Hi everyone! My name is Rishabh Gupta and I secured AIR - 2 in GATE 2018. Marks: 83.00. Credit goes to my parents and GATE OVERFLOW.

I am a final year student in a tier-3 college. It was my first attempt. Even being in a central university, we have zero placements. Really, not a single company visited our campus this year for CSE(till now), not even the mass recruiters like TCS and Infy.
But I think that is why I got this rank. There was no other option, but to study and prepare for a competitive exam which offers a decent chance to excel in the professional sphere.

Whatever I am writing here is a part of my own viewpoint. Many might disagree with me. I would, rather, like to suggest you do not follow me blindly but rather analyse yourself and do what suits you best.

I always followed standard books during my BTech, even when teachers forced us to follow books of some local authors. This resulted in a relatively not that good performance in my college exams, but I knew that I was building concepts instead of mugging up and rotting my knowledge.

It would be my suggestion for you all aspirants to follow the standard books. It might take more efforts, but its worth it. Don't ask for notes from toppers, seniors, etc. but create your own. When you will make notes all by yourself, you will understand better. There is no secret to success, It's all up to you as you have to do the intended labour. Your teachers can teach you, blogs can motivate you, seniors can guide you, coaching people can tell you everything, but it's YOU who have to put your brain to work.

I started proper GATE preparation from July 2017. I prepared the complete schedule up till the exam.
I went through books of all subjects in this duration. Since I had already been through them earlier, so it was not difficult for me to do it again.
You should be clear about when and how you will do each and every subject. Create your plan according to your grasp in each subject. My plan was:
July - Discrete Maths (started with this because this is the base for cs)
August - C, Data structure and Algorithms (These were comparatively easy subjects for me since I did competitive coding)
September - TOC and Compiler Design (Compiler Design took a lot of time since I was studying it for the first time, so I made sure to do TOC quickly as I had a grip on it already)
October - DLD and COA (DLD is considered easy. COA can take time and I spent a lot of time in clearing my doubts)
November - OS (only 1 subject because of 7th sem exams)
December - DBMS and Networks (Don't take networking lightly!)
January - Aptitude and revision (and also Engineering Maths, which I kept neglecting)
February - Relax and gave the exam

Although, I set the deadlines but sometimes was not able to achieve it and extended a day or two. Make sure you stick to your plan and make changes to it as you proceed. The key here is consistency. Work hard, DAILY.

After reading books and preparing notes, I used to solve previous year GATE questions. And often got stuck. GO comes to the rescue at this point. There are so many aspirants like you, here at GO, who will help you in resolving doubts. You should also engage in helping others and clearing their doubts, this will, in turn, will clarify your concepts too.
For the name of the books and relevant chapters see this: https://engineering.careers360.com/articles/gate-2017-topper-interview-ravi-shankar-mishra-air-3-cs
You can find all book's pdf on the internet.

COACHING
I didn't attend any coaching(mainly because there was no coaching centre near me).
I felt that they just help us in mugging formulas, without giving an intuition of the core concepts. I have seen their study material, it often consists of "points to remember", and they expect you to memorize them(or rather to say mug them up), without having much of understanding.
Mugging up formulas is not at all required(at least this is what I believe in Computer Science it's all about Common Sense). I think if you intend to memorize the formula then it indicates that you do not have a hold over the concept. For example, people often try to "mug up" the formula for the average access time in cache (and Virtual memory) and often get confused when to use what. But once you understand that how the cache works, the confusion won't arise. You should understand the meaning of the terms related to it like hierarchical access or simultaneous access, miss penalty, main memory access time, etc.
Similarly, there are concepts in TOC like closure properties. Don't try to learn it by-heart, instead, try to make sense out of it, try to develop an intuition for it, try to visualize the concept, read the books and try to understand through the lines. Search on the internet, you will find lectures, ppts of great university's professors. When you began searching on the internet, you often come across new things surrounding that concept. It's YOU who need to browse things. No one is going to spoon feed.
It might not be possible to grasp everything and you might need to just memorize the formula sometimes due to time constraints. It's okay, everyone does it. But try to keep it at a minimum level. I was not able to understand a lot of things like probability distribution formulas, Catalan numbers, and a few other concepts. So I just learnt it by heart but you should try to by-heart things as minimum as possible. Mug it only when it is the last option.

I have already said a lot against "Coaching". But this should not be taken in a bad light, some of them might be worthy of their popularity (since I never went to one). But still, they are not the "masters" of their field. One can learn directly from the MASTERS of CS. Video lectures by NPTEL, MIT, Stanford, Aduni(Shai Simonson), etc. are all available for free. Those are some of the professors who developed these concepts, so you can't doubt their knowledge.
Going for coaching or Self-preparation? totally depends on you. Ask yourself. "Can I do it without coaching?"

STUDY MATERIAL
People often ask me for this, "Without the help of coaching material from where you have practised?"
1. First of all, GATE PREVIOUS YEAR questions. I am emphasizing on this a lot. These are really really very important.
These will give you an idea about the type of questions you will be confronting to. So solve them at least twice.
2. Then questions from CMI, TIFR, ISRO, etc.
For above points(1 and 2) GOPDF is best. It's better than any question bank book because you can comment and argue in GO, and attain a deeper understanding. And it's free!
3. Solve questions from standard textbooks. Those questions are more about thinking and letting your brain do some hard work.
These are not MCQs which you just try to look out for correct answer by eliminating options. Rather these are generally proofs or "finding an efficient algorithm" types. Here seeking the answer is not that important rather your approach matters. You might not be able to solve all of them, but at least try to grab a few. The time you will spend in thinking about the problem will be fruitful, whether you find an answer or not. It will increase your thinking capability.
At least understand what the question is asking. If you are not able to solve yourself, then search for solutions.
4. If you still have time, search for IIT, MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc. assignments. They are great. Be aware that you don't step far away from GATE syllabus. Caution: Some of these questions might be very difficult from GATE point of view. But at least giving it a try will help you. You will get a feeling that GATE questions are pretty easy as compared to them.
5. See questions here at GO. Many people add questions from their study material or test series. You can have a look at these questions too.

Also, try to modify GATE questions and try to develop an understanding about their solutions.

TEST SERIES
Test series are important. They might not increase your knowledge, but provide an environment of competition and help you in self-analysis.
GO and Virtual Gate test series are great. I would like to thank Techtud Group for providing free quality tests.
Other than these, I joined ME test series, but it wasn't so qualitative like they advertised it to be. I was hardly able to cross 70+ in these test, mainly because there were so many wrong questions. Nonetheless, taking them can be advantageous.
Importance of test series is that you can analyse your mistakes and they help you in time management. Try to give the exam at the same time as of GATE, it will train your mind to work at that time.
Don't bother much about rank. I was never in top 10 in ME full-length MOCK test. And I saw people getting 90+ in these tests.
Silly mistakes, you cannot eliminate, but can reduce them significantly by practice.
A single mistake of writing 0.231 instead of 0.0231 made me 2 instead of AIR 1  :p

At last, a rank is just a number, it does not prove your intelligence or brilliance(but yes they give you admissions to good college). I have seen many people here at GO who are far more knowledgeable than me (like the LEGEND, Habib Sir, and many more). They had written many great answers here, and I often asked doubts from them. After a certain level of preparation, almost everyone comes at an equal level. It just boils down to what you are going to do in those 3 hours. How you are going to manage the pressure. I was lucky enough to do good in those 3 hours. Take proper rest before the exam day and be confident.

Thank you very much Arjun sir for this platform, thanks to Bikram sir for so many good tests(which are way better than paid ones), and thanks to all seniors here at GO, whose blogs and answers motivated me. And Thanks to all other active users of GO. It was a great experience preparing with you people :)

All the best to future aspirants. You can message me anytime, I will be glad to help :)
Thank You!

