Recent posts in Preparation Experience

41
How to decide whether I should apply with old gate scores or of this year. I got some less score in GATE 18, but have better scores in 17. How different years' scores are compared.

Need some guidance.
42
Hello folks,

I am very thankful to GateOverflow which makes my dream comes true... I am selected as a Assistant Engineer in PTCUL and all credits goes to GO and all helpful members of this site. From this site I had learn a lot. I just do all previous CBSE NET papers and GATE papers from this site, and go through the comments of each answers and learn many things about the topics which are new for me.. So guysss do ur hardwork...one day u will get ur destination... God bless uhh alll :)
43
I am finding it very hard for managing both the tasks in parallel. But I know, people have done it before too. So, dear experienced people, kindly extend your  advice. I just have 1 month left. And I have already prepared for GATE 18 (scored just 32/100 ).

 

If you know any blogs / experiences of people managing jobs and Preparation in parallel, please post the links in comment.

 

Also, I am currently living in Magarpatta, Pune. And I am interested in forming study groups. If you can help. Let's get together.
44

After completing 2 years as a Associate Software Engineer in a startup in Gurgaon, decided to quit the job and appear for GATE and secured a rank that has increased the uncertainty of my future(AIR-1254). Now until now all the posts were of people with ranks <400 and you would be thinking why this bloke with a pathetic rank is writing a post. But I just wanted to share my experience as to how after preparing for 4 months(YES, I started preparing only in October, when the toppers had already completed the syllabus) and seeing the pattern of the paper change drastically as from previous years I was able to maintain such calm and composure so as to not completely ruin my rank. Sorry for the length of the post

So the journey started in 2015 when I first appeared for GATE. As I was already placed in the above mentioned company and had no intention of further studies(due to the mindset "Bhut kar li padhai..ab paise kamayenge bas :P") I appeared for the exam in the most chilled out manner,i.e. after watching a movie till late night and waking up just 1 hr before the exam and gave the exam just because 1000 rupaye lage the bhaiya. But as I was a study bloke in my college who used to read most of the subjects from standard books and used to teach around 20 students from before each exam, for the first time while giving a competitive exam in my life I FELT GOOD. Now on the results day I was travelling from Delhi to Jaipur and was receiving messages constantly that although they prepared for a complete year still they got rank above 5k and forced me to check my result but I was in no mood and had also forgotten my credentials :P. Once I reached home, I checked the result and it showed a rank around 3k and I was like this is the best result I have seen for myself uptil now 

Fast forward 2 years(July 2017), the desire to study again and that too from some reputed college and professors(forgot to mention did my B.Tech from a tier 3 college), and the previous attempt's result I resigned from the job and started preparing for GATE from October. Now initially it was a little difficult getting back to studies and thus decided to join Gateforum's Online Coaching which made me realise that reading from standard books aorund this time won't help my cause. Thus only took help of reference books where I wasn't able to understand the concept from the online coaching. I knew that my weakest subject is CN and thus tried to cover a lot of topics from Ross, Kurose although still ended up getting least marks in CN only :(. But the confidence in other subjects like OS, DBMS, Maths helped in overcoming the CN loss. Now coming to the GO community, I introduced it to myself in December, too late I was in getting to know about such awesome community but still I learnt a lot and tried to learn as well as get involved in various discussions. With just 1 month left I got a lot of support in getting my queries solved from HiggsMk UtkarshAshwin Kulkarni, Anu007 and many more. Since none of my friends were giving GATE along with me and I had no mentor who could guide me while my preperation GO community members helped me a lot.

I still regret making the silly mistake in that "Hi Bye Bye Hi" question which could have resulted in getting <1000 rank but I know silly mistakes happen even with the toppers :P. So this was my journey from being nothing to still being nothing and would seriously want some suggestions about whether I should apply in any of the IITs, i.e. can I get a call from any of them(old or new) and what other colleges should I prefer.

