about it, or stand valiantly in defence of this
statement. It's too vague, it's too floofy. Instead of judging the comment as true or
false, good or bad, tell me what it means for you. That's your best bet. What does this
remind you of? Tell us a story that might help me understand this analogy, or explain
it in some other way.
Both Tasks can be appraoched the same way with the intention to explain what the
given quote means and to describe any implications and predictions we can make off
the back of it.
You don't lose marks on Task B for omitting personal experiences from the
discussion. Just like in Task A you don't lose marks from bringing them in.
Now you might say that subjective experience is no basis for a rational argument, and
you'd be right, to an extent.
In an argument, if I claim that 'all dogs are brown' I may be expected to give reasons
or evidence in support of this claim. I must explain how this can be known, or why
we should assume it to be true.
If I say 'because all the dogs I've seen are brown', that won't sound very
convincing. In order for my claim to be true I would have had to have seen all the
dogs there are. It seems like I'm going to need more than my own experience to
validate this claim.
The problem is not with the way I have supported my claim, however, it's with the
claim itself. It is too general, and divorced from my actual experience. A more
accurate claim would be 'dogs can be brown'. How do I know? Because I have seen
brown dogs. In this case it's not important how many dogs I've seen, and my claim is
no less important to the discussion about the colour of dogs for being less grand.
I guess my point is don't try too hard to make rules of things. Talk about what is
possible, rather than what is certain or what is known. If you talk about what can
happen rather than what always or often happens, you open yourself up to talking
about the subject in different ways.
When looking for things to say, focus on what may be possible, rather than what you
know to be impossible. Aside from the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative,
these positive type of statements draw the reader in and encourage him to accept your
point of view and experience. They also enable you to talk about the subject in
different ways.

14

If you say 'dogs can be brown', you can then go on to explain in analytical or
scientific terms how this is possible (typical task A style) or you can just talk about
your experience and direct perception of the brownness of dogs (task B).
Communication is not about winning an argument, it's about cultivating an
understanding.
Whether on Task A or Task B, ask of the quote how is this possible?
How might this perspective be understood to be true?

Depth of Thought And How To Disect Any Argument

Depth of Thought (DoT) is a term I use to describe a very important aspect of the
winning GAMSAT essay. It's a somewhat elusive quality that you nonetheless know
once you see it.
There are numerous ways to demonstrate to your reader that you've thought deeply
about the subject. One popular method is the Thesis-AntiThesis approach which is
championed by many online in GAMSAT forums and in a number of commercial
guidebooks.
The method is as follows:
Step 1: Agree or disagree with the given quote
Step 2: Give 2-3 reasons why you agree
Step 3: On the other hand... give reasons why you might disagree
Step 4: Conclude on your points of difference between the two sides
The purpose of this method is to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about the
subject by addressing two alternate sides of the same discussion. Although there's
fundamentally nothing broken about this method, I have a couple of points I'd like to
raise in relation to it.
The first is that the popularity of this approach is such that a lot of students have
become convinced that this is something they have to do. They come to believe that
they cannot do a proper GAMSAT essay without arguing both for and against a point
and in believing so they limit themselves.
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Similarly, since this approach is so popular, you can bet you're not the only one
in the room writing an essay like this. By and large the essays produced by this
method are homogenous. Consistent but average scoring essays abound. Intentionally
structuring your essay in the same format as many other people is safe to a degree,
but unless you're a science god you may need more than safety to get you that place
in grad entry medicine. While it can be helpful to have a process like this in mind, it
is important to stay flexible and allow yourself the room for a creative divergence if
the feeling takes you.
My final point is that following this method creates a number of traps that many an
unwary student falls into. Trap the first is not knowing how to dismantle an argument
that they fundamentally agree with. They argue one side, but don't know how to
disagree with themselves, so the second half of the essay appears lackluster and a bit
stupid. Some students, in anticipation of this happening, intentionally write very
weak or seethrough arguments in order to make it easy for themselves to pick them
apart in the second half. Hopefully by the end of this chapter you'll have an idea of
how to dismantle your own arguments and won't fall into these holes.
The other trap, which seems to catch the most students out, is arguing too
generally the point where they have no actual conclusion to make. The arguments for
the motion share no common relation with the arguments against it, so no point of
contention or difference ever arises, and the result is that there's no way to say which
one is more valid or agreeable.
Here's an example of what I mean:
Claim: Dogs are bad
Argument: Dogs can be considered bad because they are dangerous. They have
sharp teeth that can severely injure a person and maybe even kill a small child. On
the other hand, dogs are good because they are man's best friend. They can help keep
rodents and foxes away and are good for guarding your house.
Conclusion: Dogs are good sometimes but other times they are bad. There's no way
to say definitively which they are, so it really just depends on your perspective.
To conclude that subjective experience exists is hardly news. This is the most
common cop-out ending on the GAMSAT. The ideal conclusion should be as specific
as possible, not as general as possible. And it should be drawn from the interaction of
the arguments for and against the leading claim.

