The Best GAMSAT Preparation Courses
Are you trying to find the best GAMSAT preparation courses? Here's my list of the best ones based on my years of experience helping people pass Gamsat.
I've got 15 years experience following the market and getting feedback from students so this is my honest opinion.
These include home study and in person attendance courses
1. Griffiths Gamsat Review Home Study System - home
2. Gradmed - attendance only in the UK and Ireland
3. Grad Ready - home and attendance in Australia
4. Gold Standard - home and attendance in Australia, UK and Ireland
5. Fraser's - mainly home with a small attendance element in Australia and UK
6. Ace Gamsat - home
Obviously I'm biased since I have my own course so Griffiths Gamsat Review is first on the list but below I'll tell you the various factors I base it on so you can then look at them all yourself, compare, and make up your own mind.
There are others but you can find so little good feedback on them that they didn't make the list so draw your own conclusions about that if you were considering another course not mentioned above.
WHAT CRITERIA DID I USE FOR INCLUSION ON THE LIST?
1. Actual Student Reviews
Obviously this is the most important factor to take into account when buying any product. It's one of the reasons Amazon is so successful. People love getting honest opinions from other users of the same product.
Crucial to remember here is that even the top rated products on Amazon with the most 5 star rated reviews will still have the odd one star review. So don't be put off a Gamsat course if you find the odd negative comment online as long as the majority are positive.
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WHERE TO FIND REVIEWS?
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Look on the company website itself, student forums, plain old Google search.
Be SUSPICIOUS of Gamsat course websites which don't have any reviews of their own product.
After all if they had them they'd surely put them up right?
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SPOTTING FAKE REVIEWS
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Is it clear where the reviews came from? Does it include the full name of the person who wrote it?
For example on my website you can see many screenshots I've taken from student forums of people discussing Griffiths Gamsat Review like the one below.
Or screenshots of emails I've received from students like this one...
As you can see the shots taken from forums have the name of the forum, username, date posted, how many posts that user has etc. So you could easily find the original on the forum if you wanted.
Similarly for the email shots they have the person's name etc. The email is blacked out as I can't put peoples' personal email addresses up on the internet, but if anyone wrote to me asking me to forward them the original email I could do it.
I also have "Verified" Trustpilot reviews (verified means Trustpilot have confirmed it is an actual paying customer via access to the online payment system just like Amazon verified reviews).
One of the companies on the list above has screenshots of some Amazon style Star Reviews on their website but doesn't say where they come from.
Now I'm not saying these are FAKE REVIEWS but if they came from a genuine review site where you leave a star review why wouldn't they say where it came from or put a link to it? There's no link to leave your own review.
Another of the companies listed above claims to have a high Google Reviews star rating but doesn't appear to actually have a Google Reviews Page anywhere.
Make your own mind up. Most people can sniff out a fake review using common sense.
2. Number of years in business
Again common sense - a bad company will go out of business. Good ones tend to stick around.
The Gamsat Guru company for example is nowadays nowhere to be found.
Back when I first created Griffiths Gamsat Review 15 years ago there were only two other Gamsat prep companies around. The most famous of them Des O' Neill is now closed (he retired) You can still get copies of his materials second hand but they're a bit out of date now.
Another of the others on the list above was also around then, GRADMED, which is partly why it made it onto my list since they must be doing something right if they're still going as long as me.
A good way to check how a long a company has been in existence is to look up their website domain name on ICANN at https://lookup.icann.org/ or the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/web/web.php and see when it was first registered.
This can also help you spot fakes as if a company claims they've been around 10 years and the domain name was only registered last year, then chances are they haven't.
In fact I already did this exercise for you, here are the results:
gamsat.co.uk (Gradmed) created 2001
gamsatreview.com created 2005
medired.com.au created 2005
passgamsat.com created 2007
gamsattestpreparation.com (Gold Standard) created 2008
gamsat-prep.com (Gold Standard also) created 2009
gradready.com.au created 2013
metcinstitute.com created 2013
frasers.com.au created 2015
acegamsat.com created 2015
crimsoneducation.org created 2016
acergamsat.com created 2018
3. Is it run by "real" people?
Can you find the REAL NAMES of the actual people running the company on the website? Who are they? Do they have credibility? Do they have any qualifications? Did any of them or their tutors even sit Gamsat?
Or do just say their name is "David" or otherwise hide their identity.
I don't know about you but I wouldn't even buy a pint of milk from someone who wouldn't tell me their name.
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Even some of the companies that made it onto my top 6 list above suffer from this issue.
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4. Value for money
This is clearly important, most people taking Gamsat are current undergraduate students who are not generally known to have thousands of spare dollars in their bank accounts.
Think carefully about what you REALLY need.
Now this is just my personal opinion about ATTENDANCE COURSES so take it with a pinch of salt if you like, but the science level you need for Gamsat really isn't that high, just first year degree level (in reality a top A level standard or final year 12 High School level).
Most people can easily achieve that teaching themselves with books and if you can't then maybe you should consider if a tough course like medicine is really for you.
So for me personally, paying $4000 to sit in a classroom with a load of other people to have a current university undergraduate give you some science classes just doesn't make sense.
Even if you can afford it.
And if you're the sort of person who really likes to be taught, you could hire that same tutor privately to give you one on one lessons for a fraction of the cost.
If you're happy teaching yourself, you'll do just fine with a home study course which directs your studies, takes you step by step through all three sections and sets out exactly what you need to do and what you need to study for each.
So that's it, check out some of the links below to the courses mentioned and best of luck with the test!
Further Resources
For more help with GAMSAT check out Griffiths Gamsat Review GAMSAT Home Study Course which takes you step by step through all three sections with advanced strategies for each.
