How I prepared for GATE

Though it has been more than 2 years for me since I appeared for GATE(2011), I still get many questions from my friends or acquaintances about how I prepared for the exam.  I am probably not the best person to talk about my "success story" because I prepared while working. Hence I could not dedicate much time for thorough preparation.

Due to these reasons, I could not score much and ended up with AIR 1196 in GATE 2011 in CSE branch. However I got interview call from IISc and got admission there. The interview experience is a different story which I discussed in a previous entry. (Link to it is provided at the end of this entry).

My preparation for GATE started with buying second hand Gate Forum study material and enrolling for TarGATE, a test series again by GateForum. However, due to work pressure and deadlines, I could hardly study for GATE on weekdays. Thus, for me, enrolling for test series was one of the best decision that I took for GATE preparation as these weekly/bi-weekly tests gave me a reason to atleast open some books on Saturday (3 hrs test on Sunday morning).

Also, we used to get the answer keys immediately after the test so we could calculate our scores and detailed solution was uploaded online on the day the test results were out. The analysis of results used to be on many parameters including overall performance, subject-wise performance etc. This allowed me to better understand my weak and strong points/subjects.

Also, after the detailed solution was out, I would go through them in detail and would attempt the paper again after a few days to see if my understanding of the topic/subject improved. Hence I would suggest everyone to join some test series, not necessarily TarGate.

Also as I already said, I did not have enough time to go through all the subjects in details so I took a chance by doing selective studying by concentrating more on the subjects which generally have more weightage. The other thing that I realized was accuracy was more important than the number of questions being attempted. Even in the main exam, I attempted only around 46 or 47 questions out of 65 but got 44 of them correct thus securing 99.12 %ile.

So to sum up, I would make the following suggestions:
        1) Enroll for some test series
        2) Distribute your time/effort for each subject as per their weightage
        3) Concentrate on accuracy rather than the no. of attempts.

Link to my POST GATE Experience: http://words-of-the-fallen-angel.blogspot.in/2013/03/my-2011-gatepost-gate-experience.html

Image courtesy: Google