[Index]

1. Resources: I used for GATE
2. Study tips
3. Test Series
4. Recommended preparation blogs/ videos
5. FAQs

1. Resources

Digital Logic

Book: Digital Design by Morris Mano [5th ed] Chapter 1 to 6 along with some questions from exercises

PAL and PLA : Neso Academy

Floating point representation: Article by Steve Hollasch

Computer Organization and Architecture

Book 1: Computer Organization and Embedded Systems by Carl Hamacher [6th ed] Chapter 1 to 3, 5, 6

Input Output: IIT Madras lectures by Prof S. Raman

Cache Miss: Article by Arjun sir

Cache Miss Questions: Gateoverflow classroom assignment 1

More on Cache: CSE378 by Prof Larry Snyder

Data Dependencies in Pipelining: Lecture by Arjun sir

Book #2: Check the “Computer Architecture Formulas” on 2nd page of Computer Architecture: A quantitative approach by David Patterson [6th ed]

Check examples and formulas used for Memory Hierarchy and Pipelining: Appendix B and C from Computer Architecture: A quantitative approach by David Patterson [6th ed]

Relocatable Code and Program Independent Code

Programming

Book: The C Programming Language [2nd edition:ANSI C] Chapter 1-6 

Important Questions about C Language: C Programming FAQs by Steve Summit

Must read articles on C programming by Arjun Sir:     1) C Program- A system view

                                                                                    2) Data Types and Operators in C

                                                                                    3) Pointers

Articles and MCQs by GeeksforGeeks (very few questions and articles may contain errors)

Sequence Points: Article by GeeksforGeeks

Data Structures

Book: Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structures and Algorithmic Puzzles by Narsimha Karumanchi [5th ed] Chapter 3 to 7

Programming Assignments: Gateoverflow classroom

Algorithms

Book #1: Introduction to Algorithms 3rd Edition by C.L.R.S. [3rd ed] Chapter 1 to 4, 6 to 9, 10 to 12, 15 to 17, 21 to 23

Book #2: Data Structures and Algorithms Made Easy: Data Structures and Algorithmic Puzzles by Narsimha Karumanchi [5th ed] Relevant Chapters are 8 to 12, 14, 17 to 19 (Studied very selectively)

Video Lectures #1: MIT 6.006 Fall 2011 by Prof. Srini Devadas and Prof Eric Demaine (TA: Victor Costan)

Video Lecture #2: Lecture on Median by Prof. Shai Simonson

Akra Bazzi method for calculating Asymptotic Analysis: Wikipedia Article

Theory of Computation

Book #1: An Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata by Peter Linz [6th ed] Chapter 1 to 12 (Also do the exercises)

Video Lecture: Theory of Computation by Prof. Shai Simonson

Book #2: Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser [3rd ed] Topic 5.3 Mapping Reducibility (Also checkout the exercises from other chapters)

Article on RICE Theorem by Arjun Sir

Compiler Design

Video Lectures #1: Compilers by Prof. Alex Aiken (Lecture list relevant to GATE + Week 8 and Week 9 until lecture 16-04)

Articles by Arjun Sir:    1) Viable Prefixes and Handle in LR Parsing

            2) Language of LL and LR grammars

            3) LR(0) items and LR(0) parsing

            4) SLR, CLR, LALR and Summary

Video Lectures #2: Lectures by Uncode Lecture 1 to 19

Book: Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools by Ullman [2nd ed] Chapter 1 to 9

Lex specification and Yacc grammar of ANSI C

Operating System

Book #1: Operating System Concepts by Galvin [10th ed] Chapter 1 to 15

Book #2: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Remzi and Andrea (Most of your queries will be solved after reading the book)

Multi Level Paging: Lecture by Arjun Sir

HPCA lectures by Georgia Tech:     1) Virtual Memory + Paging + VIPT Cache + DRAM

2) RAID

Databases

Video Lectures #1: Lectures by Kiran Sir Lecture 1 to 26, 29

Video Lectures #2: DBMS by IITKGP Lectures 6 to 9 for relational algebra and relational calculus

Book #1: Database System Concepts by Korth [8th ed] Chapter 1 to 4, 6 to 8, 10, 11, 14 15

Book #2: Fundamentals of Database Systems by Navathe[7th ed] Chapter 17

Normalization article by Arjun sir

Computer Networks

Book #1: Data Communication and Networking by Forouzan [5th ed] Chapter 4, 7, 10 to 13, 19.1 ,20, 21, 23

Book #2 : Computer Networks by Tanenbaum [4th ed] Chapter 4 to 6

IITB Notes

Some Articles from GeeksforGeeks

Book #3: Internet Core Protocols by Erik Hall (Read Selectively)

Uncode Lectures 1 to 20 and Problem Solving 1 to 76

Hamming Code with additional Parity

Linear Algebra

Video Lectures: Linear Algebra by Prof. Gilbert Strang  Unit I and Unit II along with recitation and practice problems

Calculus

Video Lectures: Single Variable Calculus by Prof. David Jerison 

Practice Problems from Cole's World of Mathematics

Probability

Video Lectures: Probabilistic Systems Analysis and Applied Probability by Prof. John Tsitsiklis

Book: A first Course in Probability by Sheldon Ross [9th ed]  Solved exercises of Chapter 1,2

More distributions and statistics from Made Easy Engineering Maths book

Discrete Mathematics

Video Lectures #1: Lectures by Kiran sir

Video Lectures #2: Discrete Mathematics IIT Ropar (Did not watch these lectures,found these after GATE)

Book #1: Discrete Mathematics and its applications by Kenneth Rosen Chapter 1,2, 6 to 9

Book #2: Graph Theory with Applications to Engineering and Computer Science by Narsingh Deo Chapter 1 to 5, 8

Combinatorics and groups: Slide 1 and 2 from Gateoverflow classroom 

Abstract Algebra: Discrete Mathematical Structures by Prof Kamala Krithivasan Lecture 35,36,37

General Aptitude

Verbal, Quantitative and Logical Aptitude: Solved PYQs , Notes, Number Theory, Modular Arithmetic

Spacial Aptitude: Spacial Aptitude by NLN Sharma Sir

Notes

1) GATE Notes from Standard Notes by Manu Thakur sir

2) GATE Notes by Ankur Gupta sir

Discussion on GATECSE website under every subject is helpful

Book to Improve preparation : A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley

2. Study Tips

Revision : Using Spaced Repetition

Anki: Create Q&A format Anki flashcards for topics difficult to remember or topics rarely asked in GATE

Test Series Timetable: Used retrospective timetable using Google Sheets

Here’s a sample: Color indicates how I felt about my performance and date indicates when I attempted them. Using both these metrics I chose which tests to prioritize during the last 2 months.

Solving questions: I divided my notebook into 3 equal parts so that I get used to taking less and narrow space. During your initial period before you start test series you can use cstimer to put yourself under timer pressure and improve your speed(but not at the cost of accuracy). I also used the same pen throughout GATE preparation(Technotip).

Summarized study tips by Barbara Oakley

3. Test Series

Ankita Jain AIR 1 GATE CSE 2016 in her wordpress blog recommends using more than one test series.

I enrolled for Ace, Made Easy and GO test series.

Topic Wise: Ace, Made Easy and GO

Subject Wise: Made Easy and GO

Full Length: Made Easy(Basic Tests only) and GO

My review of these test series:

• Ace: Easy questions, focus on concepts
• Made Easy: Moderate questions, focus on numericals
• GO: Moderate questions, focus on subject coverage and a balance of concepts and numericals

4. Recommended preparation blogs/videos

1. AIR 1 GATE CSE 2015
2. AIR 1 GATE CSE 2016
3. AIR 67 GATE CSE 2018
4. AIR 8 GATE CSE 2021 

5. FAQs

1. Which PYQ book should I go with? GO Book
2. How many times should I solve PYQs? Maybe twice, once from GO book and second time through the exams section of gateoverflow.
3. How to deal with MSQs? Focus on building concepts
4. How many hours should I study? Study whenever you can, keep a balance between study, rest and exercise
5. How much should I sleep? Get a good sleep, varies from person to person
6. I can’t study for longer hours, what should I do? Check out “Study with me” live streams, join the ones that have timers(pomodoro timers)
7. We all have some days when we feel down or demotivated, what did you do during those times? I solved tests, for some reason it brought me back into study mindset. Since I revised everyday using Anki I could attempt perviously studied topic/subject tests any time.
8. I can’t afford coaching and I don’t have enough time for standard books, what should I do? Check out Parnika Tutorials, Gatebook, Neso Academy (please validate whatever you learn)
9. Were you studying in your last year? No, I started preparing for GATE after I graduated and took several attempts
10. What were the mistakes you made in your previous attempts that I should avoid? Delaying revision and not enrolling for test series
11. How should you stay calm during the day of your exam? Some blogs said its best to meditate after sitting at allotted place, I tried it out and it worked
12. What is your rank? AIR 29

Thanks to authors of the books, professors who have contributed to open learning, Arjun sir, Bikram sir, Shaik Masthan sir, Srestha mam, Sounjaya mam and everyone who has directly or indirectly helped me reach my goal.

I have secured AIR-(202) out of 97481 students( 99.79 percentile) in GATE CS-2020 with marks 68/100 and my gate score is 811/1000. Currently , I am in my final year and  pursuing my B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from  Feroze Gandhi Institute of Engineering & Technology, Raebareli (U.P.).  I always had a dream of getting into IIT and with that dream after my 10+2, I went to KOTA FACTORY but was unable to crack it but the most important part was what I have learned from the failure and throughout the journey. After that anyhow I took admission in a state University Tier – 3 college.

Now I will describe shortly the each year of my B.Tech :
FIRST YEAR – ended up in knowing the status of my college weather it is private or semi-govt. (Till now it’s a mystery).

SECOND YEAR – Did some Competitive Programming and done some Training and projects in Android.

