Ep 27: How to Get Better at Section 3 Without Memorising Content

Mare Forfa (00:02)
I’m going to jump right in.
If Section 3 has ever made you want to throw your computer across the room, you are certainly not alone. In today’s episode, we’re going to explain what reasoning skills really are, why memorising more content won’t fix your Section 3 score, and how to build skills that actually move the needle forward, which is super exciting. So welcome back to the Nurses Doing GAMSAT podcast. I’m Mare, I’m your host. And whether you’re prepping between night shifts or fitting it in after a long clinical placement, this podcast is for you.
Today we’re going to hear from Urvi, our lead science tutor and current fourth-year med student at the University of Melbourne, who got a phenomenal 84 in Section 3. So stick around—this is going to be a good one. Welcome, Urvi.

Urvi (00:56)
Thanks, Mare. Hi everyone. Super excited to be here and talk about my favourite section. I know it sounds nerdy, but Section 3 is my favourite, and it is not as scary as it seems—we’ll talk about why.

Mare Forfa (01:04)
Favourite? What?
Okay, awesome. Before we jump in, I want to mention to everyone—all the links, the study guides, the deep dives—they’re all in the show notes here. So head to thankflipgamsat.com/episode27. And as always, if you have any questions or want us to cover something in future episodes, please drop us a comment or a DM. We are literally building this for you.

What we’re going to cover in this episode is:
What is the science section actually testing? Why content alone won’t save you. What reasoning skills are—and more importantly, how to build them. Some myths I hear about Section 3. And how to get started without feeling overwhelmed.

So Urvi, do you want to dive in and give us the basics of the format, timing, and all the bits and pieces of Section 3?

Urvi (02:09)
Yep, so Section 3 is the science-y part of the GAMSAT. Depending on which university you’re applying to, it’s weighted more heavily than Sections 1 and 2—so it’s very important.
Its format is 75 multiple-choice questions, and you have 150 minutes to complete them. It is meant to assess problem solving, reasoning skills, and critical thinking in the context of science—specifically biology, chemistry and physics. The split is generally 40% biology, 40% chemistry, and 20% physics.

Mare Forfa (03:00)
Thank God, right? Like, who wants more than 20% physics? No one.
Oh my God, you’re crazy.

Urvi (03:06)
Everyone needs physics! I love physics, just letting you know.
If students read the ACER GAMSAT booklet, they’ll see that the expected knowledge level is around first-year uni for biology and chemistry, and high school for physics. But even so, the test is primarily about problem solving. Having that science background gives you the language and context, but what you’re really being tested on are your reasoning and problem-solving skills.

There are lots of different question styles in Section 3—texts, mathematical info, graphs, tables, diagrams, flowcharts, and more.

Mare Forfa (04:20)
I hear students say all the time, “I don’t know what topics to study,” or “I don’t know what reasoning skills are,” or “I’ll just keep doing questions even though I’m not getting better.” That’s really common.

Urvi (04:34)
And it’s totally normal. It’s hard because there’s no set curriculum. Unlike high school or uni, you haven’t studied like this before. It can feel like shooting darts in the dark—you don’t know where you’re going.
But once you understand the skills you’re building and how to train them, everything changes. That initial fear of “I don’t know anything about Section 3” transforms into confidence and comfort across all the sciences.

Mare Forfa (05:16)
So many students panic and start trying to re-learn Year 12 physics or first-year bio and chem—but it just doesn’t work.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. Let’s talk about the difference between knowledge acquisition (the science content) and skill acquisition (the reasoning skills).

The way I like to explain it—because I love analogies—is that learning science is like learning about water, and reasoning is like learning to swim. In Australia, most of us learn to swim at school, around five years old. But your teacher doesn’t start by saying, “Let’s learn everything about the chemical composition of water.” It’s assumed you already know the basics: water is wet, it’s a liquid, you can’t breathe under it. Then you learn how to swim.

