If you’ve had any experience prepping for the GAMSAT at all, and pride yourself for not living under a rock, you’ve probably used, or at least heard of Khan Academy.

What is Khan Academy?

Khan Academy was started by one Salman Khan in 2004, when he taught his cousin maths online – his teaching style proved popular, and Sal soon had more demand for his tutoring, and he made the fateful decision to put his teaching video online, back in the OG days of Youtube.

Fast-forward a decade, Khan Academy is now a non-profit educational juggernault that has its own dedicated gamification platform, and content completely translated into different languages.

How about Serbian? Or Japanese?

And Khan Academy is popular.

Why GAMSAT Candidates Love Khan Academy

One of the diehard groupie demographics of Khan Academy is, unsurprisingly, Gamsters.

(⌐O_O)
And that’s no joke

And this is not without reason – Khan Academy is free, accessible, and everywhere:

Khan Academy is Free

Gamsters already dish out more than half a grand for the exam and practice papers – we kinda don’t want to spend any more than we need to.

Luckily for test-takers, every video on Khan Academy is free.

Khan Academy is Accessible

Salman teaches using an electronic blackboard, which is versatile enough for him to draw anything or paste any pictures, but is minimalistic enough that if he didn’t have an engaging teaching style, people would simply use the videos as unintentional ASMR and catch up on nap-time.

Luckily, Sal knows how to teach properly.

Khan Academy is Everywhere

I want you to do something right now. Go and google:

• Learn Biology
• Learn Chemistry
• Learn Organic Chemistry
• Learn Physics

This is what you should see¹:

And if you google learn and any science concept (like say, acid base, mitosis, torque, chirality), you’ll likely come across a Khan Academy link or video on the first page.

Like holy shit.

If you tried publishing anything online before, you’ll know how hard it is to rank highly on Google organically (i.e. you’re not paying to rank highly as an ad). And Google ranks sites highly based on how much they get shared, and the reputation of the people/sites doing the sharing. So, the more helpful and authoritative a site is, the higher they rank.

And Khan Academy has pretty much the whole of Section 3 subjects covered – meaning a lot of people, and a lot of trustworthy sources (like, say, the White House, or NASA), think Khan Academy is a good bet when it comes to learning these things.

If you’re looking to learn any science, Khan Academy is everywhere, like Wikipedia². And Indians.

Khan Academy is like the Wikipedia of academic-style learning.

And for Gamsters, you’re in pretty good hands.

The Wrong Way to use Khan Academy

Although I’ve talked up Khan Academy for GAMSAT prep – like, a lot – studying from Khan Academy won’t automatically make you smash the GAMSAT.

Like any resource, there’s a wrong way – and a right way – to use Khan Academy.

The worst way to use Khan Academy, would be to think that you’re set for every subject and every section, simply by watching the videos.

If you want that level of comprehensiveness and hands-off prep, there are workshop packages out there promising to give you the lot and hold your hand for thousands of dollars.

Khan Academy is not that – it’s a free resource; and like any free resource out there, it has its constraints, and it’s up to us to make the most of things despite these constraints.

How To Use Khan Academy Properly For GAMSAT Study

Use It For Section 3

Khan Academy is comprehensive in its approach, in that it covers every concept to do with a subject, and every aspect of these concepts.

For Sections 1 and 2, this comprehensiveness actually doesn’t help, since prep for both sections are about familiarity with topics:

• Section 1, to understand and analyse the stimulus material faster
• Section 2, to think up opinions and examples in advance or on the spot
  

For these sections, you need a wide range of topics, discussed by people of different backgrounds and opinions, and for these topics covered quickly and in a style and detail suitable for the layman audience (that is relevant to both you and the examiners). If you were using videos as resources for these two sections, the purpose would not be to educate you thoroughly on the subject, but to raise enough questions and inspiration for you to go away and find your own opinions and examples.

In these cases, you’re better off using a resource that skips between different topics and opinions, like TED.com, instead of learning way too much about History, Art History and Economics (the main humanities subjects covered by the platform).

Or better yet, listen to podcasts – find out why here.

For Section 3, it’s a different story: Even though there are sometimes tasks based on unexpected sources (e.g. strange tables and diagrams), most of the section conforms to the syllabus, meaning that being comprehensive is a good thing.