THIRD YEAR – Now , my gate journey starts from here. Remember Life always gives you a second chance . Keeps your eyes open and seize the very next opportunities. So,  I left doing any other things  and get myself  completely focused on gate.

Fifth Sem: Subjects Covered : Algorithms , DS , DBMS.

There are certain steps that I used to follow in completing each of my subjects :

1. Watch video Lectures .
2. Make Notes.
3. Revise them and Solve Previous Year Questions ( GO helped me a lot to clear all of my doubts regarding PYQs).
4. Write some Good PYQs and their concepts in a separate copy using the discussion and explanations on GO.
5. Make my own short Notes .

Sixth Sem : Subjects covered -  CN, COA, TOC, CD, OS ,DLD (as many of the subjects I have already read for my second year semester paper exams  so I completed them very fast ).

Now , till July , I completed all of my remaining subjects ( COA, DM, EM, Aptitude ) .

For aptitude and EM, I just read the basics and solved all of the PYQs from each branch which are more than sufficient.

Seventh Sem: Now, comes the most important part which are test series . Since I have completed all those subjects along with their PYQs and also had written all tough and imp PYQs once so only thing that I have to do was revision . So I scheduled and make planned for each of the subject revision and used the test series’s topic test and subject test for my revision purpose in a Round Robin manner .

I purchased  only Made Easy Test Series( of 2 yrs)   so I was having around 4-5 topic test and 2-3 single and multi-subjects test . So I give them all in a round robin manner taking all subjects so that all of my subjects are in continuous revision with me . I completed them all from August to November.

The steps that followed in solving test series are :

1. Revise the each subject and their PYQs once .
2. Give their topic test on weekly basis .
3. Give their single subject, multi subject test  after revising the short notes and mistakes of last given tests at an interval of 15 days .
4. Wrote and Bookmark all the important and new concepts from the test series . Many of those test series doubts are cleared from GateOverflow , a huge thanks to GO again.

In December ,my semester exam starts so I was not able to do much for gate so only thing that I done through out the 15 days of semester is given  many previous year gate paper as a mock which are available on gateoverflow .

Now , after the semester ends , It was around 45 days left . I gave around 30 Full length tests of Made Easy , Gateoverflow and some free All india mock tests of Applied Gate  and 3 Centre based tests in that period  and revised as much as possible . Before 12-15 days of exam I stop giving any test and just focused on PYQs once again and revised all those short notes and mistakes that I done in my tests.  

I would like to thank the whole GO team specially @Arjun Sir for creating such a great community for the cse gate aspirants.

Also, I would personally like to thank @vermaAshish, @Satbir for helping me endlessly to clarify my doubts.

Thanks to my family and some of my close friends for always supporting and inspiring me.

Thank you so much!

My advice to all the future aspirants :

1. Instead of covering everything in something , first cover something in everything .
2. Have a good command over the PYQs . Try to solve them at least 3-4 times.
3. Purchase any test series but complete all of  its test.
4. Never loose hope , Follow and enjoy the process rather than worrying about the results.
5. Don’t took the test series marks and rank seriously. Its good that you got to know your mistakes before the main exam ,so you won’t repeat it there.
6. Surround yourselves with positive people .
7. Follow some motivational speakers, read some self help books and most important watch and read the testimonials of toppers when you feel low .

Best wishes to all of you , DM me for any query and once again thanks to the whole GO team .

You can go through my answer on quora on Strategy of 3 hrs Gate paper – https://www.quora.com/What-was-your-3-hour-strategy-for-the-GATE-CSE-2020-exam/answer/Sandeep-Verma-525

P.S. : GOT AIR -262 IN GATE CS-2021 ALSO.

AIR-$175$
Marks-$71.67$
This was my third attempt and I got AIR-$175$. Gate preparation  can be described as $30:70$ ratio, $30$%  is learning concepts from videos/classes/books. $70$% is about practice.
So for $30$% have a look at videos, books before joining anything/ paying your money.
Gate Overflow is very helpful for the $70$% part of preparation. Previous year questions(more than 3000 questions) are very important and solving them required me around $4$ months, because if I couldn’t solve a question means I didn’t knew the concept well so I had to learn them properly and not just see the solution and happily move on to next question.
You get answers to all the previous year questions with enough discussion and even after that if you are not satisfied you can ask doubts in comment section of each question and get it clarified by experts.
Previous year paper as mock exam.
In my third attempt I evaluated using my plan, and estimated that $5$ months will be enough to prepare full time (without a job) so I left job on 31st August and started my full fledged preparation.
In first week of September I gave previous year as mock and saw the average was around $54$. I marked out all my weak areas started preparing them, few from YouTube videos, few from Standard Text Book, solved GO Book, gave subject test and moved to next subject. So I kept doing that for all subjects and eventually my concepts got stronger. Meanwhile I used to appear for few subject wise/ topic wise test on Gate Overflow and this was my schedule for four months(Sept-Oct-Nov-Dec).
In December just to test my preparation I appeared for TIFR as it has new questions and standard ones I scored $77$ and knew my preparation was going in the right direction. Thanks to Go we could evaluate it by just submitting the URL of our response sheet(were available within $10$ days of exam) and also knew the current rank also. As official TIFR results were out after Gate exam cut off was 75.
In December I also started focusing on aptitude, I used to give $20$ minutes to aptitude everyday and I used to solve a aptitude paper from previous year(8 sessions every year, so for last $5$ year I had $5*8=40$ papers in $40$ days) and continued working on my weak areas.
In January I focused on previous year again and started giving them again daily from $9:30-12:30$, completing the paper in $2.5$ hours leaving $30$ minutes for revision. Initially I couldn’t find any mistake(silly mistake) but after practicing I did and helped me in saving few marks in actual gate exam. I also appeared for two Center Based Test of Made Easy and ACE and scored 55 and 60, I was not concerned with marks but knew my attempt strategy was okay and I am scoring well in previous year not because I am memorizing but I am solving.
After Gate exam, response sheet were available within 4 days of exam and Gate Overflow’s Praggy app start working from mid night and we could see our marks and current rank. Other institute’s answer key had $3-4$ wrong answer keys provided, and were changed as soon as the Gate key were out. But all the key provided by Gate Overflow were right.
Further Gate Overflow has guidance for post exam also for admission and counseling and college predictor is also very accurate. If I did not knew about Gate Overflow I could not have managed to get 70+ in Gate.
My other blogs:
Test Series
Figuring out attempt strategy 

Hi, I am Suraj Kesharwani, I have scored AIR: 372 in GATE 2020. My Gate-Score is 764. This was my third attempt. I had to leave my job earlier in June 2019 to prepare seriously as I decided this would be my last attempt. My previous ranks are 5793 and 7613 in GATE 2018 and 2019 respectively. 

I want to thank my family, GO Community, and my friend/ Mentor Abhishek Shaw. He has cracked GATE in 2019 with AIR: 175 and has also inspired me to leave my job and prepare full time. This blog is in continuation of his preparation strategy as I have also followed it with some improvements. You can find his blogs here (Blog 1) (Blog 2) (Blog 3)(Blog 4)(Blog 5)(Blog 6)

Some Personal Background:

• I never thought about taking GATE in my whole UG. Neither did I planned for a PG.

• I did my UG from private tier-3 college in West Bengal where people are trained to fetch marks just by mugging things up.

• I was not good at math. (I only think I am decent now)

• I had not read any standard book before this attempt.

Knowing What’s Wrong

After getting such low marks your confidence gets collapsed That is why I started my preparation to get around 70-75 marks which can land me the rank of below 200. So, I took a mock of 2019 itself, in my home after 2 weeks of actual exam. Even at home, I was only able to score just 42 marks. I realized that the problem was with my concept. I made a chart similar to the GO stats. So that I could know which all subjects ware my weak spots and needed extra attention. 

Also, wrote down those topics which I found hard to understand. I planned to work on these first and then moved onto the other subjects.

 I started a reverse plan and started to mark the dates as much I could for the next attempt with a week division like

​

and also made a sheet for each book of GO PDF. The sheets contained details of the topic of a particular subject sorted by weight.

​ 

You can copy the sheet if you want. Book 1 Book 2 Book 3

I did add columns for the question numbers as It is hard to find the questions when using GO lists and favorites questions. 

Improving

When someone has to prepare on their own, they have to have a monitoring factor to check their improvement on a daily basis. So I opted for a Test series just to make sure that I am completing the subjects with some timeline. I enrolled myself in GATEBOOK. (Because they were offering a 500rs prize money. So I motivated myself that I should top in some of the tests and could get my payment fees refunded in a way.)

After I collected this data, I started preparing the topics having more weightage. I took two subjects in parallel. One in which was I was weak and other, a lighter one. I would use to read them first from standard books and then tried to solve the PYQ of those topics from PDF. I would set a threshold of around  70-75%. I would revisit the standard books and standard resources until I was able to solve the questions with 70-75% accuracy.

