Sarah's story
GAMSAT Bursary
Did you know you were planning on applying to medical school when you started your undergraduate degree?
I always wanted to apply to Medical School but missed the grades so studied Biomedical Sciences instead. Applying for a Graduate Entry programme was always in the back of mind, but I knew how competitive and difficult it was, so throughout my undergraduate degree I questioned this a lot. However, after studying Biomedical Science and gaining more clinical experience it became clear that this was something I really wanted to do.
Can you briefly say what motivated you to apply to medical school?
I thought Medicine combined working with people and understanding the human body in health and disease. It is a very exciting field with so much going on and relevant to everyone. I hoped it would open many doors to a varied and interesting career, as well as giving me skills which will always be useful. Any experiences I had in healthcare always excited me and motivated me further to want to be a doctor.
What did you do to prepare for you application to medical school and how did it help in your application?
I think all experience is good experience when applying to medical school. I worked bank shifts in a care home since before university, which was really useful to understand the complexities of caring for people with many comorbidities. I also got a few shadowing experiences in hospital and clinics. Probably the most useful experience was getting a job as a healthcare assistant in hospital. This gave me a much better idea of how hospitals work. Aside from this I have had various part time hospitality and volunteering jobs which developed my general people skills. Medical schools also like to know that you can balance different things and can deal with stress. I found that hobbies like surfing and yoga really helped me develop the ability to destress and take my mind off work.
Why did you choose to sit the GAMSAT?
I sat both the GAMSAT and UCAT, but my UCAT score was not high enough for many of the graduate entry programmes. I thought that doing both would give me the best chance of getting a place. I also think that the essay section of GAMSAT allowed me to play to my strengths as I quite enjoy reflective writing.
What advice would you give to those potentially choosing between the UCAT & GAMSAT test?
I think it is a very personal choice. On the surface, GAMSAT is very daunting, as it appears as if you have to learn a lot of content, but all I can say is that it is not as bad as people make out. You definitely need to put more time aside to study for GAMSAT, and having studied A level Biology and Chemistry definitely gave me an advantage, although I had to relearn a lot of organic Chemistry. The questions in GAMSAT were harder, but being slightly less time pressured allowed me to perform much better. Despite the focus on science in the GAMSAT, most questions are really testing your logical thinking and problem solving and so I was able to take time to make educated guesses even if I did not know the answer.
Did receiving the GAMSAT Bursary impact your ability to apply to medical school and if so, how?
The bursary definitely encouraged me to take the test because it relieved a lot of the financial pressure and allowed me to spend the best part of a month preparing for the test. The process of applying for the bursary also helped me reflect on why I wanted to study medicine and having this support from the careers service made the process seem more achievable.
What support was offered/did you utilise from the Careers Service, and did it impact on gaining a place at medical school, if so, how?
I found the careers service very helpful for my application. Applying to medical school as a graduate can be a very daunting and quite lonely experience and simply having some moral support to guide me through it gave me the confidence to know that I was approaching it in the right way.
Can you tell us a little bit about your first semester at medical school? Has it been what you were expecting?
My first semester at medical school has been amazing. It is so exciting to be finally studying something I am passionate about. Although there is a lot of content, I have found it much easier to learn because it is all put into a clinical context and there are a lot of practical skills and hands on learning.
What has been your favourite and most challenging experience at medical school so far?
At Swansea we spend one day a month in a GP practice in 1st year, and we are really thrown in the deep end, seeing patients ourselves, taking histories and coming up with diagnoses within the first 6 weeks. Although a daunting experience, it is immensely satisfying to get into the mindset of a doctor at such an early stage and to realise that you are able to bring together the limited knowledge that you have to work out what might be going on and put what you are learning into practice.
Having been through the application process to medical school and beginning your training, what top tips do you have for those looking to do the same?
Don’t be put off applying to medical school by how ‘difficult’ everyone says it is. If it is really what you want to do you will get there, and don’t feel you need to rush into it. Taking time out to work in a clinical or care environment is incredibly valuable. It will make medical school so much easier, give you confidence as well as experiences you can draw from and talk about at interview. Being on a graduate entry programme with people from all different backgrounds made me realise that there is no one route into medicine and people with more life experience will probably find the journey a lot more manageable. The process can seem very overwhelming, but just approach it step by step, and try and take support and advice where you can find it.
Some GAMSAT preparation tips:
- In terms of timings, I spent a month lightly researching/ planning how I was going to study and starting to do some practice tests. I was doing this alongside working part time, going on holiday and preparing for the UCAT. I was lucky enough to then have a month where I could treat GAMSAT revision like a full-time job and would do a 9-5 every day with weekends off. Everyone will be different with how much time they need and obviously it’s much harder when you have to fit it around other commitments, but I found this was enough for me.
- Put aside time at the beginning to research the test online and the different strategies people have. There are lots of free online resources out there, so taking the time to find as many practice questions as you can and make a revision plan is definitely worth it. I found Jesse Osborne on Youtube and notion has some useful free tips and resources. I know other people found subscriptions for things like medify useful, but I found enough free resources that I didn’t feel I needed this.
- Do as many practice questions as possible and put a lot of time into marking them. I found this much more useful than going through all the content. I would do practice questions and then spend a lot of time understanding why I had got things wrong. For section 3 I would then teach myself the science behind the question (using A level free resources – mainly physics and maths tutor and chemguide). I definitely did not know everything by the time I did the exam, but I knew enough to get by.
- For section 1 I bought a second hand MCAT exam crackers verbal reasoning book. For section 2 I listened to lots of podcasts (one I really like is Ideas by CBC radio), I read ‘The meaning of things’ by AC Grayling and tried to make sure I was reading the news. Then I made lots of plans of answers to questions and wrote some full answers out. For section 3 the green Des O’Neill book was incredible (100% the best resource). You can download the PDF for free online, but it has hundreds of questions, pretty similar to the actual exam, and it gives really good explanations of the answers, and the book is structured it in a way to help you work out what you need to improve on.
- The only thing I thought worth spending a lot of money on was the official ACER practice tests, which are expensive, but the closest to the real thing you can get. (Although a warning that the number of questions/ timings were different in my actual exam).