In the GAMSAT, science is just the environment in which you practise reasoning. Learning both is important, but most people spend 80% of their time learning about water (science) and only 20% learning how to swim (reasoning). It should be the other way around.

Urvi (08:20)
Exactly. And it’s so tempting to focus on content because it’s familiar. It feels productive to watch videos and take notes. What we avoid is the uncomfortable stuff—the things we’re not good at. Reasoning is uncomfortable at first because we’re not used to thinking that way.

And the questions can be so varied—camels, frogs, birds—you name it. But we’re not here to teach you frog physiology.

Mare Forfa (09:22)
I’m not! And I don’t want my doctor to know more about frogs than humans.

Urvi (09:31)
Exactly. But the concepts often translate. For example, if you know how blood circulation works in humans, you can reason through similar scenarios in other species. Once you’ve developed reasoning skills, you can apply them across the board.

And interestingly, if students sit the GAMSAT with no time limit, they often do surprisingly well. With time to reason and pick things apart, they perform better than expected—even without deep science knowledge.

Mare Forfa (11:05)
Yes, absolutely. What you’re expected to do is interpret unfamiliar data. And this all makes sense—you don’t go to the doctor and have everyone present with the same symptoms all the time. Like, for example, take me. I’ve been so sick lately. I don’t know if any regular listeners have noticed, but even Urvi was like, “How long have you been sick?” I’ve had two different things, and in between them I had massive post-viral symptoms. So I trundled along to my GP…

I’m having chest pains—thankfully, he’s an ex-ED physician. He whips out an ECG. He says it doesn’t look like pericarditis, but maybe. So we do all the precautions. Then I come back with swollen hands and pain that feels like rheumatoid arthritis. And he’s expected to interpret all these unfamiliar symptoms—chest pain and hand pain? Not normally linked.

Just to close the loop—I don’t have pericarditis, in case anyone’s worried. It turned out to be costochondritis. It’s chest pain-y stuff, but not dangerous. Heart’s fine.

But again, the reason I say all this is because the skills we’re talking about—interpreting unfamiliar data, applying logic, extracting meaning from tables, graphs, text—all of that in GAMSAT land, is the exact same thing a doctor does with humans. And eliminating wrong answers methodically is just as important.

Urvi (13:41)
That’s such a good way of looking at it. It’s about what ACER is actually testing in the GAMSAT. You don’t need to know everything—you just need to know how to work with the information you’re given.
And these reasoning skills absolutely translate into studying medicine and being a doctor. That’s where the skill acquisition comes in. Reasoning through unfamiliar content, picking it apart, applying what you know—those are the skills that lead to success in Section 3.

Mare Forfa (14:32)
Love that. Let’s dive into actual skill acquisition. I’ve asked thousands of students across the country—from UQ to UNSW to UVic and more—“How do you build a skill?”
Most people say, “Just practice.” And I say, yes—practice is part of it. But what happens before that? Then, crickets. Everyone goes silent.

So let’s look at skill acquisition differently. For example—let’s say I’m teaching my daughter Ruby, who’s five, how to do addition. Would I just give her some practice questions and say, “Off you go”? Never. We’d follow a process.

Urvi (15:46)
Thank you!

Mare Forfa (16:00)
Step one: teach the replicable steps. For Ruby, we might grab two bananas and three apples, and say, “Ruby, let’s count them all together.” It’s about teaching the process—“count them”—so she can apply it to any objects.

Step two: a worked example. Kids don’t always listen, but they watch. When she sees me do it, it clicks. And the more complex the skill, the more worked examples she’ll need.

Step three: practice questions. Yes, they matter. But here’s the kicker—the questions don’t teach you. They’re feedback. If Ruby gets it right, we say “Great job!” If she gets it wrong, we don’t scream, “You’ll never be a cashier!”
We just go back to step one. She doesn’t know how—yet.