After completing each topic I used to take a topic-wise test of completed topics available in my test series and GO. For the questions which I was not able to solve in the first attempt, I used to note their question numbers in my sheets. The next day, my first task was to attempt them one more time. (Going by the theory of Eating your frog first). This time I would read the words very carefully of these questions twice or thrice just to make sure that I am not missing some important details. This can help you to solve 50% of these problems. For the rest 50% which you are still not able to solve, you can go to the respective questions and read all the comments and discussions regarding each of these questions. (These questions are the most important ones which will help you to stand apart from average student). I used to decide my day in the previous night itself about what topics and subjects I would be reading the next day. As someone has rightly said. “You should run your day or else the day will run you.”

You can make your study plan as per your wish but don’t make it for more than two weeks. I prepared a sheet for myself like the one attached below where I used to make a to-do list with a color-coding. The most important thing about it which I personally feel is when some days in preparation when you are feeling down, you just have to complete your task and not do anything else since consistency is the key.

I also used to mark such topics just to get an aggregated view of subjects like 

Once I have covered the 60-65% topics of each subject. I started with a full-length test of previous years. It was around September end. I used to take paper for the previous year on a weekend. and in other days kept completing the subjects and topics. By this time I was scoring 55-60 marks in them. (Remember to leave the test from 2017 to 2020 for future use and do not see their questions while solving pyq.) 

I made a separate copy of my mistakes where I used to write down my conceptual mistakes in these tests. (It was a great help while revising). And when I felt nervous with the very thought that I might have forgotten an already covered topic, I would randomly generate question number in the topic question range and solve them just to make sure that I was fine. (I had written a simple program for it.).

Some of the topics are hard to understand in one go. Like for me, it was Turing Machine and Reducibility, Pipelining, Congestion control, etc. You can visit those again just to be sure. These things were continued till November end and by this time I was scoring around 70-73 marks in previous year tests. All these while I was revising the completed topics from my notes from time to time.

Test Series

In December, I took TIFR as it has new questions, and that too standard one. It helped me to judge my ability to solve and understand new questions.  Also, I started to solve aptitude daily for 20 mins. I used to solve only GATE aptitude with all the branches of previous years. You can download it if you want from All Apti Sets. You can download a gate calculator just to get the right environment and monitor your time with a stopwatch. You can also get the result data saved and try to see how you are performing and the area where you need to work on. My average was 10.33 total and I also scored about 13 in the actual exam.

This time is very crucial you have to finish the small topics as well since you cannot be sure as to where the questions will come from. At least you should cover the topics from which questions are asked in GATE since 2014. and cover them since they are very small and can be done in a very few days. Try not to learn anything new in Jan and wrap all your new learnings in December. You can now make use of the GATE papers from 2017 to the current year. Solve one in each week at exactly on your actual test slot. and can change your plan accordingly. I had saved 2018 and 2019 papers only and when I took them, I scored around 65 and 67 marks. If you aren’t scoring 70+ in these tests, try to read and get some ideas about the questions, and its solutions which you are not able to solve as some questions are there just to scare you but are actually based on simple logic, for example: 

So I completed these types of questions. and taught me not to get scared after seeing these types of questions in the actual exam. 

CBT and All India Test

In January the CBT and the All India Level Test of various Institutes had started and I was just regularly revising my subject notes and my Mistake Copy notes. (Apart from subject notes you must have even shorter notes which you can use in the last week to revise).

I took two CBT tests, one from made easy and one from ACE. and scored AIR: 346 (38.33 marks), and AIR: 189 (54.66 marks). You can just judge yourself and practise the environment of the exam. Even if you get some fewer marks don’t be disappointed, as real battle is still there. I was not concerned with marks but knew my attempt strategy was okay and I was scoring well in the previous year papers not because I am memorised but I am solving. I also took one test by Applied Gate. I scored only 15 marks and then I realised that they are not framing the questions well enough like standards of GATE and are giving some questions way above the GATE level so I did not attempt any more of their tests.

Speed GATE

In the last week, I was tensed as I had a slow speed in the calculation and I used to get stuck in some questions which generally takes more time than a normal question. So to teach myself the art of leaving those questions and try to fetch marks from other relatively easier questions, I and Abhishek came up with a plan of something we call it speed-GATE. I used to solve the same previous year papers but in just 2 hours time so that I could get familiar with leaving questions and judging quickly as to how much time will it would take to solve it and then solve it accordingly. (Ideally, I should have got 80+ marks after seeing those so many times. But I was making sure that I solve them each time and do not mark those solved questions just by memorizing.) My stats of those as follows: 

Just two days before the exam, I was just revising the shorter notes and my mistake copy notes. The last day I just tested the Interface by taking the mock in the actual GATE site. I did not take the whole test as I was just making sure whether I know all the functionalities of this year's interface. The last day I just relaxed. 

After the result came out this year, many of the students were much tensed as some of the GO answers were multiple. And I finally ended up securing 64 marks. At last, I would only like to say If you are preparing alone, be true to yourself while solving the questions. If you are taking a shortcut for even for a single question, you are just cheating yourself and if it will be continued you are the only one going to suffer. I have seen in GO Fb page posts of people in Jan that they still are getting some 60 marks. But instead of re-reading the weak topics, they just kept taking more tests.

Some additional tips:

Refrain yourself from watching a web series as you can not control the urge and it will end up taking your time.

Create a playlist where you can add songs which inspire you to achieve your goal. You can listen to them often to get motivated or when feeling low.

Take proper sleep of 8hour. You are going to use your mind heavily so let it have proper rest

Never compromise on your health as a healthy mind resides in a healthy body.

Do not have a conversation with your friend who is not so important as much of your energy and mental peace would be used explaining to them what you are doing and why are you doing so. 

Once in a week take a break for 3-4 hours as it’s a long journey and we need some relaxing time as well

Have the logo of your dream college printed in your study area so that every time you see it, you can remind yourself Your Ultimate Goal.

If you are comfortable with PDF then you can download almost all the standard books pdf from Books. 

I personally liked the earlier version of GO-PDF so if you want to download it, you can find it GO-PDF.

If you are watching any video lecture please be very sure that you are using standard content, as most of the (around 80%) of the content on the internet for GATE will make you dumber. I know two such Youtubers/ Teachers who have massive students following them but they themselves have not cleared GATE with a good rank and are teaching subjects for GATE (at least I did not find that about their rank).

A unique channel which I discovered was Shrenik Jain on youtube. For those who are searching materials for Engineering math of other branches, You can pause his video and solve and also see some short tricks shared by him using Just the properties.

Hi, I got AIR 94 in GATE CSE 2018. The actual preparation started after my 6 sem exam in May. I started with Discrete Mathematics. The strategy I used to follow is that at a time I used to do only 1 subject. I learn the concept either from Standard Books or Videos. Make my own notes. Then do the previous year of that subject. Then move to the other subject. and Keep revising in between.

For previous year I used GO PDF soft copy. For easy question, I solved it within the PDF only. For good question, I used to open it into the browser, then I try to solve it. Whether I solved it or not. I checked the answer, read the discussion, and visit the mentioned links to understand it properly. Especially the links mentioned by Arjun sir, are really awesome, it really helped me to understand the concept better. I feel that solving like this really helped me to widen my strength and also tackle new questions in the examination.

How much quality videos you watched for a subject, but I personally feel that better concepts are built by reading the standard books. Once you read from Standard books it will be cemented into your mind and you will not forget it for a long time. But you should also know how to use those concepts and for that previous year questions or the exercises questions in the book will be too good. I purchased one standard book for all subject, except compiler.

For me, Managing my environment is also a big task. I don't find any person from my college who is actually preparing for Gate. So whenever I have 2 or more days holidays I come to my home and start preparing. Most of the good preparation time I spent at my home. And whenever I was in college I try to attend all the classes so that I can take big holidays and go home, and somehow I also able to manage 75% attendance, otherwise, I have to pay a huge fine. Already paid it many times :p.

You may have heard that quote "Surround yourself with those on the same mission as you", and for that Gateoverflow comes in rescue, Make lots of friends, solved each other doubts. Thanks to @Nitish Joshi, @Ruhul Sharma, @Ashwin KulKarni, @Soumya Jain, @Sonveer Tomar, @anup patel and many many more for being part of this. :)

After Completing Discrete Mathematics, I started C/DS/Algo and I didn't take too much time in it as I already good in it. After that, I moved to System subject and give proper time to understand them. I completed my syllabus in mid of November then I started taking tests. I really enjoyed taking tests at Gateoverflow because we can do discussion if we have some doubt and also we can answer the question if we want and have a better approach for that. Answering the question at GO really helped me a lot. :)

I also took Made easy full-length and testbook test series. It helped me to manage the time and to know that how many questions should we safely attempt (not get negative :P) to be on the safer side. While taking the actual Gate exam I was left with 25 minutes, I already go through the question paper once and only solved 46 questions, I know that it is not enough to get good marks, drink that 250ml water bottle, and again started solving questions with a lot of focus, Solved 11 more question and I think most of them are correct, But on the other hand also did silly mistakes :( and lost 7-8 marks. But it is okay, happened with everyone :) .

