GAMSAT (Graduate Australian Medical Schools Admission Test) is an entrance examination that must be completed by all applicants to graduate medical schools in Australia (as well as some in the UK and Ireland). The examination is held only once a year, in the middle of March for Australian and Irish applicants (the middle of September for UK applicants), and takes a whole day to complete. GAMSAT is composed of three sections:
| Section | Time Limit | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Section I (Humanities and Social Sciences) | 100 minutes | 75 multiple-choice questions centered around the interpretation of prose, poetry, flowcharts, diagrams and cartoons |
| Section II (Written Communication) | 60 minutes | Two essays based on the themes of two sets of provided quotations |
| Section III (Biological and Physical Sciences) | 170 minutes | 110 multiple-choice questions made up roughly of 40% biology, 40% chemistry and 20% physics. The standard at which the questions are set is first-year university level (for biology and chemistry) and HSC-level (for physics). |
Each section is given a score out of 100, and then all three sections are combined to give a total GAMSAT score. For all universities other than the University of Melbourne, the science section of the GAMSAT is given double weighting so that the calculated total score is given by:
Overall GAMSAT Score = ((Section I Score) + (Section II Score) + 2 * (Section III Score)) / 4
The University of Melbourne only gives single weighting to section III, resulting in a total score of:
Overall GAMSAT Score (UMelb) = ((Section I Score) + (Section II Score) + (Section III Score)) / 3
The scores for sections I and III are not raw or scaled marks in the traditional sense. Instead, GAMSAT multiple-choice scoring makes use of a system called Item Response Theory (IRT). Essentially, each individual question in each section is allocated a set of parameters (question difficulty, chance to guess, etc) These parameters are then iteratively massaged based on candidate responses to give a best fit for how much "better" each candidate is than each of the questions. More detailed information is available on the Wikipedia page linked above.
For a discussion of GAMSAT questions from previous years, GAMSAT strategy and help with practice questions, head on over to the PagingDr GAMSAT sub-forum.