This three-step process is how you improve Section 3. Most people skip straight to step three, hammer out questions with bad technique, then wonder why they’re stuck. It’s time to go back to proper learning—skill acquisition is the new black. And I don’t call them “practice questions” anymore. I call them “feedback questions.”

Urvi (19:05)
Yes, absolutely. And that’s a trap I see students fall into—doing loads of questions thinking they’re improving. Especially for students coming from biomed backgrounds—it feels familiar. But GAMSAT questions aren’t based on recall. They test reasoning.

Let’s say a question has a graph, a flowchart, and some maths. Most students panic. But you shouldn’t approach it blindly. You need to know how to interpret a graph—look at axes, legends, trends. Know how to rearrange equations. These are skills. And they don’t come naturally—you’ve got to train them.

Often, each GAMSAT question stem tells a story. That’s what I tell my students: find the story. People get so caught up in the jargon they miss the big picture.

Mare Forfa (21:49)
Oh my God, that is gold. Knowing the story of the stem—that can change someone’s entire approach.

Urvi (22:00)
Exactly. Think about it: when you read a book or article, you don’t read every single letter. You’re reading for meaning. You should approach Section 3 the same way.
And do it in the way your brain likes—maybe that’s a flowchart, maybe it’s taking notes, maybe it’s visualising. Whatever helps you interpret that stimulus logically—use it.

And then it’s about knowing the question types. The more practice you do (and this is where practice is useful), the more familiar you become with the styles, how to eliminate answers, and how to avoid silly mistakes.
The most common mistake? Missing the word “not” in a question. Like “Which of the following is not correct?” And students answer it like it’s “Which is correct?”

Mare Forfa (23:57)
Ugh, that’s the worst. It’s such an easy mark to lose.

Urvi (24:01)
It’s heartbreaking! So getting familiar with these question types, understanding your patterns—what do you consistently get wrong? That’s how you improve.

And of course, you apply the science basics you know, combine all those skills, and work through the question with purpose.

And one of the biggest challenges is cognitive load under time pressure.

Mare Forfa (24:57)
Yes! That makes everyone sweat.

Urvi (25:03)
Yeah, and it really is hard. But that’s where training and practice come into play. It’s completely unfair to expect yourself to just wake up one day and run a marathon. You can’t—and don’t try! (This is not medical advice!)

Mare Forfa (25:17)
Please don’t do that. And definitely don’t ask me to do that!

But seriously, you don’t just wake up and do a marathon, and you also don’t just wake up and sit a three-hour reasoning exam under time pressure.

A few years ago—before we started recruiting tutors from our bootcamp program—we had this one tutor who scored in the 80s, maybe even the 90s. I asked him, “What happened in the exam?” and he said, “Oh, I didn’t finish it.”

And I was like, “What?! How’d you score so high?”

And he said, “Because you don’t get extra marks for finishing. You get marks for getting the answers right. Every single question I touched, I got right. I didn’t care if I left a few at the end. I’d rather not rush and get questions wrong.”

And that was a big eye-opener for me. Yes, time pressure matters, but what matters more is staying focused, staying accurate, and doing your best on each question you attempt.

Urvi (26:53)
Yes, absolutely—totally agree.

Mare Forfa (26:56)
So I was thinking, Urvi, maybe we could do some rapid-fire questions? These are the ones I get all the time. Just quick one- or two-sentence answers.

Urvi (27:09)
Done!

Mare Forfa (27:22)
Alright—first one.
“You need to know heaps of science content.”

Urvi (27:26)
Very common myth. GAMSAT is not a content recall test. Your uni exams are. GAMSAT is about reasoning with unfamiliar material. You already have what you need—you just need to apply, interpret, and problem-solve.

Mare Forfa (27:40)
“If you haven’t done physics, you’re screwed.”

Urvi (27:45)
Not true. Many high scorers never studied physics. I did—and I love it—but I’m the exception. Most people don’t study or love physics, and that’s fine. The physics questions are mostly about reasoning, not recalling content.