There are many up and down during my preparation, especially when I have to go to college continuously. Sometimes I'm not able to study one day, two day but whatever happened I don't lose my belief. I have a belief that I will make it. Really happy to make it. :) 

Few advice for the future aspirants:

1. Don't leave anything, complete the entire syllabus. Even a 1 marks in GATE make a big difference.

2. Solved previous year question at least twice or more.

3. Take Tests (either free or paid). In last 2 months trying to take lots of tests for practices.

4. Whatever you are aiming to score, Suppose 70 Marks in actual Gate then try to score 75 or 80 in test series because there will be examination pressure in actual Gate. Have some marks for it in the worst case.

5. Don't compare yourself to anyone.

6. Even the NPTEL videos are bit boring but they are really a high-quality one. They really help to build the good intuition. 

7. Even you are not scoring good in test series. Don't worry. Sometimes questions in test series are not good and answers are wrong.  But in actual Gate Exam, it is not like that. You will do good in actual Gate.

A Big thanks to @arjun sir, @preveen sir, @bikram sir, @anirudh pratap singh sir, @Habib sir, @Sachin Mittal sir, @Debashish Sir, @Digvijay sir, @Manu Thakur sir and many more for their guidance and inspiration.

In the end, I want to quote, 2 of my favorite quotation for inspiration for future aspirants. I used to take print out of quotation and paste them at my workspace. They give positivity. :) 

"There is no greater power in heaven or on earth than the commitment to a dream." ~Ignited Minds

"It doesn't matter what your past is, it doesn't matter what your present is, what only matter is where you want to go."

Hello everyone, This is Rajnandani Shaw and I have secured AIR 312 with marks 65.3(Gate score 779) in GATE 2020 and also selected as Scientist B in DRDO. I am neither a GATE topper nor from IIT/IIIT/NIT's but just an average student from a very normal engineering college just like many. I am a 2016 batch passout and had prepared for GATE with a full-time job. I am very thankful to Arjun sir and GateOverflow team for such a wonderful platform which had helped a lot during my entire preparation. This is my first post on GateOverflow. GO previous year's questions hard copy and goclassroom are very useful for gate preparation. GateOverflow is a must for all preparing from online sources or doing self-studies. In GO we can ask our doubts, discuss anything, get preparation tips, and resolve our queries. It is a place with the best explanations of GATE PYQ and all standard materials. GateOverflow tests are also very helpful for preparation which have quality questions that check our concepts well. Previous year questions also available as test series which we can use for self-analysis before the actual GATE exam. GATE 2019 was my first attempt after preparation but I was not able to secure a good rank so I tried for GATE 2020. This time I had tried to refer standard materials/questions available in Goclassroom which helped to make my concepts more clear.

Background:

I am the first girl child of my joint family from a small place in Jharkhand. At that time in my locality girls were not allowed to live like boys. In fact, I was the first girl there to go out of the city for studies and my mother always fought for me. We belong to an average earning middle-class family and I have some responsibilities. During school, I was very weak in studies (in every result I got 2 to 3 red marks ) till standard 7th where I failed and got a warning from my school that if I get a single red mark in the Final term result then I won’t be promoted. After that, I started studying rigorously and started getting ranks like 4th, 3rd, and 2nd from class 8th onwards. In this way my 10th completed. Becoming an Engineer was the dream of my class topper. Everyone appreciated him very much and then I thought if he wants to become Engineer then it must be a good profession and I should also try this. At that time I didn’t even know what engineering meant and how to become one. I had to take admission in State Board college for 12th(with Computer Science was one of my subjects where I developed an interest in CS). No JEE level coaching/tuition was available in my area.  I got UCET VBU Hazaribag, Jharkhand with TFW(tuition fees are waived) through the state engineering exam as I can't afford Pvt engineering college. We were our college’s 4th batch and no one from my college was working in even service-based companies or cracked GATE. Not even a single company visited our campus and we had to do strike in order to get AICTE approval. I didn’t even know what is GATE and how to prepare for it before 3rd year. But somehow I managed to qualify for GATE 2016. I was a college topper and completed my B.Tech with 83.2%. After college, I had to struggle a lot for getting a job. I applied for AMCAT and COCUBES and the score was good.  I got a job in a startup named Novatree solutions, Kolkata as Software Developer through COCUBES with a 1.8 LPA package. I worked in Novatree till 16 Nov 2016 and on 17 Nov 2016, I joined my 2nd job offer from Cognizant through AMCAT as an Engineer trainee. I never thought of working in MNC and so I was overwhelmed with joy. I was very happy in the initial months as I thought that after getting this job all problems of my life will be solved. But after a few months, I realized it is not true and I need to work hard with the job(no chance of leaving it) and prepare for the IBPS IT officer job as I didn’t have that confidence that I can crack GATE. I appeared for the IBPS IT Officer exam and missed it by 2 marks. I was so desperate to change my life that I started to appear in every exam that I was eligible for and sacrificed everything for it. I appeared for Damodar Valley Corporation(DVC) Assistant Engineer IT(Group A job with very good salary) post on a contractual basis exam and cleared it. I joined DVC on 24 Nov’2017 after resigning at Cognizant on 23 Nov 2017. I got a posting near my home. Here I worked with people who had cleared GATE which boosted my confidence to clear GATE. In July’18 I decided to prepare and dedicate my everything to it, so I started utilizing every waking moment for GATE. The work environment was not that supportive for preparation and Saturday was also working but I never give up. In Gate’18 I got 15 marks only and couldn't even qualify.

I solved PYQ GO hard book 2 times, followed video lectures, test series, etc, and I started appearing for every exam(AAI/UPPCL etc) for which I was eligible and missed each by few marks. In GATE 2020, I got 65.33 marks with a 779 Gate Score. I got some job offers from OMPL (Subsidiary of ONGC and MRPL) for the Executive (IT) post, Punjab and Sind Bank for the post of Software Developer and CRIS but I didn’t join any. I appeared for these exams because I wanted to have a backup plan. I lost 5.33 marks in GATE 2020 by doing some silly mistakes in basic formulae and division in the aptitude section as I was not able to revise aptitude because I had exams and interviews in the last two months and my DRDO interview was also scheduled in Delhi 2 days prior to the GATE exam which was not in my GATE preparation plan, but I am happy for my DRDO result.

Thanks for reading. Sorry for the long post. All the very best.

Before you read any further, you should judge me, because I am not a topper! My rank(558) and gate score(729), marks (63.67). It is important for you to decide if my experience is worth your time. Also, the usual disclaimer, below is My reasoned routine for GATE 2019.

First things first, there is "NO SHORT CUT TO THE GATE JOURNEY". Quite trivial a line it is and you must indeed learn to value the meaning that it holds. For those preparing for GATE 2020, the biggest challenge you have right now is time. Not that you have less time in hand, but the fact that you have way way more than whats required to kill GATE, calls for immense dedication to keep the regularity of studies going. At times you shall feel that the pace at which your preparation is going is pretty good, and you deserve a break. Trust me, you DO NOT DESERVE A BREAK, SHOULD YOU WISH TO BE AT IISc. At times you shall feel that the pace is below par, and that you are not gonna make it. Everyone feels so. But the secret is to keep pushing. Ask those who go to gym, what matters. Trying to lift the weight, when you thought you could not, gets you the shape!

Secondly, there will be a lot of advises and preparation strategies from your well-wishers. But before resolving to any of them, you should know that "These are tips, that worked for them", might not work for you. So even after following the tips and strategies of your well-wishers, you should have your own ingredient.

If at all you are feeling comfortable in the course of your preparation, trust me, you are not putting in enough. If a comfortable effort could get you an IISc or a good IIT, you would not have bothered reading such a long post, at the first place. You are supposed to feel the sense of loss of social enjoyment.

Thirdly, for freshers, try to get placed into a company in your college interviews. Takes the pressure off for GATE. Makes you write GATE with little expectations.

Final days(last 2 months) of your preparation are the most important. This is where I believe your rank gets improved by around a 1000. Be brutal with yourself. Dont let yourself sit idle. Every second of your last moments count. As far as I am concerned, I used to have one of the four corners of my mosquito net hung, to save time before and after my sleeps.
In this period of your preparation, having friends(normal ones as well as the Shona Janu ones :P) is poisonous to you. However, having a best friend shall be your penicillin. He will push your mind from the outside.
You will also need an internal sense of "I CAN DO IT". You have to find yourself, what it is that you can do, to give you a sense of achievement. I used to walk a distance of 10-11 Km a day, to make me feel mentally and physically enabled.

