Best medical school guides according to redditors

Take a deep breath.

You are just overwhelming yourself and over-thinking the whole thing.
As you know, GAMSAT is all about 'Reasoning' - So, for section 3, all the answers are there for you to figure out. Any knowledge you have on a subject is there to cut through all the lingo, so you can figure out the relevant information quickly without getting bogged down in long words.

Sounds like you are not too long out of school, so you'd be more revising stuff rather than learning new stuff. Maybe pick up an A-level Chemistry and Organic Chemistry revision book.
Like This or This

Don't focus TOO hard on remembering facts, Your section 3 score is pretty good so it's just a bit of polish.

As for section 1 - It's gonna be.. Just do practice questions. Maybe get a UMAT (or old UKCAT) question book like this as it tests similar critical thinking skills.

As for section 2 - It might be worth considering using some of the 'Marking' resources offered by a few of the online GAMSAT resources.
Sorry to say bud, but the best way to practice is to put pen to paper.
I think once you start reviewing some of the Chem stuff, the train will start rolling, you'll feel like you are making positive steps which will clear your mind a bit and get cracking with those essays.

this one

I found the maths section harder in the book than the real thing though

Use medify.co.uk to revise for UKCAT, I used it thoroughly but I panicked during the first section of the test because I am a slow reader. Overall score was 700,

breakdown
Reading- 600
maths-800
non verbal reasoning (the shapes thing)- 840
Verbal reasoning- 560 (i used an old book for this, and they changed the logarithms for the questions that year, so my answers were given incorrect, even though in practice i was scoring the highest in this section)

As for university recommendations, I suggest you look through this forum page which discusses which Uni's to apply to depending on your strengths. http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Applying_to_Medical_School_using_your_Strengths

Lastly if you do get accepted for an interview, make sure you use this book for interview prep

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Medical-Interviews-Questions-Analysed-Multiple-Mini-Interviews/dp/1905812051

Don't just read the question and think ok this is how I am going to say it, remember you are competing against many other candidates and in order to make yourself shine, your answers must be succinct, personal and original. The most crucial part of any interview is that if you don't know an answer, be humble and say you don't know. Apart from oxbridge, where they want to see your deduction and induction skills. Interviewers only mark what you speak, not what you do and do not know. So if you say that I don't know a question, they will ask another question which you can hopefully respond to. You can also give a semi-knowlegable response. E.g In one of my interviews , I was asked " who do you think is the leader in a surgery ? ", It was a trick question because anyone can be a leader in any given situation depending on the resources and type of surgery. I didn't know this, so at the time I said, "based off my experience I have only seen surgeons lead surgeries, however my empirical observations may not translate into other environments, In the present day where nurses are substituting for surgeons in many smaller cases, there should be no reason why they too cannot lead surgeries. They then followed up with " So, who else can lead a surgery apart from a nurse and a doctor", I just said I didnt know and we moved on.

Additionally, if you haven't already started, please start writing your personal statement, it is very important and pretty much got me my interviews because my igcse grades were relatively subpar.

Is the 600 questions book you've got this one? If so, brilliant, the questions in there are harder than the actual questions you'll get, so it's perfect to practice with, but don't get discouraged by it. I got that book and was horrified at how difficult some of the questions were.

With the resit stuff, honestly it's more the marks that matter and their contribution to next year than the actual grades you got, so a remark to push a subject to an A isn't necessarily all that worth it. Some of the other medics I knew who got low A's in biol and chem decided to retake anyway just to push up their chances of an A overall for the A level. I can't talk for other subjects, but with chemistry the retake didn't actually take much extra effort, since a lot of the second year stuff (we were doing OCR salters chemistry) built off the first year stuff, so by the time I did the retake I could have got the marks I needed on it in my sleep. I imagine it's probably the same for most subjects.

How much guidance are your college giving you with the personal statement? I found what they wanted and what I'd initially thought I'd do were completely different. At first I'd thought I should avoid going down the whole generic "I want to help people" route, since it's basically a given, and I thought it'd just be dull, but apparently that's totally wrong - the more generic it seems, the better (I actually ended up using a thesaurus to find more ways of saying "help"). The way we were advised to stand out is how we talked about our work experience and volunteering. If you can sound like you really understand what being a doctor is like by reference to what you've actually seen then they really love it. If you'd like (and promise not to copy, of course) I can show you my one as an example - it got me four interviews, so I must've done something right (can't help a little boast, I was so pleased with myself over that :D)

The actual workload doesn't get much worse, except for some of the coursework is a bit of a pain, it's that what you learn becomes harder to understand right off the bat. That said, it does depend on what subjects you've got - my view of things is pretty heavily skewed by further maths, which just got crazy hard in the second year. The actual biol and chem don't get that much worse (chem a little worse than biol though, at least for me), it's more memory with those two.