Mare Forfa (28:25)
“More content equals higher score.”

Urvi (28:30)
Actually, it’s often the opposite. Students tend to over-learn the content and under-learn the skills. You could have a PhD in osmosis and still get a GAMSAT osmosis question wrong if you can’t reason through it.

Mare Forfa (28:52)
This one’s from my nurses:
“Section 3 is only for science students.”

Urvi (29:04)
No way. Students from all backgrounds—arts, music, engineering—can score well. It’s about how you think, not what you studied. We’ve helped nurses, ambos, podiatrists, even a cello player smash Section 3.

Mare Forfa (29:31)
Yes! Shoutout to Elizabeth, our cello player turned doctor.
I’ve helped a theatre manager—like, actual stage plays, not surgery. Right now, we’ve got a builder who’s retraining as a doctor after 40 years.

Honestly, sometimes science students overthink it. They dive too deep into content, and it works against them.

We should just rebrand it as the “Reasoning Section,” not the “Science Section.” It’d make way more sense.

Urvi (30:40)
Absolutely agree.

Mare Forfa (30:58)
“You need to memorise formulas.”

Urvi (31:01)
Nope. If you need a formula, GAMSAT provides it in the question stem. You can memorise them if you want, but what matters is understanding how to use them—how they work, how to rearrange, how to interpret changes.

Mare Forfa (31:26)
“I’m just going to do practice questions and I’ll improve.”

Urvi (31:33)
Not necessarily. That’s mindless repetition. You can smash out thousands of questions, but if you don’t know why you got something right or wrong, you won’t improve. You need analysis, feedback, and targeted adjustments.

Mare Forfa (32:11)
Exactly. It’s like giving Ruby subtraction and long division when we’re trying to teach addition. Targeted drills matter. Not just repetition—smart repetition.

“Speed is the key to scoring well.”

Urvi (32:39)
No. Rushing leads to careless mistakes. High scorers know when to slow down and be deliberate. Accuracy comes first—speed is a skill you build after strategy and accuracy.

Mare Forfa (33:24)
Yes! That’s exactly what I said about Joseph, my Section 2 student who got 100th percentile. We didn’t even touch timing until he’d done eight to ten strong essays. It’s the same for science—don’t worry about speed until you have the foundation.

Mare Forfa (34:04)
It’s like swimming again—you can’t just learn the strokes and then immediately enter the Olympics. You need to refine technique bit by bit.

Real story—okay, no judgement, everyone—but Dr. Tom, my husband, used to ocean swim every day for years. Even in cold weather—like now, it’s 17 degrees in the water—he’d be in there. He’s six foot three, so big hands, big feet, like built-in flippers.

Now, I’m not six-three. Nor do I swim every day. So one day, Tom goes, “Let’s go for a little swim together, it’ll be romantic.” We jump in. It’s a choppy day. He’s fine—water off a duck’s back. I’m out there flapping around thinking, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”

And that made him realise maybe we’d jumped in too deep, too quickly. He’s been swimming so long he’s forgotten how many little steps were involved in building up to that.

Urvi (35:30)
Yeah. Same. I would not do that either.

Mare Forfa (35:42)
No way. He’d swim through a hurricane, no worries. Me? I’m not getting in unless it’s a calm pool with no wind.

So I didn’t die, clearly, but it’s the same thing with the GAMSAT—you can’t just jump into the deep end. You need to start in shallow water. Build up your technique, build your confidence, then move into the challenging stuff.

Mare Forfa (36:09)
Okay, next myth:
“Getting a few questions wrong means you’ve blown the whole exam.”

Urvi (36:26)
Nope. That’s not how GAMSAT scoring works. It’s scaled, not absolute. Everyone gets questions wrong. It’s your performance relative to others that matters.