And Khan Academy covers all of the Section 3 subjects that you need to learn – including one that you might not have known about.

Learn Your Fundamentals Properly

Khan Academy has a major advantage as a one-stop shop for learning (for Section 3 anyway), because almost all of the material is taught by the same person, and the syllabus is quite comprehensive: This means that, compared to learning from multiple sources or textbooks, there’s the least amount of redundant material, and you don’t need to visit the library when the current texts don’t cover what you need.

This makes Khan Academy great for not only learning all the sciences, but also for relearning the hidden subject that underpins these sciences – which is maths. There is a separate post detailing why to relearn maths for GAMSAT prep, and how to do so without wasting a ton of time and getting super-bored.

 

Cover all essay topics, and start writing strong essays, in just 2 or 3 days. LEARN HOW

 

Active Learning

Ok look, with Khan Academy, you’re watching videos on the internet – but these are not cat videos, or memes, or porn – you’re watching videos to learn: And you don’t learn by having words go in one ear and out the other while staring blankly at something or other . True learning happens when it’s active, not passive – it happens when you’re involved.

That means engaging your brain, and taking notes.

Engaging Your Brain

There are a lot of reasons to engage your brain:

• You find yourself in conversation with your crush, and you desperately need to not crash and burn
• You’re running late to get out of your house, and you can’t remember where you put your keys
• You’re avoiding getting out of bed, and need to calculate – then count-down – how many times you can snooze your alarm

In the context of studying, engaging your brain has the goal of improving your memory and application of the concepts. The way to do this, is by asking the following:

1. How does this lesson help me with GAMSAT prep?
   • If you can’t answer this question, it means one of two things
     • You’re not understanding the content
     • The content is not relevant to GAMSAT prep
2. How does this lesson relate to what I’ve learnt so far?
   • Links lessons you’re learning to one another
     • The more connections a memory has, the less likely it is to be forgotten
   • If you can’t answer this question
     • You haven’t been understanding the syllabus up to this point
3. How does this lesson fit into the subject in general?
   • Just a general idea is fine
   • Scan through the entire syllabus first, for an idea of what you’re learning
   • Gives you an idea of your progress in the syllabus
   • Purpose
     • Noticing your progress is motivating
     • Noting if your progress is on track, or behind, or ahead
     • Linking what you’re learning to the whole subject
4. What do I want to achieve by watching this video?
   • Can be things like:
     • So I can solve questions about (topic)
     • So I understand (topic) properly this time round
     • So I understand all the variables in (formula)
     • To learn what the relevant terminologies and jargon mean
   • At the end of the video, check if you’ve fulfilled your goal
   • If you don’t do this
     • You won’t be as engaged as you could be³
     • You fall into the dangerous situation of feeling like you’re making progress, but you’re really just wasting time, because
       • You might not be learning the current topic properly
       • You’re forming gaps in your knowledge, which will cost time and effort down the track⁴, when you stop being able to understand stuff, because there are too many gaps for things to make sense anymore – and you must backtrack and fill the gaps if you want to move ahead

When Should I Do The Above?

You should ask the above questions:

• How does this lesson help me with GAMSAT prep?
• How does this lesson relate to what I’ve learnt so far?
• How does this lesson fit into the subject in general?

Both before AND after the video.

As for the question “What do I want to achieve by watching this video?” – it becomes “Did I achieve my goals for watching this video?” after viewing, as noted above.

The purpose for these questions is, by giving your opinions (backed by reasoning) – then checking the accuracy of your opinions, you are fine-tuning your reasoning skills.

You’ve probably seen that, in the GAMSAT MCQs (especially for S1), the answer options for questions can be very similar, and it is the very subtle differences that make an option correct or incorrect.   For example: Q2 The author’s view of pets is that they should: A Serve at the whims of their owners B Be grateful that their owners provide them with a life of safety and abundance C Feel sorry for their meaningless existence D Enjoy their carefree life while it is available to them It takes a lot of effort and practice to drill down to the differences between the options, what the question is really asking, and analyse the stimulus material for the aspect relevant to answering the question. For example, for Q2, even if the author never uses words or phrases that directly indicate any of the 4 responses, does the tone of the text suggest: A superiority of some species or others?  How most people or animals take their situation for granted? A particularly nihilistic worldview? Hedonism, instead? Analysing out the above helps you to solve Q2

All of these analytical skills (or reasoning skills) get exercised when you think critically – which is what you’re doing by considering the above questions, and also comparing-and-contrasting your views before and after the videos.