16

Here's an example of arguments that interact with one another productively:

Claim: Dogs are bad
Argument: Dogs can be considered bad because they are dangerous. They have
sharp teeth that can severely injure a person and maybe even kill a small child. On
the other hand, dogs are easily trained to obey commands, and can be socially
engineered to be friendly and safe around kids.
Conclusion: Dogs are potentially dangerous when let loose in the wild, but make
great safe companions when trained appropriately.
The resulting conclusion is more specific and helpful. Upon reading this the examiner
will see that there was a point to the essay after all, and will feel like he has
understood since there is a clear takeaway message. It should be possible to
summarise the main message of your essay in one sentence. This example makes it
easy to do, whereas the former does not.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's look at how you might go about
deconstructing an argument that you've already made.
The fundamental point to be aware of here is that arguments are built on assumptions.
The truth of any statement rests on the assumptions made or implied by its
construction.
A fact is another word for an assumption. Facts are well known and socially accepted
ideas that are assumed to be true. Whenever you observe or state a fact, be aware that
it is also an assumption. Facts are easy targets for questioning because they hide in
plain sight.
Any argument or perspective can be turned on its head by singling out one fact and
asking what if it's not true. Christopher Columbus is a classic example of a guy who
changed a global perspective when he challenged the assumption that the earth was
flat. He took one widely known fact and asked 'what if'. The result was the discovery
of an entirely new perspective and a lot of sore indians!
Here's another example drawing from our earlier argument:
Dogs can be considered bad because they are dangerous. They have sharp teeth that
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can severely injure a person and maybe even kill a small child.
Fact: Dogs have sharp teeth
What if: They don't.
New perspective: If we could find a way to dull the teeth of the dogs we keep as
housepets then it wouldn't matter who they bite. Perhaps some sort of dog food could
be invented which subtly wears away the sharp tips of their teeth... What would
happen then? What else would change?
Bit creepy, but there you go. A new way of thinking about the same issue. With this
approach you're not so much arguing against yourself as discovering another way to
look at the same issue. Also, by isolating a fact that your argument hinges on, you
demonstrate an awareness of how your argument is constructed. You're showing to
the examiner that you've thought about what you've said.
You don't need to argue both sides of an argument just to show you've thought
about an issue. Demonstrating DoT can be as simple as highlighting and questioning
some of your earlier assumptions about the truth or meaning of things

How Misunderstandings Happen

A fact is an obvious kind of assumption. A belief is another kind of personal
assumption that is not so easy to spot.
A belief is something you assume to be true about the world, but which you
don't necessarily state. Writing down what you believe is often a very difficult thing
to do, since we are not consciously aware of what most of our beliefs are.
Many of our core beliefs are formed in response to early childhood
experiences. It's also possible to retain a belief while losing the memory of the event
that warranted it's construction.
Eg. You could be in the habit of setting an alarm every morning. Even when
you don't have anywhere specific you need to be. It's hard to rationally explain why
you do this every day, or what you are trying to achieve by doing it, without an
awareness of your own beliefs on the matter.
The origin of this pattern of behaviour may go back to a day in school when
you were late and had a very traumatic interaction with one of your teachers. You
preferred not to think about the event so over time you forgot it, but the belief and
trust in the importance of your alarm clock remains.
If I don't set my alarm, bad things will happen.
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Seems like a ridiculous thing to believe, but beliefs by their very nature are
ridiculous. They are rules we invent to live by in response to very precise and limited
experiences. They can also be formed in response to information we acquired from
other people which we then assume to be true.
Intensely negative experiences often lead to the construction of a belief or rule
to live by which, based on what we know, will help us to avoid it happening again.
The alarm clock example is important because it shows how beliefs can be both
influential and elusive.
Not only do unconscious beliefs influence our behaviour, they also influence the
sense we make of the words we read.
Misunderstandings arise from unstated differences between beliefs of the
author and the reader. In other words, when you assume the reader shares the same
belief as you. Or when you assume they know something you do.
Sometimes it's the most obvious things that you forget to mention. Let's look at
the following argument to see what I mean:
Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions. He was therefore an evil person.
At first glance it might look like this makes sense as an argument, but it actually
doesn't. It's missing something. The belief is the bit that's missing. It is the unstated
assumption in the mind of the author that links killing with being evil. If the reader
does not share this belief he will not be able to make sense of the statement. If the
author continues after this point, thinking the reader is with him, he will soon
confuse.
The above assumption (a popularly held belief) is that to live is better than to die, and
to kill is wrong and evil. The logic is that Hitler killed lots of people, and since killing
is bad, he is too by association with his actions.
That he killed lots doesn't on its own make him bad, until you sprinkle on the
subjective belief that killing is evil. It's a subjective belief because the truth of it
depends on your perspective.
Sometimes killing is good. Killing animals for food is widely considered good.
In some parts of the world fighting to the death is considered good sport. And the
execution of violent criminals is still a righteous process in many places.
Now you may strongly oppose all of these examples and say that killing is bad
no matter what way you slice it. But that is just your opinion. It's no less important
for being 'just' your opinion, but the burden falls to you to explain in what way killing
is always bad. Misunderstandings will happen if you assume the reader share's your
opinion. Communication is about building an understanding, and that process ceases
just as soon as you assume it to be finished.