45

GATE(CS)-2018 AIR - 491 Marks-56 Category-General Like you all, I was an ordinary student having AIR 1,02,786 in JEE. Got into tier-3 college ; struggled with the Engineering Graphics; 96 rank out of 130 rank in IT branch; Broken after failing in 1st semester in college; trying to find what to do in life; GATE or CAT or UPSC or ARMY or MS(USA). searched whole internet, seen that in CAT you need high percentage of marks in 10th and 12th which was not in my case in 12th. even if you clear toughest exam CAT with the competition all around India; you need to face the interview which is really really tough. Also in CAT the work experience plays a key role which as a fresher I would not be having. Also because of diversity policy in MBA colleges, the entrance of engineer becomes tough. Being in general category and failing in first semester, I thought even if I prepare for CAT, I will screw my BTech which eventually will harm the interview of CAT. I am MCQ fan. I love playing with four options by my side.so I know I am not going to write UPSC as they ask aspirants to write an essay and GK which I am not at all interested. My parents didnot allow me to go to ARMY. Also I didnot want/unable  to take loan in order to do masters in USA as my father rejected the request. With all in mind in the 1st year break,I decided to appear for GATE. In the third semester, I started finding tutions for GATE(both online and offline).In 4th semester I took online classes from well-known teacher as I liked his way of teaching. I struggled with the syllabus; struggled with college exams as every month there was an exam waiting for me. Hear the GATEOVERFLOW community, GEEKSFORGEEKS helped me a lot with solutions of previous years.Fast Forward sixth semester came, I started preparing for campus interview as backup.Left GATE. got selected in Infosys. after resting for few days, I started preparing for gate. I realised that I have forgotten the concepts.I again tried to study but this time not to enter IIT. but to get a good job in Bengaluru.I applied for another company and left GATE to prepare for Interview.Company rejected me.At that point I came home and started solving DBMS. which I was not able to solve any of the five I tried to solve.One month before the exam, I left GATE preparation, On the Makar Sakranti , My father came to know that I have left preparation as I was flying kites whole day. fast forward GATE exam day, I went to the centre with zero expectation seen the screen, I was waiting since three years.solved the questions without any fear, without any expectation ,full of confidence, somewhat fear of negative marking. thought paper was easy. everyone who had prepared will get good marks. forgot the paper and got in internship mode. Shocked seeing marks in Praggys app. Thought everyone would be getting these many marks. This was not the case now.Others felt the paper tough. Seeing rank AIR - 491 on screen looks awesome.

46

Like success stories, stories of failures are equally important. Well, this is one of the stories that is somewhat between success and failure (quite amusing, isn't it?)

TLDR; There are hardly any tips for GATE examination or preparation in this post. I'm just sharing my GATE journey.

Greetings folks!

I'm Akash Mishra. I appeared for GATE-2018 CSE and got 604 marks and 1644 rank (I was expecting a rank around 2000). I'm not an academically bright student; I hardly manage to score around 60% in my college examinations (apparently, in GATE too).

I'm a good programmer though. I've many good projects at my disposal and I'm proficient with multiple programming languages. I decided to give GATE as I wanted to pursue masters from a top tier institute. I have worked on some good machine learning projects and want to advance my career in this field (specifically in research).

I decided to give GATE examination in July 2017, in the final year of my UG. Like everyone, I was really motivated and started studying. I'm used to skipping semesters in my college (I have 0% attendance in my college since 2nd semester). Since I didn't attend any classes and was not a textbook lover (I am now), I knew that I have to work really hard to clear my concepts.

Initially, I studied really hard. I wanted to get into IISc for their M.Tech. by Research programme and I knew that it won't be easy. I kept my motivation up but couldn't maintain it (barely 1 and a half month). I wasn't used to studying so much and I started to slack off more and more as the time passed. I had subscribed to 2 test series (ME and Testbook) but I hardly gave any tests. I remember that until October I had only given 4-5 tests combined in Programming and TOC. I just used to turn the pages of textbooks and watch few online lectures to learn concepts. I used to do this around 3-4 hours per day (and I didn't used to study every day). 

My First Mistake - I LOST CONSISTENCY.

