My experience self studying for GATE CSE(AIR 40). Resources and Strats.

Question

Hello GateOverflow, this is Himanshu Gupta. I have secured AIR 40 in CS and AIR 477 in DA without any coaching. GateOverflow was crucial in my journey and I think this blog post will be useful to future aspirants. For some background info this was my first time giving GATE and I have graduated in 2024 from a third tier government college. I belong to a CS background. I started my preparation in late July 2024, after my internship ended. For some clarification, this gave me about 6 months to prepare for the exam. In my bachelors, marks wise, I was a below average student but I always thought that I had a good grasp on the fundamentals.

In general, I will advise you to avoid all resources do not directly or indirectly derive from a standard resource. That basically means all youtube videos except a few(like GOClasses who cite their sources). By standard resource I mean a textbook or a course taught by some university professor(like NPTEL/MIT OCW).
Anything learned should be immediately validated using PYQs. For core subjects you should be able to do 60-70% of PYQs after studying the theory. You may get the questions wrong but you should see a way to the solution, you should not be clueless.

My strategy for preparation was 3 months of studying to complete the syllabus and doing all the PYQS once, another 2 months for revision(which is basically doing PYQs again and tests) and the last 1 month for mock tests. I was more or less able to follow this schedule. Although things did get hairy in the end of each period where I had to do prolonged hours. I didn't take any major breaks, but some days were wasted here and there, even when I tried to study daily.
I did one subject at a time and after completing each topic of each subject I always did all PYQs. I used the GO-PDFs for this purpose. I didn't use any physical media and read all the books digitally.
About notes, I didn't make any. I think you should probably make notes. They are great for a certain type of student but unfortunately I am not one of them. I like to keep things fast and fairly unorganized, and notes get in the way of that. If I had more time I would have probably atleast tried though. My revisions were tests, PYQs, bookmarked webpages, and favorited questions on GateOverflow along GoClasses free videos in the background. I tried reading notes by Manu Thakur but was unsuccessful.
I also didn't give any tests till the first revision. In which I gave subject tests. I gave my first full mock test on Jan 5th 2025, after which I gave almost 1 test every day. I only took the GateOverflow+GoClasses test series.

Now coming to resources that I used. I will list them subject wise along with the time I spent on each subject during the initial 3 months of my prep. This time includes time solving PYQs and days wasted. The resources are in no particular order.

Discrete Math:

•   Introductory Discrete Mathematics - V.K. Balakrishnan(Textbook): Read most of the book, solved almost all questions
•   Discrete Math Course - Shai Simonson: Combinatory parts
•   GoClasses Free Course - Deepak Poonia: Logic(youtube series), generating functions, graph theory and group theory(including lattice)

  Time spent: 13 days

Engineering Math:

•   GoClasses Free Course - Sachin Mittal: Probability(Conditional Probability/Bayes/Distributions/Stat), Linear Algebra(Determinants/Eigenvalues)
•   MIT OCW 6.041 - John Tsitsiklis: Probability(Axioms/Conditional Probability/Random Variables)
•   MIT OCW 18.06 - Gilbert Strang(Everything till lecture 10)
•   I skipped calculus, only did PYQs and reviewed formulas

  Time spent: 8 days

Operating Systems:

• Modern Operating Systems 5/e - Tanenbaum et al.: Read all GATE topics from this. Skipped parts not in syllabus like distributed operating systems

  Time spent: 6 days

Computer Organization and Architecture:

• Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface 5/e - Patterson and Hennessy: Read all GATE relevant topics and more. Really excellent book. Bad exercises though

  Time spent: 5 days

Theory of Computation:

• Theory of Computation - Shai Simonson: Every lecture including recitations
• gatecse.in - Arjun Suresh: Very good blogs on TOC. Read them all.
• Introdution to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation 1/e - Hopcroft and Ullman: Terse book but serves as a great reference. Contains almost everything and more. There are things in this book that you won't find in any other introductory book

  Time spent: 9 days

Compiler Design:

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools 2/e - Ullman et al.: Read all GATE relevant topics
• gatecse.in - Arjun Suresh: Again excellent blogs on parsing this time. Read them all
• Compilers - Alex Aiken: Good lectures but didn't find them suitable for GATE. Very intuitive but I think they lacked theory. Dropped them very early. Will be revisiting them later

  Time spent: 8 days

Computer Networks:

• Computer Networks - Tanenbaum et al.: Read all GATE relevant topics. Very good book but maybe not the best for GATE. In hindsight could have used a different book. Gave me issues during revision
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach(The lectures not the book) - Jim Kurose: Watched some videos on TCP and flow control.