19

Every statement conceals an assumption about the way things are. These assumptions
are subtle and often hard to spot. Look at this next one for example. The statement is
an explicit comment about the nature of dogs. The question is what else is this
statement implying? (Once we assume it to be true)
All dogs are brown
In order for this statement to be true, it must be possible for a dog to be brown. From
my own experience it's certainly possible for a dog to appear brown. Many dogs have
fur of varying shades of brown. At least they look that way when the light meets my
eyes. I perceive the dog as brown, but does that automatically mean that the dog is
brown?
How do I know that we both see the dog the same way? How do I know that
the colour you see of the dog is not a completely different shade;one you just happen
to also call 'brown'.
How do we know the dog even exists independently of our perception of him?
Perhaps the 'dog' as we know him, is just our brain's rendering of a completely
different reality. So then the dog is not actually brown at all. Brownness is just a
quality we infer and describe of him due to the way we perceive him.
It seems then bizarre to suggest that any animal that isn't a little bit brown is
not a dog, since his degree of brownness or not-browness is entirely predicated on my
perception of him. And my perception can change.
If I wear funny glasses with coloured lenses I may perceive the dog as yellow
or blue. Is he no longer a dog while I'm wearing the glasses?
Maybe I've gone too far with this one but hopefully you get the basic idea.
For the purposes of communication, assume your reader is a toddler. He's a 2
year old with an exceptional vocabulary and mighty command of the English
language. He doesn't assume anything unless you tell him to. He shares none of your
life experiences and has no specific knowledge of the outside world. He won't
necessarily believe everything you say to be true, but he will at least agree to consider
your proposals for the sake of argument.
Nothing is too obvious or basic to mention if it's relevant to the point you want to
make. Simplicity is the essence of effective communication. Simple writing is never
stupid writing.

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Having A Big Vocabulary

This is an interesting question. Should you try to use bigger or better words in your
GAMSAT essay to demonstrate a broad vocabulary.?
The answer is no, not necessarily.
The GAMSAT is not like Scrabble, where different words are worth different
marks. Using obscure words is not necessarily any better than using common and
well known words. The purpose of words is not to demonstrate how clever you are
and how many of them you know, their value is as tools of communication.
There are so many different words because they all serve a different purpose.
No one word is better than another. The common words are common precisely
because they are used so often. They are used often because they are helpful. And
they are helpful because they represent common ideas which are regularly required in
conversation.
Mendacious is an uncommon word, which describes someone who is lying or
not telling the truth. This is an uncommon word, largely because 'dishonest' is more
well known and communicates more or less the same idea.
Sterling is another word for 'good'. Again, it is less common to hear because,
for the most part, we use words with the intention of communicating ideas to other
people, and it's a bit awkward when someone misunderstands you because they didn't
know about one of the words you said.
The examiner can be assumed to know all the words, but he places no
exceptional value on any particular group of them.
In my experience the students who have English as their first language do not always
do better than the ones who take it as their second. They may know fewer words, but
their skill in using them is not necessarily any less for it.
Having a large vocabulary can be a helpful tool to have when constructing
complicated sentences, but it is not a necessity. And you certainly don't get more
marks for convincing the examiner you have one. He only gets to see a few hundred
of your words anyway. How is he to know these aren't all the words you do?

