Best study methods for organic chemistry and anatomy

Those of you brushing up on the GAMSAT may be interested in a recent Ask Metafilter question on the best ways to study these complex subjects.

An organic chemistry teacher made an interesting point against memorising reaction patterns with flashcards:

Organic chemistry is all about patterns. The question you see on an exam will look, at first glance, absolutely nothing like the example that you've studied, which is why the flash carders rarely do well. The trick to doing well is to learn the types of reactions, why they happen, and then seeing which of those apply to molecule/conditions in question. In most cases, a large molecule can be reduced down to a single functional group that's doing a very simple reaction, and the rest of it that's just along for the ride. Once you do that, there are usually a very narrow set of possibilities for a given problem.

Other useful tricks include

- Setting up a random revolving background image or wallpaper on your PC
- Breaking medical terminology into it's (Latin or Greek) word-roots to determine the meaning of the word, which will then more easily prompt your memory and understanding
- Using spaced repetition to vary how often you revisit material. One variation of this is the Leitner system where material is sorted based on the number of errors made in recall; other software implementations use a logarithmic drop-off in how frequently memorised material is presented.

Guessing in Multiple Choice Tests

The GAMSAT relies heavily on multiple-choice questions. While this means the test can be marked by machine (this is why you'll use a really soft, dark graphite pencil, and completely erase all smudges), it also means that they're not testing your knowledge as they could in an in-person interview. If you've been schooled in Australia, hopefully you've had exposure to many multiple-choice tests. This will help you.

Firstly, there's no reasoning listed when you mark an answer, just a circle. It does not matter how you got that answer. This means if you guessed every single question on the GAMSAT, you'd score around 25%. If there is any question you are unsure of, you will can guess, and you'll score yourself - on average - 25% of a correct answer. Do not leave any questions unanswered. Best to leave yourself a few minutes at the end of the test to go back over all the answers you don't know, and guess them.

Often you will be able to narrow down your options even further. In the science section, is one of the answers the wrong order of magnitude? In the humanities section, is one of the answers nonsensical given the stimulus paragraph? I like to mark an option I have decided is not correct by crossing out the letter. This means that when I'm reviewing my answer, I can more quickly see why I made the choice I did.

In high-school tests, you may have heard that there's a bias for C or B answers. This is not true for the GAMSAT as it is highly randomised. I'd advise you to look at the questions and see if you can rule out some of the options in the questions instead. You can usually increase your chances this way. Whatever you do, do not leave any questions blank. It's worth filling in all remaining questions with five or ten minutes to go, then change any you need to - at least you have them down.

When guessing, watch out for strong, decisive answers (X must happen in every circumstance, all of the above are true) unless you know them to be the case. If a question has two answers that are similar, the answer may be more likely to be one of the two. An answer that differs from all the rest may be more likely to be correct. Test for answers being a multiple of numbers in the prompt, or check the magnitude of the correct answer.

Making educated guesses for questions will give you much better results than leaving the questions blank.

Practice question - Fish osmosis

Prompt
The following table contains details of the relative solutes in a variety of fish and their environments. Both sharks and bony fish live in the sea.

	Salt	Urea	Osmotic concentration
Sea water	1000		1000
Fresh water	20		20
Sharks	650	400	1050
Bony fish	190		190
Freshwater fish	130		130

Questions
Which of the fish types would need to drink water in their normal environment?
A. Freshwater fish
B. Bony fish
C. Sharks
D. None of the above

In which fish is there likely to be a net solute flow into the fish?
A. Freshwater fish and bony fish
B. Bony fish only
C. Sharks only
D. Both freshwater fish and sharks

Practice question - Metabolic rates

Prompt
The below diagram shows changes in metabolic rates dependant on body and environment temperature for two mammals, the kangaroo rat and the harbour seal.

(diagram)

Questions

When outside temperature drops below body temperature, the kangaroo rat's metabolism increases
A. at different rates but at the same body temperatures
B. at the same rate at the same body temperatures
C. at different rates at different body temperatures
D. at the same rate at different body temperatures

When outside temperature drops below body temperature, the harbour seal's metabolism increases
A. at different rates but at the same body temperatures
B. at the same rate at the same body temperatures
C. at different rates at different body temperatures
D. at the same rate at different body temperatures

Answers

Kangaroo rat - D, harbour seal - A

Practice question - Fish circulation

Prompt
The circulatory system of the fish is diagrammed below. Of the output from the heart, 40% is directed to the brain and 15% to each of the gills, kidneys, front and rear intestines.