To all the future aspirants: Guys! Be consistent and don't lose your motivation for studying. There's no need to put too many hours, but put sufficient hours every day and be consistent. Don't slack off for even a single day.

This continued until the middle January (the time I realized I really screwed up). I had completed only 5 subjects by this time. I had completely left CSO, Digital, Computer Networks, a huge chunk of Mathematics and DBMS.

It was January 16 when I was lectured by a good friend of mine. He told me that I completely messed up and wasted my whole 6 months. He then advised me to give my best shot in the remaining days. He told me to give 1 full test daily and practice as many questions as I can.

* During my preparation, he used to tell me to practice a lot of questions. I just didn't listen. My bad. *

I started to follow a strict routine for the next 17-18 days. I seriously started studying around 7 hours per day (extra 3 hours for the full tests). I was scared and maybe that was the only motivation for me at that time. I never studied this seriously before. I used to practice around 100 - 130 questions every day and kept my consistency for the remaining days.

Since my preparation wasn't satisfactory I was expecting a rank around 2000, but surprisingly I managed to secure AIR 1644. I failed, but I succeeded. This was quite pleasant for me. I studied hard in the last days and I'm confident that I've learned something really good through my journey. Right now I'm thinking to appear for IIIT-H as it seems a good option to me.

So, that's all! This was my journey so far.

Be consistent and practice a lot.

47
Can anyone of the GO members who secured a rank below 500 share their GATE 2018 journey here like when did they start their preparation, what strategy did the follow etc. here.
48
if any one knows about ms from iit madras please help about gate score approx (500-504 general category) is enough for getting shortlisted for written exam ?
49

1. Start with Discrete Mathematics.

Most of us underestimate this subject and that is the very first mistake we make while preparing for GATE. If you get a good hold at this subject you will be able to imagine most of the confusing problems in computer science world. If you are a machine learning/AI enthusiastic , you are going to love Prepositions and Logic.  Understanding sets/relations will make your life easier when you start talking about ER tables in DBMS and many topics in other subjects. Graphs are the crux of computer science world , befriend them.

Solve exercises of standard books + previous years. No point solving your coaching material , a bad question can corrupt your knowledge. Read Reliable, Share Reliable.

2. Programming and DSA

Topics like recursion, pointers etc often confuse one in the beginning. The best way is to CODE every algorithm you encounter while studying DSA.  Implementing linked lists on your own will make you understand pointers very well and recursion will not leave you until the end of the algorithm course. It might sound foolish to code , but trust me, the problems will not look scary afterwards. There are no shortcuts to conquer these subjects.

Solve exercises of standard books + previous years.

3. Digital Logic before Computer Architecture.

Do not jump to COA directly. Master digital logic and then move on to COA. Be very sure that you are reading reliable stuff when it comes to COA. Not doing that will frustrate you,atleast in pipelining concept.

Solve exercises of standard books( can skip this for DL) + previous years.

( COA is a system subject , mugging up formulas will surely gift you negative marks )

4. TOC before Compiler Design

Try to make DFAs/PDAs/TMs when you are solving a problem. Do not be overconfident and come to conclusion directly without even using a pen. Do not skip Undecidability part , you can find good resources on gateoverflow.in itself to master this topic. Make sure you know why are we eliminating left recursions ,  using bottom parsers instead of just mugging up how the DFA of the parsers work. Read dragon book to make this subject look interesting.

Solve exercises of standard books + previous years.

5. OS , DBMS , CN

I personally believe ,these are scoring subjects. A good hold of COA can make your life better while studying OS. Spend some time understanding normalizations instead of just mugging them up. Some formula's will definitely help you in Computer Networks. 

Thanks. 

50
How can I revise my weak topics in 6days by reading particular theory to topic or solving previous year gate questions to the particular topic? Which is best?
51

1)NOT verifying all options in multiple choice questions  leads to selecting wrong option

2) escaping key terms like "SOME" , "ATMOST", "ATLEAST" , "ALWAYS " ,"NOT " ,"strongly supports" etc , so read the question two times

3)during calculation " not focusing on units like bytes , bits , km ,m ,mili ,micro etc"( mostly happens due to hurry)

4)not writing steps clearly which will help in rechecking .

