Hi Perp,
How did you find the essay questions in the GAMSAT? As someone with a science background did you find yourself to be underbaked when it came to argumentative writing? Do you reckon people who did arts and stuff at undergrad would have better prepared to write on such abstract topics?
I don’t want to tread on Perp’s turf (thread) here (sorry Perp!) but thought I would quickly weigh in here as well.
I completely echo the above. As you may know (or will come to realise when preparing for GAMSAT), Acer places a much higher weighting on creativity and expressing unique ideas, rather than the way you express said ideas. An essay with poor/no structure that provides a unique/insightful viewpoint on a topic is likely to score just as well (likely better) than an essay that is expressed well but lacks any originality or insight. Obviously this is contentious and an essay riddled with spelling mistakes and lacking cohesion is going to be marked down significantly, but the point stands that originality is key.
Anyhow, what this means is that being a science student (as opposed to any other type of student, including an Arts student) should not disadvantage you in itself; however if you don’t learn to think critically/consider topics from different perspectives, you are less likely to have original ideas and therefore less likely to write a high-scoring essay. Obviously Arts students practise this skill in depth in their degrees and thus are more likely to score well in s2 even with limited GAMSAT-specific preparation; however, you can give yourself the same advantage they have by (as Perp mentioned) broadening your worldly knowledge and starting to look at different topics from multiple perspectives, being able to weigh up the pros and cons of different decisions and events etc. Obviously this doesn't necessarily require a keen interest in philosophy/humanities to achieve (I certainly didn't do any reading on philosophy in my prep!) but starting to read articles (especially editorials and opinion pieces) on broad topics provides you with a) a bunch of different perspectives on topics you may not have previously considered and b) events which you can use as supporting evidence in your essays - both of which will serve you very well for essay writing.
If you are indeed 18, I assume you won't be sitting GAMSAT properly until next year or later - if this is the case, you have plenty of time to start involving yourself in these sorts of practices which will serve you well for a GAMSAT essay. Also, for your reference you don't necessarily have to write argumentatively at all - there are people who have scored in the 80s (i.e. exceptional) who wrote first-person reflective pieces for both of their essays.
Wow, this turned out much longer than I expected.... apologies for the tangent