  Time spent: 10 days

Digital Electronics:

• Electronics - Digital Circuits and Systems(NPTEL course) - S. Srinivasan: Really good videos. Watched most of GATE CSE relevant parts.

  Time spent: 7 days

Data Structures and Algorithms:

• Algorithms(Course) - Tim Roughgarden: Really good lectures. I watched them all. This includes the content marked as optional.
• Introduction to Algorithms 4/e - Cormen et al.: Didn't really use it much for reading but solved a bunch of questions. I would not suggest doing them for GATE.
• Algorithms(Notes) - Jeff Erikson: Solving Recurrences(Especially the questions)

  Time spent: 14 days

C programming:

• Did nothing. This is basically all I did during my time at college. I am at a stage where function pointers do not look ugly anymore

  Time spent: 0 days

Databases:

• Fundamentals of Database Systems - Navathe et al.: Reference book, read transactions and concurrency
• GoClasses Free Videos - Deepak Poonia: Normalization and Normal Forms, recovery techniques
• Introduction to Databases(NPTEL Course) - Arnab Bhattacharya: Relational Model and Relational Algebra
• I didn't do anything for SQL. I knew SQL already and GATE tends to ask very easy questions
• I read some article on the internet for the ER diagrams, domain and tuple calculus. I will add them point by point if I find them

  Time spent: 6 days

Now coming to the 2-month revision. I tried to study notes by Manu Thakur but failed to do so. So I stuck with tests and PYQs along with GoClasses free content. I would review things that I was getting wrong in tests and PYQs from reference books(which there are a lot of, I can share the list if you want them, by the end my digital library had 27 books, most of them just for reference). During revision, I used the GateOverflow favorite feature a lot. I suggest you do the same. If you have made notes I would suggest reading the notes first before reattempting PYQs. This revision/test period continued till 5th Jan, when I gave my first full test, after which I stopped giving subject tests.
From 5th to 26th I gave almost 1 mock every day. I would suggest you give each mock like it is your final exam i.e. with full concentration. You should try to be in the top 20. Properly review mocks. Mark questions that you find interesting, they will help you in revision. Don't leave any question. Your performance in mocks is probably going to be how you perform in your GATE exam, so take this seriously.   

Additionally, I would like to advise you to start as early as possible. I think I had a fairly good background so I was able to cover most subjects extremely quickly but even then, It was a mistake on my part to start so late. Given another chance, I would start early.

Good Luck!

 

Comments

Congratulations, himanshu2001 🎉 Well deserved—your hard work paid off! 🔥👏

---

brave move

---

Hi
Can you share your linkedin/other social media to verify these facts and that you are real
is 6 months enough?

---

@Sherlock_Holmes

Linkedin
I don't know. I would say start as early as possible. It depends a lot on what you already know. Even before I started I was very knowledgeable in the domain of Operating Systems and Computer Architecture. Pair that with a lot of experience coding and general knowledge of DSA(about 150 leetcode questions worth), I would say that I had a pretty good foundation.  So you see I wasn't starting from absolute zero. You might be.

---

I studied for 5 months from a single book for each subject to make my revisions easy. Took mock tests for 3 months and revised.

I could get AIR 1144.

My biggest mistake was not taking mock tests seriously. I took tests, and if I didn't get a good score, I revised the subject and solved more PYQs. The problem with this approach, which I couldn't see then, was that I wasn't correcting my mistakes directly.