5) overconfidence kills , so even if question is easy try to answer it with calm mind

6) not sleeping properly one day before exam : this is biggest mistake .

7)getting in panic mode by observing continuous run of 3-4   hard or lengthy questions.( this can be handled if you have practice of test series)

SOME SUGGESTIONS :

1) how to use rough book : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9NsODo1mIY

2)during calculation write all necessary steps , do not skip

3) do not try to do " JAY MATA DI "(guessing answer) for multiple choice questions , it will down your rank if "MATA JI " is not happy with you :)

.......................................................ALL THE BEST FRIENDS ......................................................

 

 

52
I request someone experienced in GATE to please comment on the fact that:-
Entire CS branch is accomodated in a single session on a single day -on 4th ---> unlike previous years. So, does this means that this time number of students registered in GATE CS are lesser this time?And competition maybe relatively less due to lower cutoffs??

Please Enlighten.
53

Hello friends!!

It is October already. So, many of you might have started feeling the heat of GATE 2018, especially with the volume of course still left to cover with the added pressure of projects or workload at job. A very alluring option to cope up with this issue is to start byhearting standard results (or formula) and not giving attention to how they came (usually, the mathematics part), as it takes very less time to do so, covers the syllabus faster and most importantly gives us the feeling of being fully-prepared (illusion). We have lot of such standard results in:

  • trees (binary, AVL, m-ary, B tree and B+ tree) and graphs,
  • computer networks as a whole,
  • automata designing (no. of states),
  • computer architecture (cache, memory management, disc management and file management),
  • digital electronics (combinational and sequential circuits),
  • probability and permutations and combinations.

But, is it a wise way to do so? NO, and I will tell you why?

  • The fact that GATE examination in CS/IT dates back to 1980s itself nullifies the probability of a direct standard result based question compared to subjects in which GATE has been started recently. Even if such questions comes, 90% of the aspirants will score +1/+2 (full), which means you may have got +1/+2 on paper, but technically you are still at 0 competitively.
  • This necessitates the need of questions to be a little deviated from the ideal cases for which those standard results hold which happens in GATE a lot as the question setters already know what kind of loopholes one makes in preparation every-time. Now, the standard results won’t work. But, yes if you learnt the way those results were derived, you can derive the answer for this deviated/ modified/ tweaked case as well. Remember, GATE scrutinizes one’s merit via his/her understanding of the subject, unlike other exams like ISRO, BARC or any other PSUs like BEL, CIL or SBI that tries to gauge one's merit through command over formula based questions (majorly) in their written examination.
  • Not only this, this will help you during interviews and written examinations in IITs/ IISc as well, where they very often ask to prove or derive a very commonly known result or some modification of it.
  • For example, derive the maximum number of nodes in a m-ary tree of height (h) (root is at height 1). A very handy way of solving this question in an objective type exam would be to take m=2,3,4 and h=5(say) and safely conclude that it will be m^h. But such an approach will fetch you no good repo in an interview or written tests in IITs/ IISc. But, have one learnt during preparation that for a binary tree (2-ary), the formula 2^h comes from a GP of 1,2,4,….,2^(h-1), he/she could easily proceed in the way to get the desired result. Note that, the former was verification while the latter is the proof/ derivation, the terms which are fundamentally different in mathematical premise.

Especially the people, who are taking any coaching as THE BIBLE, have to pay attention to it as the course completion in coaching institutes revolves majorly around giving a brief introduction to the baics and then providing with all set of standard results for advanced concepts, a term called as over-fitting in Machine Learning. Coaching is supposed to be a catalyst and is not a substitute to self-study.

