GAMSAT flashcards are most useful when they train a decision you must make under pressure. They are less useful when they ask you to memorise isolated facts that do not transfer to an unfamiliar passage, graph or experiment.
The deck below is designed for a single study session. It covers three recurring tasks: extracting meaning from humanities and social sciences material, building a defensible Section II argument, and checking quantitative reasoning in biological and physical sciences. It is not a substitute for solving full questions. Its purpose is to make the underlying moves faster and more reliable.
How to use this deck
Work through the cards one at a time. Read the question, answer aloud or in a sentence, then reveal the answer. Grade yourself using the four buttons:
- Again — you could not produce the method or made a serious error.
- Hard — you had the idea but needed prompting or missed an important condition.
- Good — you gave the complete answer with only minor hesitation.
- Easy — you answered accurately and could apply it to a new example.
Do not grade a card as Easy because the wording looks familiar. A card has earned that grade only if you can use the method on new material. For example, knowing that a ratio is dimensionless is not enough; you should be able to use units to reject an implausible option in an unfamiliar problem.
A useful rule is to keep cards atomic. One card should test one decision, equation, distinction or writing move. If the answer becomes a paragraph of unrelated facts, split it. That makes review intervals meaningful: you can identify exactly which part of your reasoning failed.
The GAMSAT applied-reasoning deck
This deck contains 18 cards. The Section I cards focus on interpretation rather than specialist cultural knowledge. The Section II cards turn a prompt into a controlled argument. The Section III cards focus on relationships, units, estimation and checking rather than trying to predict every possible science topic.
Start with the first card face-up, then turn it over before grading. The first pass should be active: say the answer before reading it.
A study deck for one GAMSAT session looks like this:
When interpreting a humanities or social sciences passage, what should you identify before judging whether a statement is true?
The passage's claim, the evidence or language used to support it, and the scope of the claim. Do not import outside assumptions before establishing what the passage actually says.
All 18 cards
That is a MySummaries deck, filled with GAMSAT material. Yours is written from your own notes. Start free
After the first pass, return immediately to every card graded Again or Hard. Try to answer it with a different example. For instance, apply direct proportionality to concentration and volume, not just distance and time. This checks whether you learned the relationship rather than memorised its wording.
The core to learn first
Eighteen cards may be too many when you have limited time. The following four form a compact first deck. They cover the reasoning habits that affect all three sections and can be reviewed before a question set.
A core checklist cut from the deck looks like this:
Learn the core before expanding it. Then add cards from your own errors. If a practice question shows that you repeatedly confuse absolute and percentage change, create a card with the exact distinction and a numerical example. If an essay paragraph contains an interesting example but no explanation of its relevance, create a card asking what makes an example function as evidence.
How to grade and schedule the cards
Use stricter grading for method cards than for factual cards. A correct definition without an application is not a complete answer. On the other hand, do not turn every review into a long written exercise. Say the method, give a brief example, and move on unless the card exposes a real weakness.
A practical review pattern is:
- First session: complete all 18 cards and mark each one honestly.
- Next review: repeat Again cards first, then Hard cards, then the remaining cards.
- After a question set: add no more than three cards from errors that are likely to recur.
- At the end of the week: remove or rewrite cards that you answer automatically but cannot apply.
Keep separate cards for separate failures. “I misread the graph” could mean that you missed the axis units, confused a percentage with a percentage-point change, or compared the wrong interval. Those require different corrections.
Remediation: turn lost marks into one action
A remediation card should be narrow enough to answer in a few seconds. It should also describe the error, not merely name a broad topic such as “science” or “essay writing”. A useful card asks for the exact distinction you missed and gives you a way to test it.
For example, after losing marks because you treated an association as proof of cause, your next card could be:
You lost this mark twice: two variables rise together in an observational dataset. What must you establish before claiming that one causes the other?
The answer should name at least one credible alternative explanation, such as a confounding variable, reverse causation or coincidence, and explain what additional evidence could distinguish the possibilities. Once you can answer it accurately twice in different contexts, merge it with a broader card only if the distinction remains clear.
What not to put in a GAMSAT deck
Avoid cards such as “memorise everything about biology” or “write a good essay”. They have no single answer and cannot tell you what to practise. Also avoid copying whole passages into cards. GAMSAT requires you to interpret unfamiliar material, so your deck should train transferable operations:
- identify what is stated and what is inferred;
- track variables, units and proportional relationships;
- make assumptions visible;
- connect evidence to a claim;
- test a conclusion against the question's actual constraints.
Use your own practice questions, marked essays and error notes as the main source of new cards. The deck above gives you a starting structure; your mistakes should determine what replaces or extends it.
How MySummaries helps
MySummaries lets you build a GAMSAT revision board from your own notes and practice errors, then turn that board into cards with spaced review. You can also use written mock exams to test applied reasoning and convert repeated lost marks into a remediation tray. Start at portal.mysummaries.app.