The tips that I religiously followed are:
1. Write my own notes.
2. Besides writing my notes, I also wrote my reasons to kill GATE. These reasons are personal to me so aint writing here(Whom am I kidding :P I had a breakup). Made sure that when I went through these notes, my reasons were right in front of me. These were like my statement of purpose to my future self.
3. I tried to solve questions mentally. I did not use pen and paper. Once solved in my mind, I wrote the solution along with the question in my notebook.
4. Every time I solved a question in an inappropriate way, wrote my mistakes. However silly a mistake that might be(REVISING YOUR MISTAKES IS ALSO A FORM OF REVISION. THE ONE THAT MAKES YOU REMEMBER WHAT NOT TO DO). Along with the mistake, also wrote the correct solution.
5. Posted my doubts in GO as well as in other groups. Sometimes, the posts were silly enough, to make me laugh at myself. But that’s worth it.
6. I started my test series somewhere around the start of January. Appeared approximately for 35-40 full length tests. TEST SERIES SHOULD BE TAKEN VERY SERIOUSLY, AND TAKING THEM AT 9am IN THE MORNING IS OPTIMUM. Even more important than appearing test series is, statistically analyzing them. By that I mean you should know in numbers(by number i mean positive and negative marks) how you perform in every subject. For me, I was specifically weak in discrete and compiler. I had enough time to boost one of them. So I chose to be better at discrete.
7. Except for the last two months, watched one English movie every week without subtitles, to keep my English in shape for college campus interviews.

8.THIS POINT IS MY OWN INGREDIENT IN MY PREPARATION. I used to tell everyone that I am gonna crack GATE with a rank<500 in first attempt. Yes. I ADVERTISED. PEOPLE USED THINK OF ME AS SOMEONE WHO BOASTS(CAUSE INITIALLY MY COLLEGE GRADES WERE HARDLY AROUND 6.5 TO 7, INCREASED LATER THOUGH). THE THING IS, IF YOU ADVERTISE YOUR POTENTIAL SUCCESS, YOU ARE SUB-CONSCIOUSLY FORCING YOURSELF TO DELIVER. Even if you fail, worst case is people remember you as a jerk. But its up to you to decide what you want.

All the best for 2020. Wish you a good health. :) Jai Hind.

Hey,

My name is Shaswat and i have completed my Bachelors in Electrical engineering in 2018 from NIT Jamshedpur and was working in a Steel Industry till April last year. After that i decided to quit my job and started my preparation for Gate in Computer Science and secured an All India Rank of 13. 

After my 10 month long preparation I genuinely believe that Gate-CS can be cracked by anyone irrespective of their stream. If you have a tendency to think in a logical way then cracking Gate will be a piece of cake for you.

Although there are a lot of preparation strategies online but still i would like to briefly share my methodology that i used during my preparation (But i still think it would be better if you developed your own strategy).

•  In the first phase of preparation just focus on completing all the lectures/chapters and prepare a detailed notes for them.
• Also try to allocate some time to revise old chapters so that you donot forget them completely.
• In the next phase of preparation your focus should be to revise a chapter and solve questions of that chapter. It will be better if you solved questions from some well known Test series because the questions there will be more relevant from Gate point of View. (DONOT FORGET TO BOOKMARK QUESTIONS THAT YOU FEEL ARE IMPORTANT FOR EXAM BUT DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO SOLVE)
•  After maybe 1 round of complete revision of all chapters you should solve previous year questions. GATEOVERFLOW is the perfect place to do this (HERE ALSO DONOT FORGET TO BOOKMARK QUESTIONS).
• 2 months before exam, start giving mocks. Donot stress too much on how many mocks you should give. I personally give only 3 of them but i analysed them properly. During this time just revise your notes, highlight important points so that you can do revision later on in a short period of time. (I found highting notes more effective than make short notes seperately). And also re-solve the questions you have bookmarked from test series, mocks and previous year questions.

If you want to connect with me, you can do that via. fb/instagram. My userid is 28shaswat.

Hi Everyone,

I am Prashant Ravi and I got AIR 283 this year and my GATE score is 787. This year I prepared with a job. This rank is an improvement over my previous year rank which was 2050. I have already covered my preparation experience in a separate article here. So, I will try to keep this post short and cover main pointers for working professionals and also about how I used GO.

Main pointers for working professionals:

• Make a realistic schedule. Keep buffer time in your schedule for unprecedented activities. Slowly try to get used to that schedule and then stick to it. Occasional faulting is fine because everyone needs a break.
• Time is a luxury so utilize it properly. During weekends, if you can’t study 7-8 hours per day then don’t but don’t waste weekends completely. In best case try to study more on weekends than weekdays and in worst case, try to study as much as weekdays. I used to go out on alternate Saturdays or Sundays.
• Start as early as possible. Have a high-level plan beforehand only that by what time you should have finished what. And try to achieve those goals.
• Arrange some quality, concise and to the point content to refer to while preparing. Try to avoid going out of syllabus from preparation perspective.
• Studying in office is a personal decision to take. Except for 2-3 instances, I never used to study in office because the free time I had used to be my break time and I couldn’t study or work whole day. This worked out for me but may not work for you. So, you want to study in office or not is totally your personal choice.
• Try to live as near as possible to office. If nearby area is expensive, then try to get a residence in such vicinity that per day you don’t take more than 30-40 minutes in travelling.
• You must lose something to gain something. It’s perfectly fine missing some parties, movies, lunch and dinners. You will have ample time to enjoy all this but once this time is gone, it’s gone.

How I used GO:

• FB group of GO is very responsive and provide you with solutions of your doubts really quick. Apart from that, whenever I want, I could have a healthy discussion about why my approach to a question is right or wrong.
• Being a community driven platform, the quality of answers on GO is very high. By quality I mean correctness, explanation and also in some answers, if there is a new concept or an uncommon concept used to solve problem, then mostly you can find links to read about that concept within that answer only.
• GO pdfs were bible for me while preparing. All 3 GO pdfs combined have almost 3k questions covering almost every previous year question of GATE as well as ISRO, CMI, ISI and TIFR. I had 2018 version so there can be more additions to recent editions.
• I started preparing towards the end of July, so I didn’t have much time to read standard books. There also GO pdfs helped me a lot. After finishing theory of a subject, I used to attempt that subject’s questions from GO pdf and while attempting questions, I used to learn so many new concepts. Then I used to read that concept in depth, and I used to write that concept down subject wise and topic wise in a notebook. This way I could read so many new concepts which I was otherwise missing by not reading standard books.
• While solving questions from GO pdf, I used to learn so many one-two line concepts which I used to write down subject wise and topic wise.
• If I wanted more insight at some question, then I used to visit that question on GO platform and read the discussion around that question which proved really helpful for me.

There are other facilities also which GO platform provide which I couldn’t use but are really helpful. For example, GO Classroom and Assignments.

Other helpful pointers:

• Maintain a separate notebook to note down whatever new you learn throughout your preparation and write that down subject wise and topic wise.
• If you don’t have enough time to make short notes, then once you know all the theory, start marking main main points in your actual notes. Mark in such a way that during final revision, subject like Computer Networks also don’t take more than 2 hours.
• Appear for as many tests as possible. If possible, try to take previous year papers on GO platform and try to score 75+. By the time you are appearing for these tests, you must have completed previous year questions twice and if still you are not able to solve already solved questions, then you may need to re-assess your preparation strategy and make necessary changes.

Mistakes I did:

• Did not go through standard books. Since I was short on time, I had to prioritize the material I want to study, and I chose not to read standard books. However, it is highly recommended to read standard books. One thing that is common across double digit rankers is that they read standard books. 
• Time management. I wasted a lot of time in unnecessary things, which made me rush my preparation at later stages. I had to compromise on quality of preparation on some aspects.
• By the virtue of 2nd point, I was not able to appear for sufficient number of tests. My strategy for appearing for exam went for a toss while writing GATE. Just because I didn’t practice much in exam conditions trying different different strategies and working out the best one for me. Ideally, I should’ve been writing tests all of January but that couldn’t happen for me and I wrote really less number of tests. I missed all CBTs also for which you must go to a center to give test. Giving sufficient number of tests is really important.

In the end, again I will highlight that Gate Overflow was a very crucial factor in my success. Thanks a lot Gate Overflow!

To read my preparation experience in detail, please click here.

Well, after my BTech in EXTC, I had managed to get a good job at Wipro in Telecom domain. However, after few months in the IT work, I started feeling that this is not the place where I belong, I felt I am born to do something more, the IT work can be taught to any other BTech guy, and he was any day replaceable. I didn’t wanted to be that replaceable person, and wanted to do more fruitful work, and I also wanted to study more, and then I thought of giving GATE, and yes, I wanted to give GATE in CS.