That Sounds Like A Lot Of Work, Will

This might seem like a lot of work, but in practice, it’s a few thoughts, like if your friend drove you home, and on the way, they asked you how far away you guys are, you’d have to:

• Think where you started (A)
• Think where you are (B)
• Think where your house is (C)
• Think what the time distance between B and C is (D) (40 min)
• Think what the time distance between A and C is (E) (60 min)
• Divide D by E (40/60 = 2/3)

And you can just answer “There’s 40 minutes left” or “There’s two-thirds of the way left” within like 2 seconds, because you can just estimate it, and because your brain was built for greater computational purposes (e.g. the GAMSAT).

In other words, the above won’t take that much time and effort – it’s more like a sniff test: Just like a quick sniff can tell you if the food is still good, or iffy⁵, or compost-worthy, you can quickly think through the questions, and see if you’re confident, or anything but confident.

And if you’re not fully confident, you can do damage control as soon the lesson is over, by rewatching the video and focusing on bits you feel weak on, or to consult another source (video lesson from somewhere else, or a textbook).

Take Notes

Ok, so Khan Academy is huge – there are a lot of videos in each subject syllabus, and I doubt you’ll want to rewatch videos in full just to review things. So, take notes instead.

What Notes To, Um, Note

For each video, note down:

• Name of the lesson
  • For ease of review later
• Formulas and what they do
  • Especially for Physics, understanding and applying formulas are the key to solving questions – make sure you treat your guests of honour correctly by recognising them properly
  • For particularly large topics, formulas are useful for dividing the topic up into manageable parts
• Key concepts and variables and relevant notes
  • Meaning, enough words to remind you of the general idea, that if you needed to explain it to someone, you could do it
• Questions you have
  • This can be questions about the material (e.g. if a point wasn’t explained to your full understanding), or new questions that the material make you think of
  • Leave the questions until after the video, then answer those questions yourself (educated guess, or consult existing material), then check the answer
  • Then check your understanding again, by answering the question without referring to any notes
  • Again, the above process helps develop your reasoning skills
• Notes and thoughts
  • Can be related or unrelated to the concept you’re learning
  • Even if it’s unrelated, it’s important to note them down, because:
    • If it occupies your mind, if can distract from your learning
    • They can help anchor your memory of the lesson

How To Take Notes

The best way to take notes from videos:

• Minimises steps between video and note-taking
• Minimises time between video and note-taking
• Minimises disruption between video and note-taking

Two different ways:

1. Take notes by hand
   1. You have one hand holding your pen, and the other hand on the space-bar, or close to the screen (if using a smart-device for the video)
   2. When you need to pause the video to take notes, simply hit the space-key (works for Youtube and generic video player on the Khan Academy platform), or the Pause button in the centre of the screen (tap the screen once to make the buttons appear)
   3. After the video, or at the end of the study session, rewrite the notes properly, or type them up
   4. Suitable for:
      1. You only have one screen (laptop or tablet or phone)
      2. The screen you have is not efficient for multitasking (e.g. tablet or phone) or note-taking (e.g. tablet or phone without an external keyboard)
      3. You want to practice your writing-with-a-pen skills (relevant to S2)
2. Take notes by laptop/computer
   1. You have the KA video open, and also word-processing or mindmapping app ready to go
   2. You can have the video and the document/mindmap as a split-screen, or just have the video on the screen
   3. If you have a second screen connected (e.g. laptop + external monitor, or a Matrix Operator / day-trader setup), open the video and the note-taking app on separate screens
   4. When you need to take notes, Space to pause the video, then mouse-click or Alt-Tab⁶ to the word/mindmap app
   5. Suitable for:
      1. You have a laptop or desktop computer when studying
      2. You hate handwriting notes, or feel it’s inefficient to write notes then type it up

Note-Taking Apps

In case you don’t use these note-taking apps already, you really should.

