After 6 months of preparation of gate along with my software development job . I was screwed in my gate exam( venn diagram question of 2 marks, of which I found out correct answer but I don't know how other option got ticked which I came to know after seeing response sheet and also I missed the question to find out 2s compliment as when I reached that it was just 20 secs remaining) the paper was very easy hence I slipped my rank and landed on 1454 rank and I know iit was only a dream now. That 3 4 marks silly mistakes costed me my iit dream.
Then there was iiith pgee exam a month later. seriously , i didn't prepared for it(because workload was too high as I took 1 month leave already for gate). Still I was able to clear the written and reason I think was the aptitude section. I had prepared for cat in my bachelor's so the quant and english was a cakewalk for me and technical section was also too easy as compared to gate.The thing here is you have to clear both sections aptitude and technical to be called for interview.Hence prepare for aptitude and english too if you are not strong in that.
Now as I know the date of interview was 13 June I resigned my job and got free till end of may and had around 10-11 days for interview preparation.
First I started reading previous year interview experinces from pgee fb group and response sheets of previous year and made a list of topics subject wise from which questions were asked and then allocated a day for each subject.Following is the list
1)C and DS - array heap tree fib heap,c struct pointers , Avl Red black tree,print all elem in Bt with no siblings -monday
2)Algorithm-algo bfs dfs, sorting ,dynamic prog / divide n conquer,branch and bound knapsack, tree forest,prim krushkal ,dag dijkstra - Tuesday
3)OS- os process execution link load first fit best fit semaphonre - Wednesday
4)DBMS-dbms lock primary foreign keys fd,normalization - Thursday
5)Discrete -maths divide rules, sets relation fnction, vectors,matrix, rank inverse ,determ, 0 eigen values,mead median mode- Friday
6)network &Probab -probab coins and names question and dictionary, bayes theorem mutually exclusive events- Saturday
7)Graph Theory- graph for functions ,paths sets , independent set, edge cover, vertex cover- Sunday
8)Miscellaneous-mails from and without browser,network,tcp ip, functioning when we search google.com ,network 127.0.0.1
lines ,circle, eqation graphs of functions , toghest code written, last sem subjects . Monday
I first revised the subject in whole day and then the topics which are asked again in night. Now in this way I covered almost all topics till 10 .on 11th I read miscellaneous things and had reservation from pune to Hyderabad(which was rac so I was hell lot tired as I was not able to sleep in whole night journey).
I already had friends in Hyderabad but the thing I did was booked a hotel for 12th to 13 as I already stayed with my friend during interview of iitb and iisc and we just talked till 2 in night as we met after a long long time, so I decided to book a hotel for a day before interview(got an ac room in 260 rs courtesy Oyo ) and then stayed with my friends after interview for 3 4 days and visited Hyderabad too.
The Day before Interview- I reached my hotel my sharing an auto from railway station to iiith . Then I checked in and had lunch and slept 3 4 hours in afternoon .Then i studied in hotel room , revised short notes till 1 and went to sleep .
The D Day- I woke up at 7 , took bath and went for interview There I had breakfast in college itself. There first verification was done and then called according to some sequence in 4 panels . I was 7th in 3rd panel and there were around 30 candidates in each panel.
I was calm and confident. I went in room there were 5 interviewers. They took my resume and asked about my work experience. I had 1.2 yrs of front end development in amdocs . Then they asked what you did from July2017 to march 2018 . I said our joinings were late so we just enjoyed. They asked how I was placed. I said campus placement.
Now came the turning point . The third interviewer asked me about difference of JavaScript and java . I didn't came with a strong answer. Then they asked me about why js is used in Front end. I said it is evolving and new Frameworks are continuously coming but seems he was not satisfied with my answer(I later searched and found out that js is not compiled. It is executed directly and a script)
Now the 2nd interviewer asked me my favorite subjects . I said algo data structures. He asked how many data structures I know . I said tree graph , trie, array , stack queue etc. He asked whether you know about hashing. I said I don't know much in dept about hashing but you can ask me about linked list and algorithms.
Till this time I thought I had screwed a lot but still I carried out. He asked me to find the nth element from end of single link list .I already knew it and told. Then if link list is doubly , no of steps taken to find kth step from end(n-k +2k). Now he asked how can we find a pair of number that sum to a specific value in array. I said one is brute force other is by sorting. He then gave me chalk and told to write full code line by line of brute force which I did. There were some silly mistakes like i=0 to i=n which they all laughed. He asked me another approach , i told we can sort array and start with checking sum if extremes to the given value. then he interrupted as he thought I knew which I did.
Now again 2nd interviewer gave me pen and paper and asked me to draw graph of logx and x =y. I drawed it incorrectly so he told me to check if it's correct. I had made log 0 =0 . But then I corrected and told that i was a little nervous. He told me to chill and again asked to draw the graph of log x to the base 2 log x to the base 3 and difference between them .
Then they told me I can leave and take choclate. I asked it was done and they said yes. I told it was great meeting and talking with you and they said same.
Later I went charminar enjoyed biryani and stayed 3 4 days with my friends in Hyderabad and came home.
Seriously I had not much hope as other people might have given their best and I was not able to differentiate between java and JavaScript. I was just ready to go to nitk for admission on 20 and on 18 result came and I was selected for mtech cse in iiith. It was really a dream come true . I cannot just control my happiness and emotions. I told my parents and friend and went to temple to pray and offer prashad .
For pgee you should prepare aptitude english and maths as it is compulsory to clear it's cutoff rest you will clear if you studied properly for gate . Now coming to interview just go through previous interview experinces . Revise all major subjects and then the topics which have been asked previously.
My advice to aspirants of gate and pgee is sometimes things go wrong but keep trying. Hard work always pays off.