 It was a difficult decision for me and a risky one too, to leave my well paid job and go back to studies, that too in a new branch for me since I was from EXTC. I was blessed to have very supportive parents and friends, who suggested me to join classroom coaching in Ace. Coaching gave me the competitive environment which I needed to focus. It gave me a basic idea of subjects which were totally new for me, like Algo, DS, CD, TOC, DBMS, OS in a shorter span of time, and for in depth understanding, I used to refer the textbooks. It gave me a push to study more, ask more questions, manage time well, but then I realized this is not enough. This is when I came across Gate overflow. Coaching materials have lot of incorrect answers and the moment I used to search for a Gate question on net, the first hit was GO.

I found GO very useful, then I practiced all PYQ’s from GO pdf. I used to read all the comments from the seniors and how they arrived at answers, how they eliminated the options. Till in Ace, I felt I am doing quite well, but when I found the questions getting asked in GO site, I realized that  there are people well ahead of me. I bucked up myself, there were many days when I used to feel low seeing my fellow colleagues going onsite, then I uninstalled Facebook, Instagram, and I used Whattsap just to be in contact with parents. I had a clear vision that I need to study all topics once, revise them once properly, and during this time make clear short notes, then for next revisions, I would follow short notes only. And in between if I had doubts anywhere I used to refer textbooks. 1 thing that helped me a lot was solving doubts of others, I always approached a question from basic definition level, and was firm that it will have a valid answer, and if I am unable to solve it, then I don’t know some concept. I also used to solve lot of questions from GO. Then started with test series, gate tests from GO, Gatebook, Ace, Made easy. Quality of questions from Gatebook and MadeEasy were very good.

Finally the big day came, 3rd Feb and I tried to be as cool as cucumber and answer well. I got a score of 762, marks 66.67 and AIR 388. I feel I have got what I deserved, nothing more nothing less. I didn’t get much time to read all the subjects and concepts from textbook, since I understood lot of things from coaching itself. I feel I could have got better rank, if I knew about GO before my prep started, nevertheless, I knew that I will face interviews at all IITs and IISc at this score, so I started preparing for the interviews. Again GO was very helpful here, the score predictor app by Pragy sir allowed us to start our interview preps well before the GATE results were out.

I have written blogs for my interview experiences at https://chaitrasj.github.io/interview-exp/ I will add them in GO site also. For interview prep also GO came as a boon for me. There were interview experiences shared by seniors and they were very much detailed posts. Only because of those posts, I got some idea what to prepare. And GO classroom coding questions also showed the coding level that is needed in IIT coding tests, after solving those questions, I felt a bit more confident.

Finally with the blessings of my parents and my friends, and a lot of help from the entire Gate Overflow community, I got selected in IISc as an MTech Research student in Computational and Data science (CDS) dept. If I look back today, I'm happy for having taken that risk, it was worth it.

Thank you: A very big thank you and salute to Arjun Sir for running this community with so much dedication and all other members who have made GO such a huge success, who selflessly continue to help the students, specially Digvijay Sir, Srestha Maam, Shaikh Masthan Sir, Bikram Sir

Suggestions to Gate Aspirants : Conceptual clarity is what is needed in Gate, question everything, don’t accept anything unless and until you know why it is so, practice lot of questions, be dedicated and confident, during the last month of Gate you may feel it’s done, can’t read more, but that’s the time we must push ourselves more, and everything you read matters.. and don’t give up, even if you score less, you may get calls for interviews, if you don’t get calls, there are other exams like IIITH, JEST, etc. be updated, there is very nice fb group of GO (I would suggest joining after GATE though :p)

“There is always a way, we just need to find it, and there is always an answer, we just need to solve it” ..!! :)

Thanks for reading guys, if you have any queries feel free to reach out to me, I would be happy to help :)

Cheers!! 

My Background

During my 11th-12th I studied in a school where there were no one preparing for JEE. Everyone just wanted to get into some local engineering college. Best scenario possible was getting into some private college with tuition-fee-waiver. If one cannot make it into some engineering college then he/she would join BSc or something. That’s what our teachers told us. I didn’t know what’s the difference between IITs and local colleges is. Actually, at the time of solving MCQs from books we skipped the question if it had been asked in previous JEE papers :). That was the scenario. I really find it very frustrating sometime that I didn’t even recognized difference between premier institution and some very creep institutions. Every one of us just believed that JEE is not for us. We didn’t even think of it at first place.

Now, I got into some local private college based on my performance in state board exam. That’s what I could best dream of during those days. At that time, I was actually very happy that I was able to get into an engineering college on full tuition fee waiver.  I thought that there would not be any problem if faculties would not be good, I would work very hard and would get into wherever I want to. Btw best job I could think of after college at that time was engineer in some local company providing 27k Rs/month. Nothing more than that.

But after entering college, scenario was very different. I started using Quora, started surfing internet to learn things in CSE and then I got to know that what my faculties used to teach me during classes was very poor education if not wrong. I came to realize that it really matters in which college you are. I started hating my college ******* hardly. I didn’t like anything about it. They were focusing mostly on discipline rather than engineering (Because most people didn’t know engineering I think). Focus was not on deep understanding of concept but rather on discipline. You would feel outlier if you are discussing some programming problem in class room. That was the situation. Faculty would take interest in gossips with students and another faculty member. If you would ask some technical question then there would be very little chance that faculty would be able to answer it. (Here I must mention that there were some very good faculties too. But those were very rare.)

Now, one day I came across this question on Quora about local college CSE grad vs IIT CSE grad. That seeded the thought of getting into IITs someday in future. Then that thought became stronger and stronger with time. At that time, I was also actively participating in coding competition at CodeChef which helped me to build quite a good foundation of problem-solving ability. Which would eventually help in my GATE preparation in future (preparation for which I had not even thought about at that time). I wanted to go to google when I entered into college and that idea was because of my friend Milan. He knew about it and he used to tell me that never let your dream die ever. So, I just knew that I wanted to get into Google somehow. So that was which got me started with competitive coding (Btw if you talk about competitive coding to someone from my college there are 95% chances that he/she will not even aware about it).

Now, as 2nd year of college ended, I started to think about what next. I had option to go for TCS (Companies like this one is a best case for a student in our college. But I would be able to get into that though CodeVita competition. Which I think is not up to the mark of course, but It can get you hired easily in TCS). But I did not want to get into such a service company. I wanted to do some really interesting work. So here comes GATE into my mind. I searched strategies to prepare for GATE. I used to read blogs by toppers a lot. And I came across Gate Overflow.  I downloaded the GO pdf 2016. I used to read some questions on algorithms, programming, DS while I was free to figure out what type of questions get asked in GATE. And to my surprise I was able to answer algorithm and DS-programming related question quite accurately. So, that was my starter block. In start I didn’t thought about other subjects much. I thought I would be able to manage them if I give them a try. Actually, being good (at least that’s what I used to think during those days) in competitive coding gave me confidence that I can perform well in GATE.

Now, here comes a break. During beginning of 6th semester, I started my GATE preparation on full swing just to realize that I can’t just do it with full pressure of college which requires virtually 100% attendance. Yes, you read it right 😊. The rules at my college was such a ******* strict that they required around 2 breaks of time just to complete the formalities of getting leave application signed. If you are not having leave acknowledgement slip you would have to stand 2hrs in lab and zero marks in experiment and after all this nonsense you are still left with pending task of getting same ******* leave application.  --- I also could not study after college because I felt exhausted after returning from college. In short, I could not continue my preparation in such a college. So, I decided to quit (probably delayed) my preparation.

Then during 7th semester, I got offer from TCS through CodeVita. But after discussing with my father I decided to not joining it and give GATE one another try as fulltime aspirant. I used to do programming whole day at my house during my early years in college. So, habit developed for concentrating for longer period of time helped me a lot in preparation. This preparation started around December-2018. I started with Discrete-Math. Here some blogs by arjun sir has literally made me obsessed with standard books and resources. So mostly I used standard books during my preparation. I gave GATE-2019 CSE with little expectation of just qualifying. And to my surprise I got 42.33 marks with rank about 5050.

My Strategy

Before starting preparation for 2020 I already was quite familiar with what to study and what works and what not as I have given GATE-2019(However I didn’t prepare well for that). Now there were some subject completely new to me as I was from IT branch which does not have TOC and Compilers in syllabus (at least not in my college).

I started with Discrete math. For This I used book by Kenneth Rosen. I used to solve most exercise problems as I focused on improving my problem-solving ability rather than just mugging up formulas and concepts. I believe that exercises are really an important part in learning most things. Now here some exercise in standard books are outside of scope of gate syllabus. But at starting phase of my preparation I had time to do that. So, during my early preparation I tend to solve most exercise problems.

Then I picked up TOC.  I used book by Peter Linz for this along with video lectures by Sai Simonson (He made most concepts really obvious. He is such a great professor). This subject was complete alien to me before I started. (I also read starting few pages of book during my previous preparation to find out that I just could not cope up with material in that book) I kept my pace slow. I used to read a concept and imagine it visually as much as possible. I tend to explore various possible corner cases. I just fixed that I will give this subject 30 days (which is relatively longer) if I have to but I will excel in this. I used to watch video lectures by Sai Simonson then read a concept and then solve corresponding exercises in book. And to my surprise the subject which I thought I would not like became one of my favorite subjects.

