I started my preparation in my 6th semester of B.Tech . I completed my B.Tech in IT from VSSUT, Burla (a state government institute in Odisha). The lockdown for Corona gave me a lot of time to prepare for GATE and I was able to look after my college curriculum side by side in online mode. I prepared using online video lectures and practiced questions from GateOverflow (Use GO Book). All the Online lectures will help you a lot to build your basic concepts, but don't think that it is enough. You have to practice a lot of questions to get a good rank in GATE. Previous year question are best for practicing questions and to test your understanding of concepts. Before taking tests from test series, I solved the previous year question once. And totally twice ( last 15 years). I was preparing with my two other friends and we used to motivate each other regularly because while preparing for GATE it is very easy to get distracted and demotivated. I completed the entire syllabus and long notes by September. Except Maths ( please don't neglect maths or keep delaying unless you are good at maths).I covered maths in November and December thinking that Its easy but ended up getting less time for practicing. So for revision I went for 3 iterations of all subjects in a round robin fashion. First iteration took more than one month to revise all subjects and further iterations took lesser. During revision schedule I was taking topic and subject tests and trying to figure out my weak areas, silly mistakes and conceptual gap. I was maintaining a mistake copy to track these things which helped a lot in further revision iterations. I started taking full length mock tests in December. I was Also taking subject tests in between if I find that I am scoring less in that particular subject in full mocks. You can build your own strategy but PYQs are very important because many minor topics are sometimes not covered in test series. I was identifying those topics and used to revise. Initially I was scoring less in full length mocks but gradually it increased as my revision went on. I solved the topic wise PYQs while watching videos of that subject/topic. In the last month mocks are very important. Give as many as possible but after every mock test analyse your mistakes, weak section and uncovered section.
Keep talking to seniors who have a experience in GATE to stay motivated. Don't get demotivated if you are not able to solve a question, or if you are getting less marks in mocks. Just learn from your mistakes and keep upgrading. If you do a lot of mistakes in mock, it will reduce your probability of commiting mistakes in final GATE exam.
Stay focused, have faith in yourself and give your best !!
~Pranab Kumar Rout