(diagram - not guaranteed to be an actual fish circulatory system)

Question
What percentage of the blood from any one pump of the heart will pass through the liver?
A. 0%
B. 15%
C. 30%
D. 40%

Practice Question - Acceleration

Prompt:
Ann, a physics student, decides to measure the acceleration in her car. She decides to hang a bob (pendulum) from the rear view mirror in her car. It can swing towards the front of the car, which she measures as theta, or towards the rear of the car, which she measures as negative theta.

(diagram)

Questions

What angle will the bob make when Ann, after moving forward at a constant speed, brakes?
A. Positive theta
B. Zero
C. Negative theta
D. There is not enough information provided to answer this question

Ann graphs the angle of the pendulum over a period of time.
(second graph)

At period 4, the car's speed was
A. Increasing
B. Constant
C. Decreasing
D. There is not enough information provided to answer this question

Over the whole time period, the car was stationary:
A. During period 1 only
B. During period 3 only
C. During period 6 only
D. There is not enough information provided to answer this question

Practice Question - Defibrillation

Prompt:
Defibrillation is a treatment for cardiac arrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia that delivers an electrical shock to the heart. The electrical shock allows the sinoatrial node to reestablish the baseline heart rythym.

An 80kg man is shocked with a defibrillator which delivers 6000 volts with a current of 100 amps.

Questions

What is the resistance across the body?
A.
B.
C.
D.

What amount of energy was delivered by the electrical shock?
A.
B.
C.
D.

Answers

Note that this question requires you to have memorised the physics formula v=ir. You may also find reading up on defibrillation at the Wikipedia page to be useful

Test Strategy - Making the Most of Reading Time

The Gamsat allows a block of reading time at the start of each section. Ten minutes are permitted for Sections I and III and five minutes for Section II.

For the MCQ sections, sections I and III:

- Firstly, quickly flip through the book and check the page numbers are all sequential and that the diagrams all printed correctly.

- As you do so, keep an eye out of the questions. Are there questions on subjects you aren't as strong on, or with long and/or complicated prompts? You may want to skip these on your first attempt and come back to them later. This will give you a good feel for where you are up to in the test and how much more work you have to do at any given time.

- During your reading time, you are not allowed to actually record answers or make notes either on the question book or on the answer sheet. I find that having read through the question and decided on the correct answer, it is very easy to simply remember the answer when I come back to it as soon as reading time finishes. You can easily get an extra 5-10 questions completed this way, giving you more time for those questions (like, say, organic chemistry) where being able to diagram and make notes is a must.

- Can you make notes? No. It's for reading only. Do so, and they will take away your answer booklet and provide you wil a clean one. I have done this before by accident, being used to uni exams where writing in the question book was fair game. I have heard of people developing systems - pencil placement or tiny indents in the book - to mark correct answers. I find it's just as easy to remember them. We're only talking 5-10 questions here, and the answers are easily remembered.

For section II, the essay section, you are allowed five minutes of reading time. I use this time to look over both sets of prompts and allow my natural response to surface. In most cases you can find a position to support or argue against that you feel strongly about that relates to the test materials. I then think of three to five book quotes, studies I have read, or examples from my own life that I can include. These, the stimulus material, and the fact that I have chosen an idea I feel strongly about allow me to write continously for around 25 minutes each essay.

Question - Fingernail growth rates

Question: Making some basic assumptions, how fast do your fingernails grow?

Answers:
A. 1*10^-3 m/s
B. 1*10^-6 m/s
C. 1*10^-9 m/s
D. 1*10^-12 m/s

How to work it out:

First, make those 'basic assumptions' mentioned earlier in the question. How fast do my fingernails grow? I assumed 5cm/year. As it turns out, I wasn't too far off, as Wikipedia suggests 3.5 cm. I then made sure I had this result in the correct units - first adjusting cm to m, and then years to seconds. You make need to make sure that you are confident with scientific notation. This estimate brought me fairly close to the result of 1*10^-9m/s - option C.