21

Writing From Your Own Perspective

Students ask me every month 'Should I write from my own perspective?'
And I say absolutely you should! Remember, the goal is to communicate with your
reader. You want him to understand your perspective. It is much easier to get the
reader to understand your perspective when you write openly from it. When you write
in accordance with what you believe, rather than suppressing your own beliefs in
favor of more popular ones, the words automatically come out more clearly.
Humans love to express themselves. And we love to be heard. Sometimes we
don't allow ourselves to be heard though, because we are worried about what others
would think if they heard what we want to say. This is exactly the kind of stifling
attitude that results in writer's block; not having anything to say because you're not
allowing yourself to say the things that come naturally.
If you have strong feelings about a subject allow yourself to express them.
If you've ever had to tell a complicated lie you'll know how much harder it is to
explain than something that's true. It's harder because you are trying to do two things
at once. 1) Inventing a story and 2) communicating it. When you write honestly you
automatically cut your workload in half. And as Mark Twain famously said 'if you tell
the truth you don't have to remember anything'.
There is no reason not to endorse your own personal perspective on the GAMSAT. It
doesn't matter what that perspective is. You don't get more marks for successfully
explaining how important vaccinations can be, and you don't get less marks for
explaining how Hitler could have been right to kill the Jews.
Too harsh? Not on the GAMSAT it isn't. It even says so on the paper:
You will not be judged on the views or attitudes you express
In fact, there may even be some merit to knowingly inflicting a very sensitive topic
on your examiner. If you are aware that what you are saying is a bit touchy, you may
be more inclined to pay attention to how you are constructing your argument. If you
know killing the Jews is an unpopular opinion you're gonna wanna make sure your
explanation of its validity is airtight. (At least I hope this would be your natural
inclination. Empathy is a helpful tool...)
Misunderstandings happen when the writer assumes the reader shares her belief about
something. Explaining the simplest things is sometimes the hardest because you are
inclined to leave critical information out. Obvious stuff that is so obvious to you why
would you even mention it. This happens especially often when you consciously
write within the bounds of normal social convention. In adhering to a convention you
22

are automatically making assumptions about what the reader does and doesn't
believe. To write what you think the reader wants to hear is to make more
assumptions about him.
So don't worry about it. Assume your reader is a blank slate. He's not judging you on
the things you think are good, he just wants to understand why you think that way.
Honest communication is effective communication. Write what you think. No matter
how offensive, insensitive or unpopular you think might be. In the GAMSAT, as in
life, you'll be surprised at how well your bold words are received.

When To Use Quotes

Unlike in the world of academia, you don't necessarily get more marks for quoting
authoritative sources in your GAMSAT essay. It is perfectly posssible to get full
marks in written communication without quoting anyone at all. (Provided you
respond directly to at least one of the ones provided on the paper).
The value of bringing in quotes is not to show off your expertise in an area, but to
help communicate your main point to the reader. Quotes are good when they help
explain what you were trying to say. Remember how I quoted Mark Twain in the last
chapter; 'if you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything'? That's what I'm
talking about.
Twain's words weren't exactly the point I wanted to make, but in a way they
contained the essence of what I wanted to get across. i.e. Writing honestly is easier
than not. Twain's comment is an example of one way in which being honest makes
things easier. I don't get marks for quoting Twain, I get marks for effectively
borrowing his words to communicate another aspect of my claim.
Examples are the same. You can bring in real world examples to explain what you
mean, or you can just make them up. Made up stories are just as good as ones that
exist in the public domain. Sometimes they're even better because you can twist and
turn the analogy to serve your needs.
Dogs are scary
Here's the quote we're responding to. Now the question, what the reader needs to
comprehend, is how are dogs scary? Under what circumstances might we consider a
dog to be scary? What makes them scary?
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Here's one way we might use an example to explain how dogs are scary:
There are many reasons why dogs are scary. For example, the WHO found that up to
50% of domestic dogs screened in 2015 had the capacity to transfer microbiological
infectants to their owners on contact. That's pretty scary.
Or:
There are many reasons to be afraid of dogs. Once I saw a woman get bitten by a dog
when she went to pet it. She screamed in terror due to the shock of suddenly being
attacked and the awful pain on her hand.
Or we can explain without examples or quotes:
There are many reasons why dogs are scary. They have sharp teeth, pointy toenails
and can bark very loudly and suddenly. Dogs often use their barks and snarls to
intimidate both other dogs and people.
None of these segments is less valid than the other. Each is a different method of
explaining. The student quoting the World Health Organisation doesn't get any extra
points for correctly doing so, though he may lose marks for incorrectly doing so if the
examiner happens to be familiar with the comment or statistics cited and his
explanation/argument leans heavily on the fact.
If you're inclined towards quoting people in your writing, I recommend you quote
authors you like or stories you love. Quote your favourite songs and movies because
they are the ones you understand the best and will therefore have the easiest time
explaining and relating to what you're talking about.
No material is too childish, silly, unimportant or unscientific to be useful when it
comes to making sense of things for your reader.
For example, let's say this quote appears on the paper:
Those who are remembered never die.
In explaining what this means I might go ahead and quote The Lion King. There's a
moment in the story where Simba is sad because he misses his dad. Then Rafiki, the
wise fool, denies that Mufasa is dead and says No, he lives in you! Simba is
comforted by the reminder that the memory of his father will always be with him.
Referencing simple and popular material can be helpful for building a common
24

ground between yourself and your reader. Just bear in mind when drawing examples
from the real world that your reader doesn't necessarily share the same perspective or
belief about events as you do.
So quote to rephrase what you want to say, not to exemplify your own broad
knowledge.