Finally, I would like to address another elephant in the room, which is lack of acceptance. At any point of time if your answer goes wrong, instead of trying to prove it right by bringing a bunch of friends to an online discussion to support you or point others to show what is wrong with your solution with an intention of non-acceptance, realize this for your own good that it is better that your mistake got rectified at this stage and you will not suffer on the exam day. Instead of arguing un-necessarily, focus on LEARNING, which is central to the process of preparation. A problem may have n ways of solving it out of which only a few are correct. So, a complexity analysis of wrong ways will be of O(n) while the analysis of the correct ones will be O(1). This decision to opt for what is efficient as well as beneficial rests with you. 

PS: Life is not long enough to learn by committing every mistake on your own. Sometimes, we must optimize our learning algorithm so as to learn from mistakes of others too. 

ALL THE BEST !!

HAPPY LEARNING !!

54
This day one year back I joined this nice platform..So I think it is just to reiterate back to the one year past..At that time I did not know much about the gateoverflow as I did not use it earlier..Just knew about the rank predictor : Thanks to @Pragy sir for this beneficial thing.. So I made this account one year back..And since then I have been learning a lot from the questions and discussions following the questions..

In fact according to me , it is one of the best platforms for GATE preparation..It contains not only the previous year questions' solutions but a lot of healthy discussions in the comment section of most of the questions..Besides one can also discuss the standard questions and concepts here..@Arjun sir and @Bikram sir in particular has been helpful a lot..

At this juncture , I also try my best to help as well..But following what happened in the GATE this year , I was upset that time..But at the same time I feel happy for those who have achieved good and acknowledge my help in some form or the other..I have learnt a lot from a few people in particular.. @Kishalay Da ,@Debashish Da , @Anusha Motamarri , @vijaycs , @srestha , @mcjoshi ,@Prashant to mention a few (Sorry if I have forgotten any) ..

In the end , I will suggest all gate aspirants to use gateoverflow nicely..It would be very beneficial..Thank you all..Myself also hoping to do something good in upcoming year..

LONG LIVE GATEOVERFLOW..:)
55

I joined a government engineering of GGSIP University Delhi in 2012, it was GB Pant Govt Engineering College. It barely fit into a definition of college. Unnaturally small campus, no permanent faculty, no ECA and not much alumni base. I got an opportunity to get Power engineering at some slightly better college but then I decided not to dwell into unchartered territory just because of money. First year went by in a blink with all those irrelevant subjects (chemistry, physics and EVS). One thing I regret about my college life is not aiming for better marks when I could easily get them.

During second and third year, I was exploring .NET technologies for career in development and also trying my hand at competitive programming (CPr), which was far more interesting than development but more difficult. The drawback* of CPr was, your market value isn't much if you aren't among the top 400-500 (unlike development). At the start of fourth year, I came back from ACM ICPC regionals Amritapuri after embarassing myself and relied on campus placements. During my internship, I saw* the jugaadu development trend in service-based firms of India so I was adamant for a package based company only. However I attended every company's recruitment drive but didn't got one, not even Infosys.

I decided to list down the possible options I had*, (assuming workload/stress is inevitable in every field)

  1. MBA: Pros
    • Hefty salary (if done from teir-1,2 institute)
    • Not much technical skills required
      Cons
    • Had to deal with people from non-technical background.
    • Had to study (many) trivial things in curriculum and my previous curriculum will become useless.
      Pass
  2. Govt Exams like SSC or Civils: Most of the aspirants are not even aware of the job profile, they go after just because of pay and perks. I looked up their work, found it boring, pass.
  3. Apply in startups:  too much work for too less salary, but still I kept this option open.
  4. MS outside India: my CGPA and profile was not even close to a good profile, I saw no point in studying in a sub-standard university of some other country on huge expenses and even after that it all depends on my hard work.

My goal of life is to create something new, something useful with the knowledge I posses. I know its quite vague but it is what it is. I never liked the reporting structure and lack of independence in IT jobs. I zeroed down to do MTech then PhD from a reputed college in India and apply for lectureship. I prefer* my own research work + mentoring kids (in long term) over anything. Its not that I come from a filthy rich family and I don't want money, its just... I have seen* (many) people compromising in life to earn some more money and then they end up... not really satisfied with life. Basically if I am* able to educate my 2-3 kids, support my parents and tolerate my wife, then I am earning enough.

