20 tips for Acing the GAMSAT

1. Register early and ensure all relevant documents are in place well in advance. Do not let any of the administrative burden get in the way of exam practice or your performance on test day.
2. Be prepared to dedicate your life to GAMSAT for several months. Accept this will mean a miserable existence occasionally punctuated by chocolate purchases. Once you have mourned this loss of your normal self, life can only get better. You might even start to enjoy the experience of obsessionally checking your answers and the increased mental agility you will acquire.
3. Have faith in brain as immense reservoir of information and adaptability. With training, your brain can conquer anything. A lame computer marked test is the least of its problems. Watch in wonder as your mind absorbs countless random facts and adjusts to practice by incremental improvement. Imagine you are laying the groundwork for medical school, where you will be required to absorb a torrent of disparate knowledge and aptitudes.
4. Only practice GAMSAT questions. Avoid anything else like the plague. Do not even bother - they will simply act as distraction. You need to immerse yourself in the GAMSAT ideology which is standardisation and measurability. Remember the computer marker takes no mercy. It will only care if you have crossed the right box. Save your esoteric knowledge of mitochondrial genetics for the interview.
5. Avoid the forums - don't go there. They are full of anxiety ridden nonsense, envious insinuation and misinformation. The GAMSAT is a solitary, dehumanising experience not fit for this world. Unfortunately you have to take it to get into med school. Hanging out with the panic ridden in cyberspace will merely increase your anxiety levels and impair your performance.
6. Plot graphs, track improvements, highlight deficits, empirically test strategies to improve your performance. Become your very own GAMSAT scientist. It will yield to your own superb initiative and outstanding understanding of your own performance metrics. Watch your time per question dramatically reduce over several months.
7. Time is not just of the essence. It is the essence. Monitor your speed against advised rate of answering questions. There is no point in taking the GAMSAT unless you answer every single question. This should be foremost in your mind from day one. Pace yourself and relentlessly focus on finishing practice question batches with a stopwatch. Give yourself a kidney punch when you don't.
8. Timing is everything. You need to reach your peak on test day. All your efforts should be focused on making incremental improvements over several months. Take the long view.
9. Don't be put off if you perform worse on one day. This is part of progress. The improvement incline is rocky and jagged, not linear. The important thing is an upward trend. Don't beat yourself up over bad days.
10. Feel the pain. No one likes the subjects everyone finds hard, but by confronting the areas you find most challenging first, you will make headway. Frontload the tricky areas.
11. You are 100% likely to hit a bad run of questions when you take the test or during practice runs. Why? Because this is probability theory in action. If you flick a coin 50 times, you don't get heads/tails alternation, you get occasional runs of heads and tails. The same with GAMSAT and easy and hard questions. Accept this and that easier questions will follow. Focus on easing yourself quickly and with damage limitation skills through the bad patch. Don't let randomness get in your way.
12. Build up your stamina - you will need it on test day. You should be able to focus for 5+ hours a day by the time you take the test. That means incrementally building up your stamina to a peak like a marathon runner.
13. Drink lots of water, eat bananas and other slow-release carbohydate foods on a daily basis.
14. Take a short break every hour or so to refresh your mind. Read a magazine, play your favourite song, dance around a bit.
15. Try and exercise every day, even if it is only a brisk walk or 20 minutes jog.
16. Practice good sleep hygiene measures. By this I mean sleep and your bed should be your refuge from GAMSAT world. Take a relaxing bath, read a book before bedtime, allow yourself the occasional afternoon nap. Don't compromise on your required amount of sleep. If you are an 8 hour a night person, have it. Sleep is there to nurture, refresh and consolidate. Let those REM waves loose on your white matter.
17. Desensitisation techniques are your tools for optimum performance. Remember that anxiety is your friend and your enemy. The Yerkes -Dodson curve clearly illustrates that you need an optimum amount of anxiety to enhance your performance. Anxiety is a universal, perpetual human experience. Better to learn how to tame it now than delay. Practice under exam conditions, imagine time pressures, feel the fear, imagine failure and then reject it as an outcome. Imagine sitting on top of the Yerkes-Dodson bell curve surfing the wave of optimum anxiety. It will drive you forward.
18. Reward yourself with a daily treat eg go to the cinema or buy your favourite food.
19. Don't do any intensive studying on the day or night before the test. A gentle skim and familiarisation with the exam format will help. Otherwise all that knowledge and acquired skill is waiting to be unleashed. Let it chill out before the big day.
20. Practice visualisation techniques. Imagine exactly how you want the test day to go. Imagine strolling nonchalantly up to the test centre, with all the time in the world. Know that you are going to be the coolest cat in the room and that other test-takers are going to envying the aloof ease with which you glide through the questions. Imagine leaving the room, a big smile on your face, an enormous wave of relief sweeping over you.

Dr Jamie Wilson MBChB MRCPsych is a psychiatrist and founder of Osler's Node - www.OslersNode.co.uk.