Word Count
The ideal word count for S2 is another popular topic among headless students.
The fact is that there is no word count. Your essay can be as long or as short as
it needs to be in order to communicate whatever your main point is.
I have seen students drop absolute bombs in just 250 words, and I've seen
others waffle on for almost 800 and still fail to say anything in particular.
The best essays, on average, tend to be around the 350-400 word mark.
This should not be understood as a target, however. It is merely a result of
everything else going right.
Normally when someone divulges a 600-700 word monster of an essay it's not
because they have so much to say, it's just because they are inefficient in their
expression and use of language. The sentences are long. Too long. And the examples
take ages to get to the point.
Not all essays are that way, however. I knew one student last year who
consistently wrote very long essays but he ended up getting a very high score on his
final exam. It was just his style.
If you have any sense you will strive to write as few words as possible. It saves you
time. It saves the reader time. Short sentences are easier to read, and easier to review
and check for clarity. If you are considering and explaining your chosen quote in
depth it is highly unlikely you will fall short of 300 words unless you are an absolute
surgeon with words.
A big word count is not a target, but if it's very low it might be a clue that
you're probably not going deep enough into your subject. Ask yourself more
questions. Question some of your assumptions. What if x is not true? How would I
feel if this happened to me? Has it happened to me? Can I give an example from my
own experience that would help clarify the point I am trying to communicate?
Keep posing questions to yourself and the words will come. If you're suffering
from a chronic issue with getting words onto the page you may have a case of
Writer's Block in which case, carry on. There will be exercises to help you loosen
up further on in the book.

25

On Reading Around
What should I read to prepare for writing GAMSAT essays?
This is another question I hear again and again. And my answer is whatever
you would normally read. You are not required to know what's going on in the
modern world of philosophy, politics or science. And writing is better learned through
practice than by reading the work of other people.
So read what you enjoy. Listen to the music you enjoy. Watch the tv programmes that
appeal to you. The stories you like are the ones you will remember. You like them
because you can identify with the feelings in them.
There is little use in writing about and quoting characters that you can't identify
with.
Don't try to make yourself into someone you're not. Be yourself. They already
knows the right things to say!

On Taking Your Time

I can't stress this enough - chill out. 30 minutes is loads of time. You probably
don't feel like it is, but trust me.
On your left is a blank page. This is your scrap paper. You can scribble
anything you like here and the examiner will disregard it. Probably. I mean his orders
are to ignore whatever you've put on this page but you never know with humans...
Anyway, take your time at the beginning of the session to get a few things clear
in your head before you start writing.
1) What do you think the chosen quote means
2) What do you want to say about it
The first few minutes should ideally feel like a word vomit. Put your pen on the page
and start rapidly jotting down ideas. Nothing is too stupid or useless to take note of
here. Filtering comes afterwards. Always filter your ideas afterwards. Don't worry
about losing time having to re-write anything on the real paper, it will be worth it.
How long does it take you to scribble 300 or so words anyway? Also, if you
know what you're going to write before you write it you won't need as many words.
You'll spend less time rambling and more time on point. Each sentence should be
relevant. Each sentence should serve a purpose.
This is back to our talk earlier about structure and organisation. Your writing
26

will be perceived to be structured and organised if each line follows logically from
the next in a clear direction. This is only possible when you have (at least) a general
idea of where you want to end up.
You should be building towards your conclusion, not realising it
retrospectively. The realisation of what your conclusion will be comes at the end of
the scrap paper session. That's when you know it's time to start writing. Your
conclusion is the pill you want the reader to swallow. The scrap is there to help you
identify this pill and then develop a method of delivery into your subject's brain.
Allow yourself the time to plan. Don't just force yourself to start writing out of
fear. Practice writing essays under time constraints so you get comfortable with the
clock.
When I first started practicing for the GAMSAT I was spending 5 minutes on the
scrap paper and 25 minutes writing. Then I found this wasn't enough time to really
figure out what I wanted to say, so I allowed myself 10 minutes instead. On the actual
exam I ended up pushing this to 15 minutes brainstorming/planning and 15 minutes
scribbling like a lunatic. My advice is don't let fear of the clock hold you back.
There's an exercise further on in the book for increasing your writing speed.

On Generalising
A generalisation is a broad statement, akin to a rule, about the way things are.
Avoid making generalisations when you can. There is no need. Generalisations
weaken your argument structure and make you appear daft. The best you can hope for
when generalising is to make a grand sweeping statement that your reader happens to
agree with.
Here's a seemingly harmless generalisation from an essay about charity I saw this
week:
The act of giving has long been viewed as a kind one
Seems like a reasonable statement to make, but it is imprecise and impersonal. It
would be more accurate of the writer to say 'I think giving is kind'. This sentence is
shorter, and more direct in its expression. The writer is now stating what she actually
thinks, rather than projecting her opinions onto other people and then generalising
them over time in order to big up the statement into something worth mentioning.