And don't worry about it, I'm really happy to help.

You are right in that you only get one shot at UCL but you only need one. I did an EPQ and talked about it quite a lot. Mine was something like "do the benefits of stem cell research exceed the ethical complications" or something like that. It's something I'm really passionate about and I'm sure you won't struggle to keep talking about it. If your's is something you are interested in try an steer the conversation that way early. I don't know whether it was just by the time I did my UCL interview I was getting better at them or the nature of the interview but I felt like I controlled the direction of the conversation and lead it the way I wanted it to go, if you can try and do the same, if you can go in with a few points that you want to make and lead the conversation that way you will do well. Don't worry about silly questions, I'm afraid I'm from a preposterously privileged background and had enough interview practice to get someone in who had been lobotomised but I know most people are in your situation. Some of my friends who are much better people than I am are involved in a thing called target medicine, they go to schools like yours and do practice interviews and BMAT prep, it's worth finding out if they are at your school. I would say the main questions to be ready for are: why medicine, why UCL, possibly a tell me about yourself (I always hate that as it's almost impossible to tread the line of not underselling and not seeming arrogant.), Work experience (I had a few things and people I saw that had an impact on me and tried to talk about that rather than general things as it seemed more personal). Then obviously anything on your personal statement, go back through it and see what you would ask about or get someone else to do that for you, if want I can send you my email and I'll do it for you but you might find it more useful to do it with a teacher or someone else who knows you. Once you've done that just drill answers in your head, don't go through them entirely because it will sound scripted but have the phrases you want in your head and the ideas you want to express and know them like you would know material for an exam. I used this which was quite helpful and it's reassuring when you hear a question that you've already thought through. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medical-Interviews-Questions-Analysed-Multiple-Mini-Interviews/dp/1905812051/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421325700&sr=1-1&keywords=medical+school+interviews.

I also read ths but it wasn't as helful. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medical-Ethics-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192802828/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1QZ21GB5NZE9YRJE84PN

That's about all I can think of at the moment but keep asking questions if you have any and I'll keep thinking about stuff. On the day try and keep relaxed as best as possible if you don't know what sort of person you are when you are afraid yet but you will know soon but most quiet people get chatty and chatty people go quiet. Some people will talk about all this stuff they've done, I don't know whether they do it to get into people's heads or to reassure themselves but ignore it. I met some really lovely people on my interview at UCL but there are a lot of arseclowns too, just let their crap wash over you and keep your head in as relaxed as space as possible and think about what you want to say. One last point is script links between your ideas, if you can go from why UCL or why medicine into other things like work experience or your job there make your last sentence leading. Don't think of it as them asking you questions, you can influence the questions they ask you. Of course you won't get 20 minutes perfectly moving from one thing to another under your control but doing it a bit will help your rhythm but don't fall into the trap of saying what you wanted to say next instead of answering their question. If they do blindside you don't say the first thing in your head, wait a few seconds, under that kind of pressure you think at a million miles an hour 3 seconds will feel like forever in your head because you are thinking so fast but you can use that time to think it through and say something sensible. I guess most of my advice is really on mentality largely because it's probably what I do best as you might guess from my username I'm a jump jockey in another life so I'm quite used to being in high pressure situations crapping myself with fear, so I have routines to put it to one side and relax which makes all the difference in the world. I can talk about that stuff if you are interested but I've always found it a very personal thing and what works for me may well not help you and it takes time to do well which you might find better spent on other things. Good luck with it all and remember that even the people the other-side of the table where in your position once and just see them as no different from you just further down the line. If it doesn't happen this year almost everyone else will consider you next year so don't build it up into a do or die thing in your head and good luck.

I studied using this book. I spent approximately 1 month just practicing the questions and trying to understand their reasoning for the answers. Did well enough to apply anywhere.

Hope this helps.

This one ye

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Get-into-Medical-School-Questions/dp/1905812264