Then came compilers. I thought I would try to implement compiler in this subject as I had time. But It turned out lot of work😊. I find Ullman book quite hard to follow. But it is better than other resources.  For compiler questions related to parsers I used to read answers on Stack Exchange for hours. This subject raised some really interesting questions. I particularly enjoyed those questions.

Then came digital logic and COA. I used Morris Mono and Carl Hemacher respectively.

Now at this stage I was solving some of the exercises only. Not all. I felt my interest in solving exercises has decreased. But I think most aspirants would find decreased interest in midway and where they would probably quit. But remember that finishing a race is prerequisite for winning it. To be a topper you at least have to finish your preparation😊.  So, I used to continue with my study even if I find decreased interest in some of the subjects. Things would be well with time (If you lack command in some subject it is not a good idea to quit preparation overthinking about it. Do your best possible at the moment. Then come back to that subject after few days.) 

Now mostly following this strategy I finished all the subjects from standard resources. I also made my notes which I used hell lot of time to revise from. I used to revise subject on weekends in round-robin fashion (suggested by Shaik Masthan).  I also solved subject wise question from GO pdf once a subject got finished.

Then once syllabus got completed, I started attending mocks. I was getting marks in range of 65 to 70 in first stage. Then during second stage my marks increased to 65 to 75. Then in third stage I got 80+ in some tests and 73+ in most tests. (These all marks are corrected marks means if some question was incorrect then I find out whose mistake it actually was - Mine or test-series mistake - and I would update my marks accordingly.)  Here I joined test series from various institutions and also found tests by mentors on GO quite well as they didn’t have much mistakes in question.

Now for test series part I would suggest that don’t get bothered much by lower test scores. Just do the best that’s possible at the moment and continue with your preparation.

Now, for those who are afraid of competition remember that your competition is not with fellow aspirants. You just have to do better than some extent and chances for you getting a good rank is much better. Because fellow aspirants are also a human. They are not some super-human kind (Maybe there might be one or two but it does not really matter 😊). You just have to train yourself such that you can get 70+ in average GATE paper. (Again, I said average GATE paper. By this I want to say that you should be having such a level of understanding that you can get 70+ in average GATE paper.)  If you can do that than chances are pretty good that you would get a good rank. So, just target to become damn good at subjects instead of targeting to get under 100 rank out of 100000 students.

My result

I got AIR 12 in GATE CSE -2020.

            I heartily thanks to Arjun Suresh sir. If he has not created this platform I would probably never had prepared for GATE and had joined TCS instead😊. His blogs made me such a student which mostly looks for in-depth understanding.

          I thank to Shaik Masthan for being active participant at csedoubts.gateoverflow.com.

          Then I thanks to those volunteers at GO who freely gives their mostly scarce time for GATE aspirants.

          There are also many fellow aspirants whose questions on csedoubts.gateoverflow.com taught me a lot. So, I’m really thankful to them😊.

A journey from AIR 3511 to AIR 94

I  completed my B.Tech. from The NorthCap University Gurgaon in 2017. I have given gate twice once during final year(rank 3511) and now in 2018 with full-time repeat by self-preparation. I really want to express my gratitude to WAHEGURU, MY FAMILY and GO OVERFLOW Community.

How Gateoverflow helped me:-

1. Best possible solution to each and every previous year questions. It has not only helped me in building my concept but also the answers written by people like Arjun Sir, Sachin Mittal, Debashish Deka motivated me to have to the good grasp over the concept and in-depth knowledge regarding the topic like them.
2. Best Test Series as the level of the questions were similar to GATE. Thank you Bikram Sir for providing these tests.
3. Best possible answers to my doubt by gateoverflow users like Joshi Nitish, Ashwani Kulkarni.
4. Giving the accurate rank prediction. As per Praggy App, my Rank estimate was 88-119 and I got 94 rank. Thankyou Pragy Sir and Arjun Sir for this app.

My Strategy

1. Build my concept from standard books and by watching some videos on youtube.
2. After finishing my syllabus. I revised it for the first time and solved all previous year questions subjectwise.
3. Revised my notes and did previous year questions once again.
4. I started giving topics and subjectwise tests. I used to note down my mistakes and any new concept being asked in the question in a separate register.
5. After completing subject test I revised my notes again and mistakes that I have committed while giving tests.
6. Start giving Full-length tests.

InShort:- I have read books and solved only previous year questions multiple time.

Mistakes did by me during preparation:-

1. Started aptitude bit late i.e in end of December due to which able to score only 11/15 marks despite the fact that this year aptitude was very easy.
2. Feeling depressed when use to score lesser marks in test series but actually marks in test series are not the right way to judge your preparation.
3. While giving the GATE exam couldn’t able to maintain the cool and panicked because of thinking about the results.

Quick Read : Follow the resources given in gatecse.in. Those are the best that you can find online. Solve GO pdf thoroughly unless you've mastered the concepts involved in the PYQs. Read comments and different approaches for answers. Take test series if you've time but don't take the marks seriously :P

A big thanks to GO community. Here you will find everything you need to strengthen your concepts. Best thing about GO is that you can argue about answers, have healthy discussions and get to the root of why the solution is the way it is. Aspirants of GATE CS are fortunate to have this platform.

I fell sick in last week leading to the exam. All my confidence was lost and was unable to perform that well in test series. So I decided to once again go through the GO pdf and discussions and not give any tests. In this period I did all 3 books and complete revision of my notes. Even on the day of exam, I was not feeling well. A bigger achievement for me was begin able to conquer the fear of failing. I never felt nervous before or during exam. I was calm and high on confidence. Most of my friends who prepared well for the exam lost the battle to panic and anxiety. One more thing you need to care about is silly mistakes. Everybody makes silly mistakes but it’s about who makes less of them.

There is no such thing as born-genius. Just work hard. You can’t control the luck factor so focus on things you can control. You don't learn anything from exams. You learn while preparing for them. Don't forget to live a life.

GATE is an easy exam and not as competitive as JEE. So if you have failed at JEE, don't think you won't make it in GATE. Life never stops throwing opportunities at you, it's upto you to make the most of them.

Rituraj Joshi
AIR 29

I am Ahwan Mishra, Air: 223 in gate 2018, This is all about my journey with gateoverflow.

    I had started my preparation for gate 2017 from a long time before the exam. I could not get what I wanted in my first attempt. I felt like, I gave my best, so GATE might not be my cup of tea. This is what I deserve. I was going to study in NIT Durgapur/Rourkela. Then someone came into my life for whom my life is going to be better. He is @Bikram sir.  He said me again and again that you should try once more, you will get into IITs next year. He knew me just for 2-3 months before that. Still, I had not decided to drop a year, I was not convinced enough. Then I saw a video in youtube by Sandeep Maheshwari. Its title was "Kuch To Log Kahenge".  That video affected my mind so much, I felt he was talking the exact same thing which I was going through. I did not have any reason for not dropping a year, the only thing I was wondering was "What will I answer to my relatives about not joining Job or mtech?". Anyway, I took the decision of dropping a year and convinced my family and said Bikram sir that I was dropping.

From that time Bikram sir was constantly motivating me in our fb group. Then I sticked to GO pdf only. I did not do any unnecessary material or qsn bank or test series.  I just focused on GO pdf which contains GATE, TIFR, CMI, ISI previous year question as per Arjun Sir's advice. I think they are huge in number and very logical. Nothing else is required for practicing.

 Then I became a friend with a guy named Bala with whom I was discussing difficult questions from GO pdf. Thank you bro, for being my friend throughout the gate preparation and for those long discussions of hours and hours on FB.

 In the last two months every day I was giving previous year gate full length at exact time 9:00. The advantages are you will get addicted to sitting 3 hours, you will get addicted to the gate interface, and the type of questions. A disadvantage is, it makes you slower. You can think it as a practice, not as a test and try to solve it within 2-2.5 hours. Anyway, I got Air: 223 this time. Could have been way better, but this year my main goal was to be in safe side. So I took more time in each and every qsns. So did not get time to do all questions and did some silly mistakes too. (You cant get rid of it, only you can reduce it.)

And thank you GO for everything. When it is the "one and only", nothing else is even close to it.. Do I need to say anything about it? The best source for prev yr qsns, most accurate rank and score predictor. Simply the best source for GATE.

Anyway, in the end, I thank all my teachers, seniors and friends.  Thank you Arjun Sir, Bikram Sir, Ravi Sir, Praveen Saini sir, @Debashish Deka bro, @Sachin Mittal bro, @Shiva Kulshreshtha bro, @Habib bro, @Digvijay Pandey bro, @balaeinstein, @Vineet, @Hemant.