GAMSAT Study Group: How to Find One and Swap Essays

The essays are the best reason to join a GAMSAT study group: ACER's practice marking gives only a score band, while three readers show where your argument lost its shape. Mix degrees, so arts graduates lead the essay reading and science graduates lead Section 3, and keep every member's materials and sentences their own.

Two windows, three sections, one formula

GAMSAT runs twice a year, in March and September, and each sitting comes in two windows (ACER Information Booklet 2026). Written Communication is sat at home under remote proctoring. About three weeks later, both reasoning sections follow at test centres in Australia, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand and Singapore. ACER's booklet names the sections without numbers; the numbers below are the ones candidates and older research use:

The weights come from ACER's formula: the Overall Score is (Humanities + Written Communication + 2 × Biological and Physical Sciences) ÷ 4. Every score runs from 0 to 100 and isn't a percentage. Section 3 is 40% chemistry, 40% biology and 20% physics, pitched at first-year university biology and chemistry and at A-level, Leaving Certificate or Year 12 physics. No marks are deducted for a wrong answer.

In 2026 the March windows were 28 February to 1 March and 20 to 22 March, with results in late May. For March 2027, ACER's registration page says registrations open in November 2026; on 14 November it didn't list the 2027 windows yet.

Match on the intake, not only the sitting

The same sitting can feed different intakes. GEMSAS, which takes applications for a group of Australian graduate-entry medical schools, uses sittings from September 2022 to March 2026 for its 2027 intake (GEMSAS). September 2026 and March 2027 count from the 2028 intake on, and every school on its list asks for at least 50 in each section. For UK courses starting in 2027, only the four sittings from March 2025 to September 2026 counted, and UCAS applications closed on 15 October 2026 (ACER, UK admission).

Ireland's cut-off comes later. For courses beginning in 2026, March 2026 results still counted, and on 14 November ACER's Ireland page still showed only those rules. So in a group that forms this winter for March 2027, Australian and UK members are aiming at 2028 at the earliest. An Irish member should check whether March 2027 counts for a 2027 start before the group plans around it.

Results last four years in Australia and two in the UK and Ireland, four at Ulster (ACER results), and ACER sets no limit on attempts. A first-timer and someone resitting for one weak section can share a group, as long as both know whose deadline comes first.

Who to put in a GAMSAT study group

Mix first degrees, because the sections pull in opposite directions. Annette Mercer and colleagues analysed ACER's records for all 9,307 people who sat GAMSAT in 2014 (BMC Medical Education, 2015). Arts and social science graduates had the highest essay mean and one of the lowest Section 3 means; physical science graduates had the highest Section 3 mean:

The two sections barely tracked each other: their correlation was 0.24, against 0.51 between Sections 1 and 3. Read the chart as a map of who can help whom, not a forecast. Age, gender, degree and the other background details together explained only about 10% of the spread in Overall scores. The data are also from 2014, and two of the five authors worked for ACER.

Three or four members cover both sides, all in the same sitting. Put at least one science graduate in the group to lead Section 3, and at least one from the humanities or social sciences to lead the essay reading. If you've never taken first-year chemistry, ACER recommends a bridging course at "an adult, vocational or further learning provider". An hour a week with friends won't replace one.

Finding members across three countries

• Your course and its societies. Ask in your year's group chat which sitting people have booked; a shared timetable matters more than a shared city.
• Prep course classmates. If you take a course, its other students share your calendar. ACER recommends no provider, calls them unregulated and asks you to weigh their evidence yourself (ACER preparation).
• Reddit and Facebook. Both have GAMSAT communities. Before you join one, check the date of its newest post: one prep company's directory of city groups still carried 2023 to 2024 labels on 14 November 2026. Keep your ACER login to yourself, and your phone number until you've met on a call.
• StudyDuo. GAMSAT isn't among the interests in Find Partners, so search for Medicine and narrow it by country or city. Follow anyone who names your sitting, or send them a message. A 1:1 session gives two people video with sound for talking an essay through; both need a verified photo.

An Australian and an Irish member share the windows but not an evening: until late March, 7 p.m. in Sydney is 8 a.m. in Dublin. Keep the essay swap in writing, so it never needs a shared hour, and save live calls for members a few hours apart. Before you meet strangers, run through our checklist for online study rooms.

The essay swap ACER's marking can't give you

ACER's Online Test Generator scores practice essays automatically, and "it is not possible to provide test takers with feedback beyond a score" (ACER Information Booklet). Its own advice is to ask someone else to read your essays and suggest improvements or other approaches, then to put them aside for several days and re-read them. A GAMSAT study group can turn that into a weekly routine:

1. Write in your own copy. ACER licenses its materials to the buyer, so each member buys the same e-book or practice test and the group agrees on a page. Write both tasks in 65 minutes, as on the day.
2. Read alone before anyone talks, as ACER's markers do: each response is scored independently three times.
3. Answer ACER's five questions, not a mark. What ideas did the writer develop? How far and how well did they explore the prompt? Is the essay structured? Is it clear and fluent? Is the language precise and right for the topic?
4. Leave spelling and opinions alone. Spelling and punctuation don't affect the score, and ACER doesn't judge whether ideas are "correct". A reader who argues with the view isn't giving feedback.
5. The writer picks one comment about the argument or the structure, and rewrites the essay a few days later.

The choice in step 5 matters. Melissa Patchan, Christian Schunn and Richard Correnti coded more than 7,500 comments that 351 college students wrote on the papers of 189 others (Journal of Educational Psychology, 2016). Comments that pointed to an exact spot were acted on most often, but those revisions were less likely to improve the paper. Comments on the larger shape of the writing (high prose, in the authors' terms) were acted on less often. Yet revisions made on them, and on comments about content, were more likely to improve it. So pick the comment that's hardest to act on.

Keep your sentences your own

Every Written Communication response goes through plagiarism checks, including for AI and against previously submitted GAMSAT responses. ACER's booklet warns that essays borrowing text from pre-prepared essays "could be flagged as plagiarised even if you have not seen the original source". When people read each other's essays every week, a groupmate's opening line can drift into yours. These rules decide what a group shares:

The test-day rule matters because each window runs over several days, so a hint from a member who sat early helps someone sitting later. ACER's penalties include withheld results and disqualification.

Section 3 between two degrees

Section 3 gives you 2 minutes a question, and calculators are prohibited aids. ACER allows a small erasable whiteboard up to A4 size, so practise on one. Split each session's work between the two leads:

• The science lead takes the misses from everyone's timed units and re-works each one on the whiteboard, on camera, with the arithmetic by hand. The others then solve a fresh question of the same type from their own materials.
• The arts lead does the same for Section 1, whose units use personal, imaginative, expository and argumentative writing, and some ideas in visual and tabular form.

Each person teaches the section their degree prepared them for and learns the other, which is the trade a mixed GAMSAT study group exists for. Once you're in, the work changes: our medical school study group guide covers the preclinical years. If you're sitting the test around a job, see our plan for exam prep alongside full-time work. For timed hours with people quietly around you, an online study group on camera does the job.