I am taking offline coaching for this year as I am already 27 and so for my PSU goal this is the last year.

I think what is the difference between people like Himanshu and people like me is that I am bad at analysing my actions' possible results which makes me a bad planner (I have started working on this weakness 😊).

---

Hello @himanshu2001 , Can you give some video references(university lectures) for OS and COA which has a mixture of both practical and theory? I also want to know how did you get so good at COA and OS from a practical point of view?

I want to get an overall deeper understanding of low level stuff as well as able to implement it practically.

---

hey, can you please tell on an average how much time you used to study for GATE each day ?

---

@Silver_Reaper  I didn't study from any video lectures for OS and COA, so I can't comment on that.

If you are intereseted in learning more about OS and Architecture you can follow the following resources to spark your interest, I will only suggest these after giving GATE or in your free time set aside from GATE prep:

For COA, Ben Eater makes really good videos on computer architecture and electronics. Watching his videos is really fun. Other than that the best way to learn more about computer arch is learning assembly. I would not suggest starting with a complex ISA, something like 6502(famous old microprocessor)/AVR(arudino is based on this platform)/ is very good for learning.

The best practical experience for learning OS is switching to linux. A do it youself distro is best. You can go for something like Arch or Gentoo. After getting comfortable with the shell and basics of linux, I would suggest learning how to write kernel drivers. There are great books and videos on both topics that you can easily find on the internet.

---

@ananyagarg175 I didn't keep track of the number of hours, I always had a certain goal for the day I tried to complete. But I can give you a rough Idea. 

I started with 4-8 hours of study daily depending on what I was studying and how was that study going. You can take the average to be 6.5 hours. Also in the month of Jan, from around 5-26 I was studying non stop. I would take a break of an hour after giving a test. And only take other breaks when I couldn't properly focus. So I would say around 12 hours.

---

@himanshu2001 Thank you for your insightful answer! I will admit Arch and Gentoo might be a bit too much for me now so I will try all of this with Ubuntu.

 

Also one more question.How long did it take you to get proficient in this stuff?Like I was interested in your journey regarding this.If you don't mind,can you share your journey of how you got into low level stuff and some highlights along your journey.

---

Congratulations @himanshu2001. 

---

Congratulations @himanshu2001, it is quite impressive that you covered the entire syllabus in 3 months and practiced all the pyqs after that.You basically did a speedrun of Gate CS.

---

I did the PYQs within those 3 months. You can't really say that you have completed the syllabus untill you have done PYQs.

---

 @himanshu2001 bhaiya, 

I recently wrote a blog seeking advice on how to prepare for gate 2026.Now,after reading your blog I understood that anything is possible if you are determined and doing hardwork in those direction.But I am astonished in only one thing,that you completed coa,os ,toc..big subjects in just 6-7 days .I listened coa,os from go classes for 1 month each.

---

@Sunnychxfyhc Everybody has their own pace, don't be discouraged! I had a good conceptual knowledge of CS before I started preparing for GATE, this gave me a huge edge. But I would say 1 month is a little too much to spend on one subject, especially when you have prepared them before. Try to watch the lectures at 1.25x or 1.5x speed and see if you can still understand them. It would be a lot better if you could complete the subject in 15 days.

Also more important than lectures and books are PYQs and their solutions. Are you doing that properly?

You should do every PYQ, and after trying to solve read atleast the top 3 solutions on GateOverflow, regardless if you were able to solve it or not. 

---

@himanshu2001 I had completed listening them in 14-15 days,.but by doing pyq whole one subject is taking 1 month.I am listening in 1.25x speed by the way :(

---

@himanshu bro first of all congratulations....i need one help can u send the link of urs digital library

---

On the same boat, aiming to complete the syllabus in 4 months and then dec-jan for revision and test series. 

So far the main challenge is to find time efficient standard resources and analyse PYQs and subject tests. The resources mentioned here will be super helpful, I'll try to finish them at the same pace.

@coderperfect you had commented that you followed similar strategy but made some mistakes on revising and test series, please share more info on what mistakes to avoid.