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Reasoning in Humanities and Social Sciences

Every GAMSAT guide, e-book and preparation course agrees – if you want to score highly on Section 1 – you need to continually practice GAMSAT-style questions. This site enables you to do exactly that.

Helping students prepare for Section 1 since 2012 – this website contains 100’s of free GAMSAT-style reading comprehension challenges. Answers and explanations are posted in the comments. Use the navigation bar above to find what you are looking for.

If you’re also looking for help with GAMSAT Section 2, then GAMSAT Sample Essays is the sister site of this one. There you can look at sample essays sent in by students along with tutorials and advice for improving your score on GAMSAT Section II.

Website currently under maintenance: some older content may not be available at this time. Check back soon for more practice questions and tutorials!

Unit 45 – Stockholm Syndrome

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below has been adapted from Culture and Religion – Sharia Law, from the iMinds series.

At first glance two of the 1970’s most notorious bank robberies would seem to have nothing in common. They occurred eight months apart, for different motives, on opposite sides of the globe. But these two incidents would prove seminal to the development and understanding of a curious and once controversial psychological condition; Stockholm Syndrome.

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Unit 46 – Tomoe Nage Instructional

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 4 minute 30 seconds

(This module is very similar to one that appeared on the March 2012 GAMSAT, which was themed on fishing and required students to interpret both text and illustrations together)

Adapted from ‘Judo Masterclass Techniques: Tomoe Nage’ by Katsuhiko Kashiwazaki

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Unit 47 – Real Life & Celebs

Difficulty: Easy

Time: 7 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below is an adaptation of an article by journalist, Julian Norman, published in The Guardian in June 2012.

Seaweed. Marmite. No, egg whites. Or maybe grilled chicken. Actually, hang on, try a handful of unsalted nuts. No bread though. Bread is poison.

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Unit 48 – Geometric Analogies

Difficulty: Very Hard

Time: 3 minutes

The segment below has been adapted from How To Solve It by George Polya.

Analogy is a sort of similarity. Similar objects agree with each other in some respect, analogous objects agree in certain relations of their respective parts.

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Unit 49 – Multilingualism In The EU

Difficulty: Hard

Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below is adapted from an article published on http://www.euractiv.com on 4th July 2012.

Jean Quatremer, a renowned French political journalist from the Daily Libération, complained about the official press statements accompanying the Commission’s economic recommendations to member states, published on 30 May.

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Unit 50 – Hannibal Lecter’s Memory Palace

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below is an extract from Hannibal by Thomas Harris

The memory palace was a mnemonic system well known to ancient scholars and much information was preserved in them through the Dark Ages while vandals burned the books. Like scholars before him, Dr. Lecter stores an enormous amount of information keyed to objects in his thousand rooms, but unlike the ancients, Dr. Lecter has a second purpose for his palace; sometimes he lives there. He has passed years among its exquisite collections, while his body lay bound on a violent ward with screams buzzing the steel bars like hell’s own harp.

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Unit 51 – Comparing Songs About Ageing

Difficulty: Easy

Time: 6 minutes

Song 1: Help The Aged, by Pulp

Help the aged,
One time they were just like you,
Drinking, smoking cigs and sniffing glue.
Help the aged,
Don’t just put them in a home,
Can’t have much fun when they’re all on their own.
Give a hand, if you can,
Try and help them to unwind.
Give them hope and give them comfort
’cause they’re running out of time.

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Unit 52 – Synthetic Life Forms

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below has been adapted from an article by Clive Cookson originally published in the Financial Times, July 2012.

Craig Venter, king of the genome, has been uncharacteristically quiet for a couple of years since his laboratory created the world’s first synthetic life form, a microbe whose genes were made entirely from inanimate chemicals. Some critics downplayed Venter’s achievement in 2010 because he did not make a novel form of life. The project was a technical tour de force, a demonstration that scientists could move on from reading to writing genes, but it reproduced an existing microbe called Mycoplasma Mycoides, with just a few “watermarking” additions to distinguish its DNA from the natural bacterium.

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GAMSAT Advice From 1st Year GEM Students

I surveyed the University College Dublin Graduate-entry Medicine class of 2016 to gather some advice for anyone sitting the GAMSAT. Word for word, here’s what they had to say:

  • Look around on the forums for advice before planning how you are going to tackle the GAMSAT. Use newmediamedicine.com and pagingdr.net. The GAMSAT is tough but a good score is achievable. Use the previous experience of others to help you maximise your chances.
  • Start studying early. If you have any decent level of English the essay section will be fine.
  • Don’t waste your money on the preparation courses, there are plenty of free online resources and also get all the sample papers from ACER off their website, well worth paying for.
  • Use Khan academy online videos, really helped me through.
  • You have to want it. If you want it badly enough then the study, the stress, the cost, the grinds and the time it takes up won’t matter. I sat the GAMSAT 4 times. The only difference in the last time I sat it, I just wanted it more than anything. I gave up everything for an entire summer and just focused on it. On a side note get the Guru Method books. I know 5 people including myself that used these books to prepare for the GAMSAT and they are all now in medicine. Once each person used them, they got in. I used mine on the 4th time I sat the exam and got more than enough to get in anywhere. All 5 individuals got over 60 too. I know they’re expensive but they are definitely worth it. Grinds in areas you are weak in will definitely help too. I got grinds in chemistry and it without doubt got me through the science section. I know I’ve rabbeted on a bit but main piece of advice is just want it more than anything.
  • Don’t stress!
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Top 5 Ways to Save Time on GAMSAT Section 1

1) Read The Questions First – Sometimes

Sometimes it’s appropriate to read the questions first, other times it’s not.

Short Poems, Songs and Units that don’t require very little reading: Questions first.

Poems and songs can often be interpreted in many ways and will always require multiple readings. The material is ambiguous, but the questions are not. Therefore allow the questions to guide your interpretation. Read one question, then look for the answer. Read another question, look for the answer. Each question frames your interpretation of the ambiguous material and informs the meaning you will attribute to it.

In the case of units that require interpretation of charts or diagrams, most of the reading is in the questions anyway. Posters too. You might spend a minute reading the text of a poster, only to discover that there’s only one question – and it asks about the image!

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