27

Pay attention here because this is an important point: Everything you feel like saying
has value. Your words are important enough as they are. You do not need to make
your statements more grand than they are. If you mean to communicate that beans are
a favourable food source, then say 'I like beans'. You don't need to go big and declare
that beans are a much loved food source and have been 'since the dawn of mankind'.
The tendency to generalise, more often than not, arises from a student's lack of
confidence in themselves. It is a lack of confidence in expression their own opinions
and direct perceptions of things as they see them that lead them to make exaggerated
claims.
A stiff portion of essays I read begin with meaningless statements like this:
_insert theme here_ is a very topical issue, especially nowadays when
pollution/climate change/chronic disease/technology/whatever is so prevalent.
It's as if the students are attempting to justify the existence of their own essay. It's
totally unnecessary because it doesn't matter how topical an issue is. It doesn't matter
if you spend thirty minutes writing about an apple you ate for lunch yesterday, or if
you devote all your time to solving world hunger in 400 words or less. The social and
global relevance of your essay is not part of the marking scheme. You don't get more
marks for tying your writing into whatever is going on in the media right now, and
you don't get more marks because your topic is one that stretches all the way back to
the dawn of time.
The essay writer reaps no benefit from the prevalence of the issue he discusses.
You are marked on your ability to communicate, not on what you communicate.
When you generalise you undermine the foundations of your argument, because
generalisation is a broad assumption that is very easy to prove wrong.
Whenever you feel inclined to make a broad statement about the way things are, ask
yourself, can I be more specific? What experience or belief am I concealing behind
this brand?
For example, if someone says:
Everyone knows that Muslims are extremists by nature
or
Many muslims are known to be terrorists,
28

We should ask, what are they really trying to say?

Perhaps they mean to say 'I am afraid of Muslims because I have come to associate
them with terrorism. Here are some stories I heard about muslims being terrorists...'
Being specific is challenging. People often prefer to speak generally rather than admit
that their expression of belief is founded on sketchy observations of a small volume
of personal experiences. They make an impersonal statement about objective reality
and project the awareness of it onto other people. Their fact is safe, concealed in the
mind of these absent others. Trust me, reader, these generalisers exist. And I'm
certainly not one of them.

Catching The Reader's Attention

I've left this til last because it's one of my favourite GAMSAT myths. The myth is
that you are somehow required to catch the examiner's attention. It is the belief that
without a catchy or attention-grabbing title and opening line, your marvelous
masterpiece will fall to the bottom of the pile and be marked down in absentia. How
awful and scary an idea this is for the student who feels 'uncreative'.
Fear and lack of confidence is all this is. The examiner will treat your essay the same
way he treats all the others. He has to read it because it is his job to do so. He may
tune out half way through when he gets confused and subsequently bored, but
otherwise he is with you. You have the examiner's attention until you lose it.
The easiest way to hold onto the reader's attention is to write short sentences. And to
do your best not to confuse him.
You all know that feeling you get when you're reading a burly paragraph on Section 1
and then half way down the page you realise you've zoned out and you don't actually
know what's going on? The most common trigger for that to happen is a sentence that
is too long or confusing.
You hear in schools how teachers complain that the students who most need to
hear the instructions are the ones paying the least attention. This is no senseless
coincidence. Students who find the material confusing or are watching it fly over
their heads are more likely to tune out than the ones who are on the same page as the
teacher, clued in and understanding.
Confusion leads to zoning out.
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Sometimes you're just in a distracted mindset and other things are pulling your
attention away. Maybe that's how the examiner is feeling. But if so there's nothing
you can do about it.
Like I said at the start, the average is poor and pervasive. If you are genuinely writing
a good GAMSAT essay the examiner will take notice. It will stand out automatically
by virtue of not being rubbish. And if you are writing rubbish, then the best you can
hope for is an average mark handed out absent-mindedly. (But let's not hope for that!)
If you are planning on a high mark you cannot operate under the assumption that your
reader is not reading. The winning student always assumes his reader is listening
intently.
So forget the 'catchy' title and write down the quote you are responding to at the top
of the page. Make that your title. This way there can be no confusion about which
quote you are talking about. The danger of creating a different or catchier title is that
you risk misleading your reader, or generalising and diluting the content of your
thesis. If you title about one thing, then write about another, you're gonna lose marks
for confusing your reader through inconsistency.
Everything you have to say is interesting. Don't worry about trying to say something
exciting that nobody else has ever said before. You are unique as you are. Write
honestly from your own perspective and you cannot help but say something different.
Don't worry about saying something agreeable or reflecting the most appropriate
response to a known global issue in the hope of garnering the examiner's personal
praise. You don't need to blow his mind or kiss his ass. He's a working man. All he
wants is to be able to read your essay once and understand what you said without
having to look it over a second time. If you can make this happen you are guaranteed
a top mark.

