Des O'neill GAMSAT Preperation Review

The Des O'Neill books contain extremely popular preparation materials, the last released edition were from 2013 (There have been no new updates to the newer versions) but most of the content is till relevant today (at the time of writing this review). The naming of the books have changed over the years, some books contain theories and questions and others just contain questions. and there are mock exams. In summary, I found the questions to be extremely similar to the actual GAMSAT, the theory side was quite light.

There is a reason why Des O'neill books have become so popular, if you can look past the 7 year old, heavily abused and yellowing paper with fading ink, it may become your best resource. Some of the books begin with light theory describing subjects within the section that you may see in the GAMSAT. The theory here is very light and is focused on what you may see and how to approach it. Followed by many, many questions on that section. There is only approach described and is outdated, it is still viable but after many years I can think of many alternate approaches to reaching a certain answer. The GAMSAT does not have a cookie-cutter, one size fits all approach and you must be able to adapt to certain questions. A similar formula is used for section 2 but is for more in-depth and contains many examples. After these examples are notes from the markers which are extremely valuable resources, looking at examples are great but being able to tell what was good or bad about them will help you improve.

Each book contains heaps of questions and are extremely similar to ACER's questions, after many years ACER has included newer and slightly different questions so unfortunately O'Neill's questions do not provide the greatest variety. Sections 1 questions include comprehension from extracts, poems, quotes, cartoons and instructional images. There was a lack of figures and diagrams, only saw a few, which are much more prevalent in the modern GAMSAT. Section 2 questions aren't 5 stimuli per question like the GAMSAT but one followed by an example as described earlier. I believe this is sufficient for practice but obviously not to recreate exam conditions. The themes are quite varied and don't contain many controversial subjects. Some of the section 3 questions contain worked solutions, which are great to study and have held up the best over the years. Science is science and it hasn't changed much over the years, definitely still relevant. There are many questions and quite varied, perhaps a bit chemistry heavy but only a minor issue from my side.

If you do find a practice exam from Des O'Neill that hasn't been scribbled over, they are great but as always i'd advise you to only use ACER's material to estimate your potential GAMSAT score.

In conclusion, Des O'Neill's textbooks are excellent for your question bank particularly section 2 and 3. If you are looking for background theory or concepts they will not provide you enough. The GAMSAT is designed in a way that is doesn't require recalling of information and the books are presented in that way. However, I found there to be an advantage in having background knowledge in the concepts being assessed. Section 1 questions are good, I'd advise you to find addition sources on top of these questions. Section 2 is by far the best, take your time write an essay to the prompts and compare yours to the example, critic yours and theirs using the markers notes and find where you can improve. Eventually you'll want to find questions that will mimic the GAMSAT with 5 quotes relating to one theme. Section 3 questions are great to add to your question bank you may want to do extra theory before hand.