Google Docs

Why use Docs?

• Take notes using any computer (e.g. library computer)
• Auto-saves, no need to fiddle with USBs
• Syncs to phones and tablets

MindMups

You’ve probably heard of mindmaps before – how it’s a more convenient and visual way to take notes.

The most straightforward way is to use pen and paper – or to look for an online app option. Unfortunately, most online options suck: Either because the app is unusable without a mouse, or the freemium model is overly restrictive for the free version (e.g. limited number of mindmaps, can’t export as an image or PDF).

Out of the piles of options, MindMup is quite alright. They have 2 options:

• Use the app on their own cloud storage
  • Not recommended, since free users can only make public mindmaps, and they’re only stored for 6 months
• Use MindMup in Google Drive
  • Recommended – just add the app to your Google Drive first.

Why use MindMups through Google Drive:

• Make mindmaps using any computer
• Autosaves
• Easily build mindmap using keyboard only
  • This is a significant factor
    • You’re not engaging in eSports or design work, where you just need one hand on the keyboard for keys concentrated in one area – you’re taking notes, so you need both hands to type.
    • If you have to move a hand to the mouse every few seconds to add a node, or select a different node, or to re-centre the screen, you’d probably lose your shit, and swear off mindmapping quick smart
    • Keyboard-only control makes mindmapping sustainable
  • Hotkeys
    • Enter
      • [If a root node is selected]
        • Makes a new root node (the centre bubble that other bubbles are connected to) below the current node
      • [If a child node is selected]
        • Makes a new sibling node (a bubble that is on the same level as the child bubble) below the current node
    • Shift-Enter
      • [If a root node is selected]
        • Same as Enter
      • [If a child node is selected]
        • Makes a new sibling node (a bubble that is on the same level as the child bubble) above the current node
    • Tab or Insert
      • Makes a new child node (a bubble that is one level lower than the selected bubble)
    • Shift-Tab or Shift-Insert
      • Makes a new parent node (a bubble that is one level higher than the selected bubble)
      • Note: This will not make a new root node
        • Every mindmap starts with a root node, and only has one root node
    • Escape
      • [If a node is empty]
        • Deletes the node
      • [If a node is NOT empty]
        • Centres the screen to the node
    • Control-Z
      • Undo action
      • If you accidentally delete a node, or overwrite some content, this is an easy way to get it back
    • ←↓↑→
      • Move through the different nodes
      • DDR
    • Find the rest of the hotkeys here

Use Youtube Properly With Hotkeys

Khan Academy videos were uploaded to YouTube back in the days. As a result, heaps of videos on the Khan Academy platform play using the YouTube player.

This is a good thing – because being an established video platform, YouTube has very strong playback controls, with convenient hotkeys for you to control the action from your keyboard (rather than your mouse, which is both inaccurate and a pain in the backside [(^ΦдΦ^) AKA the shitter] [(⌐O_O) Snarksy!]).

For the purposes of studying, the following hotkeys are relevant:

Hotkey	Function
Spacebar	[Play/Pause]   This function works for almost all video players (not just YouTube), even if they don’t support other hotkeys)
F	[Full-screen On/Off]
← Double-tapping left side of touchscreen	[Go back 5 seconds]
→ Double-tapping right side of touchscreen	[Go forward 5 seconds]
↑	[Volume up 5%]
↓	[Volume down 5%]
>	[Speed-up]   Increments: 1.0x (default) -> 1.25x -> 1.5x -> 2.0x You get > by pressing Shift + Fullstop
<	[Slow-down]   Increments: 1.0x (default) -> 0.75x -> 0.5x -> 0.25x You get < by pressing Shift + Comma
C	[Captions On/Off]

Make Your Smart-Devices Useful With The Khan Academy App

Did you know that Khan Academy has a dedicated app?

The app is actually very worth checking out: Because if you’re stuck using your phone or tablet to access Khan Academy, the app at least makes the process as painless as possible⁷.

Playback Control For All Videos

As noted above, most videos on Khan Academy are hosted on YouTube, which gives great playback control.