In my casual attempt of GATE 2016, I got AIR ~2.9k and GS 544. That year I gave other exams as well but qualified only for the interview at JNU. Their written was relatively easy and mostly (gate level) maths based, I already decided to drop a year and prepare again. So I gave the written with a relax mind. I still remember my center was opp Richie Rich restaurant.

Interview experience: there was this panel of 8-9 teachers, my interview was just before lunch so I knew they'll not give much of a thought if I screw up.

  1. They asked me to introduce myself (yes in some technical interviews they ask that, prepare a short intro and not just reading out your resume).
  2. They asked me about the subjects I studied in my last semester (I was totally unprepared for this).
  3. I told them. One of the teacher heard "Software Testing" and I thought shit! I prepared 10-11 subjects of GATE and they had to ask me about this.
  4. She started asking questions
    • What is COCOMO model used for? (Forgot)
    • How will you calculate Du-Dc paths? (No idea) At least tell me their full form (couldn't recall)
    • What is the difference between verification and validation? (partially answered)
    • Why are you so weak in software engineering? (couldn't tell her that it is full of theory, so kept mum)
  5. Other faculty intervened and asked my strong subjects. I said DS, Algo, TOC. And the questions followed:
    • Do you know traveling salesman problem, what is its time complexity? (Exponential sir, it is in O(n!) I think)
    • So how can you say it is exponential when you are saying it is O(n!)? (I was blank)
    • Do you know the relation between them? (Blank) Have you ever heard of Stirling function? (No sir)
    • Acha tell me TSP problem is what? P, NP, NP complete, NP hard? (I said NP complete, but it is not)
    • About TOC... what is the difference between a grammar and an automata? (I said both are used to generate a language, but the right answer is, only grammar generates a language whereas automata accepts or rejects strings)

I got the admission and classes began in August. I was taking coaching from gateforum saket at that time. Want to know the coaching experience? Click here. An year later, in 2017, I gave GATE again but panicked in the last moments. Got AIR 1.2k and GS 644. I received offer letter from ISM for CSE in 2nd round and NIT Silchar in ccmt. Called for the interviews at:

  1. IIT Pallakkad MS:
    • Didn't go. Their CSE dept had only 3 lecturers and that too assistant proffs.
  2. IIT Ropar MS and MTech:
    • Couldn't go because of end sems at JNU.
  3. IIT Gandhinagar MTech:
    • First there was written round (easy) and then a programming round (moderate). 30-35 students went ahead for the interview out of 150 I think.
    • I selected the panel for Algorithms (there was System panel and Ai panel).
    • What'll be the effect on the shortest route if I add a constant to every edge weight? (Knew it)
    • How does BFS work? Where it is more useful than DFS? (knew it)
    • How do you find the articulation point in a graph using BFS? (fumbled)
    • Not selected.
  4. IIT Mandi MS:
    • Written was easy and then 20-25 students shortlisted from 30 I think.
    • They asked me my research preference. (I said currently I am open to all)
    • Write pseudo code to multiply two 3x3 matrices and what'll be its complexity? (I gave non-optimal pseudo code and said it'll be of order O(n3) but the correct answer was O(1) )
    • What is a bipartite graph? (Knew it) How'll you detect if a given graph is bipartite or not? (After some hints from them, I said using chromatic number 2)
    • How can one use DFS to accomplish that? (told them) Do you think 2 disconnected bipartite graph can also be considered as a big partite graph? (I said no, answer was yes)
    • There is this stream of 0s followed by 1s, you have to find the transition of 0 to 1 in less than O(n) time. (told them to use a modified binary search, they weren't satisfied)
    • Result:  waiting list number 6 and seats were 4.
  5. NIT Trichy MS:
    • There was lack of information. Will there be interview or not? Timing on call letter was 10:30 but on the schedule it was 3:30. Out of called 30 students, 6-7 students (including me) reached NITT before time.
    • They checked our documents in the morning only and told us there'll be an interview. Thank god I came before time.
    • Panel consisted of all their proffs. They asked me introduce myself.
    • What was your Btech project? (an encryption algorithm which worked on rubiks cube and steganography)
    • What is public key cryptography? (told them)
    • How is it different that symmetric key cryptography?
    • If symmetric key cryptography is faster then why do we use asymmetric ones? (told them, bcoz then key exchange becomes a problem)
    • What are digital signatures? (told them)
    • Result: accepted (among 2 other guys)

