Essentially the title - interested to hear peoples experiences with this. On one hand they're published, peer-reviewed articles, but they're also often not explicitly described.
Doctor here, did gamsat and interviews a while back. Have helped a few people get in and just thought I’d give a few key tips.
- Get as many practice questions as you can and focus mainly on speed: understanding the key parts of the question/orienting yourself around graphs/diagrams, understanding formulas. Just do as many questions as you can, look at the answers and learn how they went about it to see how you could have done it faster.
I feel like we enjoy learning theory because the it provides reassurance that you’re preparing for something, but unless you’re a genius that retains concepts after a single encounter it’s unlikely you’ll be able to have the recall during the exam (in my opinion, this is true for me at least). Instead, focus on learning question styles.
Can’t recommend this highly enough.
- Leah4sci for MCATs math without a calculator series.
(commented this on another post but thought it’s worth highlighting).
I think it’s worth starting as early as you can be motivated to, around June should be a good time to start thinking about it.
It’s mainly to build confidence - interviews go fast and it can be difficult to get into the rhythm of giving structured answers (and not rambling). Starting early mainly just lets you get those growing pains out of the way. Plus it also gives you time to reflect on experiences and consider your answers.
Simple approach which is useful:
For a lot of unis, they have standardised marking keys for interviews and this approach makes it easy for them to give you points.
Hope that’s helpful, happy to expand on anything - good luck guys/gals.