Some videos, however, use the shitty generic video player, which literally only responds to the Spacebar to Play/Pause the video, and has no useful functions other than letting you download the video. That means you need to use the mouse to crudely skip back or forth, and have no way to speed up the video in case you want to learn faster.

With the app, tapping the screen once brings up the menu buttons, allowing you to Skip Back or Forward by 10 seconds, and toggle between different playback speeds (1.0x -> 1.3x -> 1.5x -> 2.0x -> 0.5x -> 1.0x).

Transition Seamlessly Between Computer And App

Say you were studying at the library computer, then had to catch the bus – and you want to continue studying from Khan Academy on the bus.

You can easily find your latest progress by opening the app, and in Explore -> Recent Activity, and finding the latest video you watched.

Transcripts Will Rock Your World

The transcripts help make up for the crime of displaying videos in Portrait mode

You probably know that there are two modes for viewing videos:

• Portrait
  • Small-ass video
  • Waste of screen real-estate under the video
• Landscape
  • Full-screen
  • Preferred viewing mode

For the KA app, both modes have their own advantages:

• Portrait
  • Under the video, there are the tabs About and Transcript
  • Clicking Transcript will give you the line-by-line text of the dialogue in the video
  • Useful for:
    • Learning concepts that are easier to follow when read as text
    • Finding parts of the video that you want to double-check
      • Clicking on a line of transcript makes the video skip to the corresponding part
      • Good for revisiting concepts that you didn’t learn properly
    • Saving data when not using WiFi
      • Click on a video, wait for the transcript to finish loading, then pause the video – it will stop buffering (since the video isn’t playing).
      • You can save on mobile data, and simply read the dialogue
• Landscape
  • The subtitles can be switched on/off

In Conclusion

That was a lot of reading – and it’s hopefully worth it, because now you know how to use one of the most convenient resources out there for GAMSAT study.

To review:

• Use Khan Academy to study Section 3, since you need to learn the sciences comprehensively
• Use Khan Academy to learn Maths properly, since it’s the foundation of all GAMSAT sciences
• Engage your brain by asking relevant questions before and after the videos
• Take notes for ease of review later on
• Use the YouTube hotkeys to control videos more efficiently
• Use the Khan Academy app to make your phone or tablet useful for studying too

That’s quite enough advice for now – go to www.khanacademy.org and start learning!

 

Cover all essay topics, and start writing strong essays, in just 2 or 3 days. LEARN HOW

 

Want loads more tips and strategies?

(⌐ಠㅿಠ) Including learning about a side-gig that pays $60 or more?

( ﾟ∀ﾟ) Yep – with no qualifications, labour, or dodgy-ness

(⌐O_O) I’m in

( ﾟ∀ﾟ) If that’s a yes, then check out the FastGAMSAT ebook pack on the homepage!

( ﾟ∀ﾟ) And yes, that’s Snarksy on the cover

( ^ΦдΦ^) Draw me like one of your French girls, Willeo.

---

Footnotes

1. Btw, you might see ads as the first Google entry – and that’s fair enough, since somebody’s paying for them. I use ad-blocker, so I don’t see ads.

2. Except way more credible.

3. You’re always more engaged when there’s some kind of goal: Most kids don’t like eating their veges, but if challenged to beat their siblings, suddenly they’re finishing their plate faster than you can say “can you not choke on that brussel sprout?”

4. It’s not even just a matter of going back and checking something and suddenly everything’s great – you have to try to figure out what the issue is, what topic is involved, if more than one topic is involved, what about it you didn’t understand properly, finding that exact topic, relearning it, seeing if that helped, and if not – repeating the entire process.

It’s like debugging programming code – and programmers hate debugging, because they’re not getting paid a detective’s salary. Try not to have to debug your knowledge, by learning things properly the first time round.

5. Depending on how frugal you are, you might eat it or bin it. I would engage an extra step, and ask if I had something important later that day (for brekky or lunch) or tomorrow (for dinner), like work, or an exam, or a hot date, or a social outing that I’m hosting, and gauge if I can afford to sit on My Rightful Throne for a good part of the day. I would then eat it, or leave it and re-evaluate after the important event.

6. Cmd-Tab for Mac users.

7. Not as in it puts you out of your misery ASAP, although a merciful death is always preferable (although not as preferable as not dying).