Hi all
Time for another update. A friend's boyfriend is attempting GAMSAT this year and she asked some time ago what I did to prepare. I've already outlined what I DID, so I thought I might post about what I READ.
So here goes, my GAMSAT reading list. I guarantee that the following list contains all of the requisite knowledge to pass GAMSAT (this is not something miraculous, it's posted in plain English on the ACER website). PS: please excuse the lack of Harvard referencing :)
Science:
- Chemistry and Chemical Raectivity: 5th edn, Kotz and Treichel (well written)
- Introduction to Organic Chemistry; 2nd edn, Brown (nothing was going to make me love organic chemistry, but this book helped me to not hate it entirely!)
- Biology, 5th edn, Campbell, Reece and Mitchell (I love this book and it's currently serving as my mouse pad!)
- Physics Key Ideas: 3rd edn, Essentials Education (this was my actual physics book for year 12, it's alittle clunky but solid)
- My year 11 maths book (can't remember it's name but it was as useless at that time as it was in high school....but I did a lot of practice questions to hone my mathematical skills)
- Mensa Logic Brain Teasers
- Defying Hitler: Sebastian Haffner (an illuminating account and cautionary tale of being a regular person in pre-NAZI Germany, great book)
- Kidnapped: Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my favourite books as a child)
- Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stevenson (another fabourite)
- Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu (a little less reader friendly, only read part of it)
- Oliver Twist: Charles Dickens (I've tried on multiple times to read Dickens and always struggled with the style of writing; when I finally comitted to reading this I LOVED it! Great for honing your language manipulation skills)
- The Story of My Life: Helen Keller (an amazing book and all round amazing woman)
- English Passengers: Matthew Kneale (won the 2000 Whitbread Book of the Year, my all time favourite book, I've read it 3 or 4 times now!)
- Angela's Ashes: Frank McCourt (before it was a sequel and a movie and a t-shirt and a breakfast cereal....thanks Oprah....it was just an all round top read....another of my favourites!)
- The New Testament (I was tempted to put Jesus as the author....but that might offend some people :) I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to be learnt from some of the wisest people the world has ever seen)
- The Annalects: Confucius (what a legend, top read)
- The complete works of Gary Larson (if you get his humour you basically a shoe in for the humanities)
- Lorenzo's Oil
- Patch Adams
- Good Will Hunting??
- Shawshank Redemption
- There were more but I can't recall off the top of my head
- Vivaldi
- Pachelbel
- An assortment of other classical music that I found inherently easy to listen to, I think the main album was entitled 'The Best Classical Music of All Time Ever' or somthing similarly silly, but the music was great
All told this reading list is worth about $500 from any online book seller or, to quote Good Will Hunting, about $5 in late fees from your public library. It took me 3 1/2 weeks of solid reading for 10+ hours a day to get through this lot and take notes. Best time I ever spent and it achieved what I set out to achieve.
As a side note, remember there is a rate of memory attrition to anything you learn. Let's assign it an arbitrary value of 5% per day. Cramming every day for a solid month before test day is better than a year of studying 1 hour per day. 5 years down the line I remember officially none of what I studied, but I could re-learn it all in a month if needed. Of course studying an hour each day is a good habit and worth while to do, but bear in mind that the GAMSAT is an 8 hour (ish) Battle Royale. You need to go into that thing like a finely tuned athlete ready to smash the competition. Maybe study for an hour a day for the 11 months before February, but in February/March, you train like your life depends on it!!
Good luck peeps!
