How long is the GAMSAT?

Sections 1 and 3 are multiple choice with four options each. Section 2 is two writing tasks, which ACER describes as “two (2) 30-minute writing tasks” inside a 65-minute block. It no longer says what the remaining minutes are for. The clock runs from the moment you open the test.

Averaged out, that is a little over 96 seconds per question in Section 1 and two minutes per questionin Section 3 — before you read any stimulus. Questions come in shared-stimulus units of anywhere from one to seven, so the real pacing problem is deciding how long to spend on a passage, not on an item.

ACER’s own preparation page states it plainly: “The test is completed over two sittings, with a total test time of 5.25 hours.” The arithmetic agrees — 65 + 100 + 150 = 315 minutes, which is exactly 5.25 hours.

The “5.5 hours” figure in circulation does not correspond to any published ACER number, current or historical. The 2021 booklet said 4.45 hours; the 2022 booklet said 5.25 hours; the 2026 booklet says 5.25 hours. Five and a half is a rounding that somebody made once and everybody inherited — including several AI-generated summaries currently sitting above ACER in search results.

ACER no longer publishes a reading-time breakdown. Earlier booklets (2020–2022) itemised it; the 2026 edition does not.

This matters more than it sounds. The 2020, 2021 and 2022 booklets all itemised reading time per section — the 2022 edition even totalled it, stating the test contained 21 minutes of reading time within its 5.25 hours. The 2026 edition contains no mention of reading time anywhere; the structure table gives a single time figure per section, and ACER’s preparation page says nothing about it either.

So we are not going to publish a number. Every page still quoting a per-section reading-time figure is reproducing a withdrawn document. Plan against a single pooled clock per section, which is what the current booklet describes, and treat any reading-time allowance you encounter in third-party practice material as an artefact of an older format.

Sections 1 and 3 are sat together in one session, in that order, with a 30-minute breakbetween them. Each test day runs two sessions, morning and afternoon, and you are allocated one. ACER’s published guide to the day looks like this:

Three rules about that day that people consistently get wrong:

• You cannot leave the venue during the break. You may leave the test room to eat or use the bathroom, but you remain under exam conditions for the full 30 minutes. Bring your food with you.
• Bathroom breaks during testing are allowed — with a catch. Not during the first or last ten minutes of either section, and no additional time is granted.
• Leaving early costs you the whole exam. Leaving before Section 3 begins means no GAMSAT score at all. Leaving during Section 3 through illness requires a medical certificate within three business days.

An afternoon session finishes at around 7.45 pm. If you are travelling, that is a factor worth checking before you accept a session allocation — and note that where a city has multiple venues you are allocated automatically and cannot choose.

Written Communication is remote-proctored through ProctorU for every candidate. The test itself is 65 minutes, but budget considerably more wall-clock time. ACER, verbatim:

“anywhere from 10 to 45 minutes to complete the start-up procedures in addition to the time you’ll spend in your exam… The start-up process does not take any time away from the time you’re allowed in your exam.”

So the honest planning figure for the remote sitting is 75 minutes to nearly two hours, depending on how the connection check goes. Other timing rules that bite:

• ProctorU holds your reservation for 15 minutes after your scheduled time. After that it is a no-show.
• Proctors cannot add time to your test, and timekeeping and countdown warnings are explicitly outside their remit. There is no invigilator calling out the last ten minutes.
• A genuine technical failure is nota no-show — you can reschedule free of charge. One no-show is permitted per test session; contact the GAMSAT office within 12 hours to rearrange.
• Whatever you have typed at 65 minutes is submitted for scoring. There is no grace period, no spellcheck and no copy-paste.

ACER states that the remote sittings run “approximately three (3) weeks before the Humanities and Biological Sciences test centre sittings”. For the two sittings ACER has published in full:

That gap has a practical consequence for how you prepare. Your essays are done and gone three weeks before you sit the science, so the last stretch of preparation belongs entirely to Sections 1 and 3. Planning as though all three sections land on the same morning wastes the most valuable three weeks in the cycle. Our study plan is built around that split.

Roughly two months. ACER publishes a month rather than a date: results for a March sitting are released in late May, and results for a September sitting in mid-November. September 2026 results are due mid-November 2026.

You are notified by email and access the Statement of Results online through your ACER account — no hard copies are posted. There are no remarks and no appeals for any component, including Written Communication.