I secured AIR 56 in GATE 2016(CSE) after enjoying/relaxing(These 2 term in my world refers as sleeping and more sleeping :D ) .In past months I received several messages from future gate aspirant and juniors,distant relatives (Last one is big pain in my ass )asking to share strategy and material which I used to secure this rank,so to avoid redundant answering their same question again and again I decided to write a blog about it :)
Gate 2013
I started my preparation with my college friend/mentor Sukarn Agarwal in final year and I was not even able to qualify Gate this year because I have preconceived theory that "If you want to secure a seat into IIT you must score 60+ marks in exam". so with this bizarre strategy after easily scoring 40+ marks ,In order to par this threshold I have attempted few more questions(tricky ones) and screwed up badly.....In Gate 2013 paper was designed in such a way that if you manage to score 50+ marks than you will surely have AIR 200-300 and with 60+ you will be among Top 50.
Not only I have sunk my boat but I also took him(Sukarn) along with me,since we are sitting next to each other and close enough to have a glance over each other OMR sheet and this drives him to commit the same mistake and at the end just manage to score only 48 marks.However this year we both manage to qualify for ISI,JEST,IIIT Hyderabad exam and I had offer from TCS and Accenture.
Gate 2014
I started preparing again in Sep calculating that exam will be over by the time my joining of TCS came but my misfortune again play a major role and my TCS joining came just 5 days before Gate exam and I wasn't able to attempt paper this year .As expected Sukarn secured a decent rank and flew to IIT Guwahati bailing me out in my misery ,Also paper this year is easy compare to Gate 2013.
This is the most ironic part of this exam its like someone has bowled over pitch when you are expecting a bouncer.After seeing this I understand this very clearly that it is useless to speculate anything from this uncertain exam and someone definitely SATANIC is sitting in GATE committee who kept guessing your strategy and formulating his own.
Gate 2015
Soon after boarding TCS I have got a development project in AS400 (its a Legacy system ....Trust me you don't want to work on these black screen) and since I enjoy coding and was happy that at least not doing testing/support job unlike my others college mates. Sooner realized that I am not solving any complex CS problems rather just fetching data from few tables and performing some operation and then print on screen or report.Therefore I began my quest for IIT in December onwards and with 3 month preparation secured AIR 1710 and also not able to qualify JEST,ISI,IIITH which i was consistently doing from last 2 years....I was devastated at this point of time with my performance and retrospecting what went wrong and realized my few mistakes:
- I was sailing on two boats with my feet on both i.e I was working hard on office hours to keep my manager happy and then after returning to home studying till late nights and in this process completely draining myself also attempting 3 tests daily on weekends with no time to analyse these tests which results in repeatedly doing same mistakes again and again.
- My manager got a wrong impression of me that my hard working and never say no attitude is to grab an onsite offer or receive a good appraisal so he set the bar little higher for me by handling me a role of module lead.Now writing/testing few codes individually is one thing and managing ,reviewing entire change request and facing the wrath of clients is altogether is completely different cup of tea.Gradually I became a person which I hate the most(Manager).My stress level piled up because of seesawing between job and studies.
Few Suggestions for future GATE Aspirant preparing with job:
Gate 2016
I started my preparation for gate in July and finish all subjects till November so that I have sufficient time for revision and test.I have attempted last 25 years GATE paper and always try to secure 70+ marks in it.One key strategy I took into account that I always document my mistakes and questions from unknown topic question with solution in separate notebook .
Secondly, I always try to be in top 15 in all the made easy tests.I would like to mention that take these ranking as a pinch of salt because many student cheat in these paper and most of the questions provided by them are wrong or having missing data so don't be disheartened if you don't score well here.
I have followed Standard textbook list in GATEOVERFLOW site .It contains exhaustive material for preparing gate. Try to be a part of subject discussion conducted by experts like Arjun Suresh and Praveen Saini sir.....I simply envy both of them for their contribution:)
While attempting paper I just try to solve question without giving much thought about what will happen if I screw it again . I started with aptitude part with 1 marks questions after slowly building my confidence moved to technical part with 1 marks question(Here I simply skip tricky/tough questions if I feel it take time to solve it ), After gathering enough confidence I have attempted 2 marks questions of technical part then review whole paper again for left over questions and tried to solve tough/tricky question which I left in my previous scan. After exiting from my exam hall I was happy that I have given my best and rest I leave it to God whether to reward me or bashed me.
Lastly, I would like to say to all aspirant that no matter whatever be your result just embrace yourself because you are no longer the same person which you were before starting preparation for GATE because now you are equipped with enormous technical knowledge and priceless learning and one exam cannot quantify your potential and abilities.
Please comment your queries and suggestions and I will try to respond to you as soon as possible :)
- Best strategy for this exam is 'Not to make any strategy'. Just spent 5 min and go through whole question paper and then decide how many question you can attempt depending upon the difficulty of paper.Do not mark doubtful question, 0 is better than -1
- First of all "Believe in yourself that it is possible to crack exam with job".I failed only because of doubts I had in my capability.
- Do not try to make happy everyone .You cannot be good student and obedient employee at the same time so try to grab a support project and Concentrate more on studies and less on project work.During weekdays try to study for at least 2 hours.
- Follow "DO NOT WORK ON WEEKENDS"policy.Attempt test on weekends and analyse and document your mistakes .
Gate 2016
I started my preparation for gate in July and finish all subjects till November so that I have sufficient time for revision and test.I have attempted last 25 years GATE paper and always try to secure 70+ marks in it.One key strategy I took into account that I always document my mistakes and questions from unknown topic question with solution in separate notebook .
Secondly, I always try to be in top 15 in all the made easy tests.I would like to mention that take these ranking as a pinch of salt because many student cheat in these paper and most of the questions provided by them are wrong or having missing data so don't be disheartened if you don't score well here.
I have followed Standard textbook list in GATEOVERFLOW site .It contains exhaustive material for preparing gate. Try to be a part of subject discussion conducted by experts like Arjun Suresh and Praveen Saini sir.....I simply envy both of them for their contribution:)
While attempting paper I just try to solve question without giving much thought about what will happen if I screw it again . I started with aptitude part with 1 marks questions after slowly building my confidence moved to technical part with 1 marks question(Here I simply skip tricky/tough questions if I feel it take time to solve it ), After gathering enough confidence I have attempted 2 marks questions of technical part then review whole paper again for left over questions and tried to solve tough/tricky question which I left in my previous scan. After exiting from my exam hall I was happy that I have given my best and rest I leave it to God whether to reward me or bashed me.
Lastly, I would like to say to all aspirant that no matter whatever be your result just embrace yourself because you are no longer the same person which you were before starting preparation for GATE because now you are equipped with enormous technical knowledge and priceless learning and one exam cannot quantify your potential and abilities.
Please comment your queries and suggestions and I will try to respond to you as soon as possible :)