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Part 3 Exercises
Here are a couple of basic writing exercises you can do which can dramatically
improve your GAMSAT essay writing technique. The first two are for getting over
Writer's Block that feeling you get when you just can't think of anything to say.
The third exercise is to practice the art of communication, without having to
keep writing GAMSAT essays.
The fourth exercise is for anyone who feels like 30 minutes just isn't enough
time to write an essay.
And the fifth exercise is for addressing patterns in the way you write and
finding more efficient modes and methods of expression that appeal to you.

#1 Freewriting
Freewriting is one of my favourite exercises for getting over writer's block and
loosening you up for a brainstorming session. The source of Writer's Block is not a
shortage of ideas, but the presence of a subconscious filtering system in your mind
that's throwing them all out. It's not that you don't have anything to say, it's just
nothing that's coming to mind feels good enough to warrant saying. It's not that you
can't write is just you're not allowing yourself to.
So here's the exercise: put your pen on the page. Grip it comfortably and relax
your wrist and just leave it there. You don't have to try to do anything or think about
anything at all. Just sit and watch. Pretty soon your hand will start to move and write
all on its own.
The most important thing is to not worry about what comes out. Just write
whatever comes naturally.
By putting your pen to the page you are giving your subconscious mind an
outlet. You don't have to actively think of what to say, your mind will do it for you.
If you find it more comfortable you can do this with a keyboard as well. Just
place your hands on the keyboard and wait for the words to start pouring out.
The difficulty is not in finding things to say, but allowing yourself to say them.
Freewriting can be a bit scary, so you have been warned. I find that whenever I do it
my hands automatically resort to spilling my deepest darkest secrets onto the page.
Never a pretty sight to see, but it nonetheless makes writing about normal stuff come
a bit more easily.

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#2 Describing
This is a great exercise I've nicked from Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle
Maintenence. The rhetoric teacher in the story, when his students are lost and don't
know what to write about, instructs them to spend an hour writing about one side of a
coin.
You don't necessarily need to write about a coin. You could write about the back of
your thumb, for example. Or the underside of your shoe. Or the sounds you can hear
in the room you're in.
The point is to pick a very specific target that you perceive directly. This is an
exercise in translating perception into words.
The more specific the target, the better. It's probably best just to stick to a coin, or like
the corner of your desk. A car is no good, for example. Cars have brands and lots of
different interesting parts. The idea is to practice writing about something you know
nothing about. To describe something you haven't thought about until now. Picking
something entirely mundane is what you wanna do.
Give yourself a definite target and focus on translating experience into words.
It's a surprisingly helpful exercise that gets you into the habit of speaking for yourself
and describing things exactly as you see them. Beginning essay writers often
experience a block whereby they feel they have to talk about only what other people
have said. Especially students who come from a science background can have
difficulty with this, since they are not encouraged generally to have opinions or
explain their own perception of things. Citing authoratitive sources becomes the basis
for their reasoning and interpretation of experiences. And as we discussed earlier,
that's not a helpful limitation to experience while sitting the GAMSAT.

#3 Explaining
Explaining stuff is what communication is all about. The more you practice
explaining the easier it will get.
Pick a word, any word you see around you, or the first one that comes into your
head and try to explain (without looking to the dictionary) what you think it means.
I have a can of coke here. The word multipack is printed around the top of the
label.
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What's a multipack? I'm so glad you asked.

A multipack is a package that contains multiples of the same product.
Sometimes cans of coke are sold individually, but sometimes they come all wrapped
up together in groups of six or twelve or twenty-four. These bundles are called
multipacks.
There, that's one example of explaining.
You can practice with words or ideas, feelings or stories. Write about what you know
and focus on explaining it to someone who might know nothing about the subject.

#4 Transcribing
Here's an exciting one... Find yourself a chunk of text. 800 words is ideal. It doesn't
matter what they're about, you're going to copy them by hand onto paper. The game is
to see how fast you can legibly write 800 words.
The goal is to improve your handwriting speed. Fast writing is a very basic skill, but
the faster you can write the more time you will have to plan your essays. 800 words is
probably way more than you'll need to write a single awesome GAMSAT essay, but
it's good to work on endurance as well.
The more handwriting you do the faster you will get at it. If you're concerned about
the legibility of your speedy scribbles, give the page to someone else and tell them to
read it back to you. Don't worry about it if they comment that your writing is messy,
it's probably a sign you are destined to be a doctor. The important thing is that they
can read out the same words you wrote down.