I could have gotten IIT Patna or IIITD but I was foolish to not apply. Trichy was the last interview I had. After I got acceptance from there and after a lot of brainstorming. I decided to stay in JNU only and complete my 1yr of MTech. Someone asked on facebook "then y did u even give gate and attended interviews", I told him "Gave gate for IISc and old IITs yaar and Gave interviews taaki pehle admission confirm to ho, fir sochta Jana hai ki nahi". I was scoring relatively well in mocks, I could have gotten mid level IITs or RA at old IITs with those mock scores. But I panicked on the judgment day when I saw an entire row of red buttons. I was determined to get into a tier-1 college (and I am) but I am not stubborn. I'll give my 27 % towards my grades and dissertation in JNU in order to see myself pursuing a PhD from a better college, and that is my plan. Want to know how is JNU? Click here

Even though I didn't get what I imagined but in future if I ever end up at the top of my field, a huge contribution in that will be of this GO community. Thank you all the seniors for putting sense into me when I was running haywire. 

Suggestion to my juniors:

  1. * means, those statements are my personal opinion and my personal stand. Do not copy them or be influenced with them.
  2. Grades also matters! I was told in my sophomore year and junior year that companies don't give a shit about grades/marks. But no-one told me there are options other than job after graduation, like post-graduation. And there, grades matter a lot. Maintain at least 8.0/10
  3. Software engineering also matters :p
  4. If you are preparing for GATE and ever feel distracted. Think of your dream college and say its name 4 times. I used to chant "IIT Bombay". It'll help you to concentrate.
  5. Give every exam! Be it BITS or ISI or JNU or any other. It is the fault of college if they are not preparing a wait list.
  6. Do not ask questions like "which college should I join","college A vs college B, which is better". Get your priorities straight, do your own research (if u don't know then ask how to do research) and decide for yourself.
    100 minds will give you 100 opinions whereas only 1 opinion matters, your own.
56

Disclaimer: Very Very Long!!

Exams:

Gate: Score - 717
Jest: Part A - 44 marks. Part B - not disclosed

Preparation
May 2016 holidays - Solved prev yr gate qns of Theory of Computation. 
End of Dec 2016 - Jan Beg: Read few topics from Rosen Discrete Math, DS and algo and solved prev year Gate qns. Watched some videos of Shai Simson for revision of TOC.
Jan - Feb: Solved and revised prev yr qns of DBMS,OS,Digital Logic. Solved few topics from Computer organization. Skipped networking. Gave few mock tests but scored poorly. I was almost about to give up at this point but convinced myself that this preparation will be useful if I take a drop. I stopped giving Made easy tests because it was lowering my confidence. Gave some tests of virtual gate and Gate Overflow.
About JEST exam: Not many know about this exam. but it is one of the most challenging exams I have given. Topics are mainly Discrete Math, DS and algo, TOC, Linear algebra, Probability. There are 2 parts. Part A - MCQ. Part B - Subjective Questions. Unfortunately I don't remember those questions now. So I made it a point to note down all questions in my future inteviews. 
In subjective part I attended 5 questions. More emphasis is given to proving the solution correct. I don't think I answered any of them completely correct. Yet I was called for the interview at IMSC. IISC considers the Part A score of JEST for M.Tech Research but cutoff is high. IMSC calls for interview based on Part B performance.


[The following description is based on my memory and the points I have noted after the interviews.]