Some exams are harder than others. Everyone might walk out thinking, “That was brutal,” but then they get their scores back and are surprised. That’s the scaling at work. You’re not being marked on perfection—you’re marked on reasoning, consistency, and logic.

Mare Forfa (37:25)
Yes. I say this to students all the time—your feeling about the exam doesn’t matter. You can’t know how you went. You don’t know what happened to the people next to you. You just have to do your best, and then let it go.

Remember the speed skater who won because everyone else fell over? That’s what you’re doing. Your only job is to stay on your feet.

You know what else most people don’t realise? You’re not even sitting the same exam as the person next to you.

Urvi (38:19)
Yes! Thank you!

Mare Forfa (38:32)
There are different versions of the exam. ACER randomises it somehow—I don’t know what wizardry they use—but your version might feel really physics-heavy, while the person next to you had mostly organic chem. That’s why when people come out of the exam and talk about it, they’re often like, “What?! That wasn’t my experience at all.”

So you can’t compare. And you definitely can’t judge your score based on how it felt.

Urvi (39:00)
Exactly.

Mare Forfa (39:27)
Next myth:
“If I don’t understand a science topic, I can’t do the question.”

Urvi (39:29)
Not true. Like we said—there are questions on camels, frogs, platypuses. Don’t go studying those. You’re meant to reason through the unfamiliar.

The passage itself is your friend—it gives you what you need. Your job is to pull that apart, understand it, and apply logic to answer the question.

Mare Forfa (40:40)
Last myth—and I literally heard this one yesterday, so thank you to the student who said it. You know who you are.

“I’ll never be good at Section 3. It’s just too hard.”

Urvi (40:43)
That one’s tough, because I know a lot of people feel it. But here’s the thing—it feels overwhelming if you treat it like a uni exam. You expect to know all the content, and if you don’t, you feel like a failure.

But once you shift your mindset—once you realise this is a skill-based test, and not a test of how much you know—that’s when it starts to make sense.

Improvement becomes predictable and repeatable. And eventually, dare I say it, even fun. Like solving a puzzle or doing a crossword. Once you “get” how to think about the questions, it becomes engaging.

Mare Forfa (42:04)
Exactly! People find it fun when they’re making progress. It’s when you’re stuck and nothing’s improving that it feels horrible.

When I lift weights, I know I won’t be where I used to be after being sick. But just seeing that I’m on track—that I’m improving—that’s enough to feel good.

Alright, before I go into how to get started, Urvi, what are the things people should avoid doing?

Urvi (42:48)
Yes. Number one—don’t just binge practice questions with no feedback. If you’re not reflecting, you’re not improving.

Number two—don’t try to learn all of first-year uni science. It’s impossible. I’ve studied science all my life—maths, biology, chemistry, physics, biomed—and it’s taken years. GAMSAT students try to cram all of that into three or four months. It’s not going to work.

Instead, you need to learn it smartly—focus on what’s relevant and build reasoning skills around that.

Urvi (44:25)
Also, we love comfort. We gravitate toward what we’re good at. If you’re great at bench press, you just keep benching. But if you skip leg day—well, you get chicken legs. Same thing with study.

We avoid what we’re bad at. But you’ve got to look at your weak areas and figure out why they’re weak. Is it the content? The reasoning? Your confidence? Identify it and take baby steps to improve it.

Mare Forfa (44:46)
Are you talking about me? That felt personal.

Urvi (45:12)
I’m not calling anyone out! But seriously—just like at the gym, start with baby weights and build up. Don’t be embarrassed about weak areas. Everyone has them. And with time, you’ll make progress.

Mare Forfa (45:25)
I’m glad you brought that up. We sometimes feel embarrassed about our weak spots. Not sure how many people know this, but Dr Tom—my husband—was diagnosed with osteoporosis. His endocrinologist wanted him on medication, but the side effects were terrifying, especially to his jaw.