#5 - Editing
Editing is one of the most challenging writing techniques. The game is to take an
essay, story or explanation that you've written already, and compress it down to half
as many words without subverting the meaning of it.
Shorter sentences are easier to read and understand. Around 8 words is optimal.
Anything over 14 words and you'll be starting to make things difficult on your
readers. Sentences that live past the 20-word mark are very challenging to read all the
way to the end without having to go back and start again. Especially if they're
preceded and followed by more beastly sentences.
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The goal is to be as efficient in your expenditure of letters as possible. If you

can improve the clarity of your communication by substituting in more precise or
accurate words that's brilliant too. Every edit you perform should make your work
easier to read and understand.
Each sentence should serve a purpose and help lead your reader towards the
message you want to communicate. If a sentence is not helpful then cut it out.
What do I want to communicate? This is the question you must keep asking yourself.
Check what you've written against your purpose. The more you do this the more you
will refine your automatic writing process.
Editing is not something you will do much of on the exam itself. If everything goes
right you won't have the time or the need to go back over your essay and edit things
out. This is an exercise you do in the months before the test to develop good writing
habits. As you discover shortcuts and ways to use fewer words, these techniques will
wire themselves into your brain. You'll find yourself adapting to these newly
discovered patterns and even developing your own unique writing style further.
It's like a basketball player practicing his throwing technique during training time. He
thinks carefully about how he's doing it and watches for any mistakes in posture and
movement to correct. Then when it comes to game time he can unleash himself and
just do what comes naturally. All the self-regulatory work has been done in advance
and now all he has to do is play.
This is what you should strive for in your preparation for writing the
GAMSAT.

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Part 4 - General Tips

We're getting to the end so I'm drifting a little bit off topic here, but I reckon it's worth
mentioning, for anyone not aware, of a few things you can do to improve your
performance without having to do any writing.

Exercise
Exercise is good for lots of physiological reasons. It reduces stress, it shakes you up,
and it can help you get into a positive competitive mindset. The GAMSAT is a
competition whatever way you slice it. In S2 your writing will be marked directly
against that of your rivals. And you wanna win. So practice winning.
Training with weights or against heavy resistance of any kind aids in the production
of testosterone the competitor's secret biological weapon. Running or similar
endurance exercises trains physical as well as emotional stamina. An essential trait to
have during the GAMSAT marathon.
Exercise improves the cardiorespiratory system which raises the oxygen supply to
your brain - the most important organ in the body (according to the brain). And
efficient blood supply underpins successful performance.
I swear I've never been as fit as I was when I was sitting the GAMSAT. My favourite
sport at the time was judo, which I was enjoying about 4-5 times a week back then. I
found it really helpful for getting out of the GAMSAT study haze. It's pretty hard to
worry about an exam looming at the end of March when there's a burly man trying to
throw you upside down right now!

Meditation
If physical activity is really not your thing maybe you could give meditating a go
instead. Gossipy health science journalists are now calling it 'the new exercise', and
this is one practice you should not avoid if you're interested in getting the most out of
your brain this GAMSAT season.
Meditation increases the blood supply to your brain, reduces stress and improves
overall energy levels. Have a gander through your future-favourite medical journals if
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you don't believe me.

Meditation has also been shown to improve concentration, overall cognitive
performance and self awareness.
The simplicity of the exercise is belied to a degree by the sheer volume of
information available online about it. It's actually very simple to do.
By definition, meditation is effortless observation. It's about sitting still, relaxing, and
letting go of your attention. Then just watching to see what happens. If a new
thought, feeling or idea comes up just let it happen. You don't need to judge or react
to anything that happens for the next 15 minutes, just watch and observe.
Meditation is about letting go of the reigns of your mind for a short while and
allowing your body to just be the way it is. If you're working towards passing the
GAMSAT you're probably spending a lot of your day concentrating and trying to
focus on things. It's worth taking some time out each day to do the opposite to let
go of your attention and just look at or listen to or feel whatever tickles your fancy.

Diet
A consistent diet can go a long way towards keeping you on the right track,
competitively speaking. The only thing I'll say is that you're already under pressure
with this exam. Be careful not to add to your stress by forcing yourself into
uncomfortable dietary requirements.
Being on a diet to lose weight while competing for the GAMSAT makes it harder, not
easier, as you're trying to accomplish two things at once.
Give in to cravings now and then. Now is not the time for giving up smoking
or that cheeky 3-in-1 on Wednesday nights. If your body is craving something salty,
let yourself have it. It may be just what your body needs after a long day of
concentrating and sweating over practice papers.
Eat well when you can, but don't worry about it if your temptations pull you
towards bold foods. Sugar and chocolate are important sources of energy and have
been directly linked by psychologists to the expression of willpower. (lookup
Beaumeister if interested).
If you find studying to be a grueling and offputting experience, you may
benefit from a sugary willpower boost. Then again, perhaps you are pushing yourself
too hard? Chill out now and then. You may be closer than you think to getting what
you want.

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Final Note
You can do this.

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