So, he said, “Nope. Let’s try reversing it naturally.” Being a doctor, he dove into the medical journals and created his own treatment plan, which included lifting heavy weights. And it worked—he reversed his osteoporosis. Brilliant.

But because he lifts so much, it can get boring. His trainer eventually said, “You should enter a lifting comp.” So he did.

We turn up—it’s like a metal concert. Heavy metal music, strobe lights, people everywhere. Me and our daughter are in the crowd with headphones on her ears.

Tom gets three tries. First one—can’t lift it past the knees. Second—same thing. Third—shaky, still doesn’t get it. He was mortified. Especially with his trainer there who lifted 230 kilos and won his age category.

Urvi (47:03)
Oh wow!

Mare Forfa (47:18)
Yeah! But his trainer just said, “I’m proud of you. You got up there. Now we know what to work on.” And within a month, after changing his program, Tom could easily lift 160. Why? Because they focused on the weak spots. That’s it.

He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t embarrassed. I mean—who’s he going to be embarrassed in front of? Me? I wasn’t lifting 160 on stage.

And it’s the same with GAMSAT. The only person you’re competing with is yourself. There’s no shame in needing help or not getting it right straight away. You just find the weak spot and work on it.

Urvi (48:42)
Exactly. And in the big picture of life, not getting something straight away doesn’t mean anything bad about you. It just means you’re learning.
We all have different lives, different backgrounds. Stay on your own path. Don’t get caught in comparing yourself to others. Instead, focus on growth.

When something feels hard or confusing, instead of panicking, try asking: Why am I struggling here? What don’t I understand yet? And then take steps to fix that.

Mare Forfa (49:49)
Yes! And we’d never yell at a five-year-old for not getting a question right first go. We forget that learning takes time.

I had a moment like this with Ruby. She was frustrated because she wasn’t picking things up quickly at school. She’s a clever kid, but even then she said, “I know, Mum—not everyone gets everything straight away.” And I was like, “Wow. That’s growth.”

It was such a powerful reminder: kids give themselves permission to learn. We should too.

Mare Forfa (50:41)
So, what now? Where do you begin?

Step one is acceptance. Accept that GAMSAT Section 3 is a skill-based test. Whether you like it or not, it is what it is.
(That’s basically step five of grief, isn’t it?)

Urvi (50:59)
Yes! The five stages of grief! We’re skipping to the end—straight to acceptance. No denial, anger, or bargaining—we’re done.

Mare Forfa (51:12)
Exactly. We should start a group—GAMSAT Grief Counselling.

Once you’ve accepted it’s a skill-based test, next is doing a diagnostic test. You need to see what skills you don’t have yet.
Then create a plan—who is going to teach you the replicable steps? Where will you find worked examples? What feedback questions are you going to use?

You can make the plan in a day, but the plan might take you months to execute. That’s okay. Progress is built in layers.

Urvi (52:23)
Yes. And don’t do it alone. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we have a whole team—to support you in breaking things down, seeing patterns, giving feedback, and cheering you on.

Mare Forfa (52:38)
Exactly. Sometimes it’s just about someone saying, “You’ve got this.” Like Tom’s trainer saying, “Well done. We know what to fix now.”

And by December, I know he’ll be back on that platform lifting 180. Why? Because he had a plan. He stuck to it.

Mare Forfa (53:07)
So that’s where we’ll wrap it. Thank you so much, Urvi, for going so deep into reasoning skills. I know we’ll be doing more on this in future episodes.

To everyone listening—I hope this gave you clarity, a plan, and the permission to go slow.

If you found this helpful, make sure you subscribe, leave a rating, and share it with a mate or drop it into a GAMSAT group—we love that.

And remember: you don’t need to have it all figured out. Just take the next step.
You’ve got this.

Mare Forfa (53:42)
Thank you so much, Urvi.

Urvi (53:43)
Thank you, Mare.

Mare Forfa
Bye!