IMSC interview experience: 
IMSC is a totally peaceful place. I reached early and waited for a hour. I read the quotes in the walls and passed my time.
I was totally nervous. There was about 5-6 (or 7, I forgot) interviewers. They made me feel comfortable and were very friendly.
Initially they asked me to draw automata of few regular expressions. I drew it correctly but even I couldn't understand what I have drawn. So they asked me to draw again.Then they asked me can you say WHY they are correct. I started explaining but they were expecting a FORMAL PROOF which I realised only after the interview!! Then they asked me to draw a minimal automata for the language (a*b*)*. I said it is equal to (a+b)*. Then they asked me to prove it. I said any string x in (a*b*)* will be in (a+b)* because (a+b)* is set of all strings in alphabet {a,b}. So (a*b*)* is a subset of (a+b)*. Now any string x in (a+b)* will consist of a sequence of 0 or more a's, followed by sequence of 0 or more b's, followed by 0 or more a's, followed by sequence of 0 or more b's and so on. So it will be in (a*b*)*. So (a+b)* is also subset of (a*b*)*. So both are equal. Then they asked me to prove the same using Induction. I made terrible mistakes which I realised and said to them. However I was not able to correct them at the time of interview. It was quite simple but I got tensed at that time. 

  • The second question was: Given a simple graph having more than 1 vertices prove that atleast 2 vertex have the same degree.

                Proved it using Pigeonhole principle.

  • The third question was: Given a graph having a odd degree vertex prove that there exists another vertex having odd degree which is connected to it.

              Proved it using Handshaking Theorem.
Finally we discussed about AVL trees. The discussion was not too detailed but only the basic ideas. (I must have revised it :( ). Then they asked why AVL tree over a simple BST? Why BST better than sorted array? Why sorted array better than sorted linked list. Finally they offered me a wonderful Coffee :)
I was happy after the interview despite making mistakes.


IISC Interview Experience


I was enjoying the beauty of IISC Campus and so reached the department just 5 minutes before the written test. I hurriedly filled up the forms and went to write the exam.
Written Test: 10 Questions, 30 Minutes. Most candidates were called for the interview.
Interview: [This description is more verbose than the IMSC since I noted down my experiences and feelings after the interview. The sandwich part is bit exagerated!] Much more challenging than IMSC interview. I made more mistakes than the IMSC interview. I was the 3rd person to be interviewed in morning session. Interview lasted for about 45 minutes or more. 9-10 interviewers were there. Despite getting IMSC I was tensed once again. First they read out my details and the background subjects which I had chosen (Discrete Maths, DS and algo). They asked me which area of Discrete maths I was comfortable with. I did not reply fearing they might ask too difficult question in that topic. I requested them to ask any question and said that I will try to solve them. Now the shock comes! 


['I' stands for a general interviewer.]
I: Given a d-regular graph how many colors are needed to color it.
Me: (I was almost sure I will fail, but yet decided to give it a try). Now since every vertex is adjacent to d other vertices at least d+1 colours are needed. 
I: Can you come up with a upper bound on number of colors as a function of n,d where n is number of vertices?
Me: Trying to come up with a solution. Made so many mistakes. Finally to play safe I said: If there are n vertices, then for a d-regular graph atleast d+1 colors and atmost n colors will be needed (Wow!!)
I: (Some of them laughed I think) Can you come up with a better upper bound?
Me: I will try to draw some d-regular graphs and see. 
I: Try with n = 3 and d = 5. (Please see the trick here)
Me: Trying to do that. Kept on drawing so many graphs. Finally I said I will try for n = 4
I: No, try for n = 3 with the graph you have just drawn.
Me: Trying again. Finally realized what I was doing. Sum of degrees of this graph is 3*5 = 15 which is odd. Sum of degrees must be even. So this graph is not possible.
I: You said that you need at least d+1 colors. d+1 is also the upper bound. How did you come up with that? Can you prove it? (This made things easier for me since they already said the upper bound is d+1)
Me: Thinking for a long time. I was telling them whatever I was thinking. Made mistakes again. So a d-regular graph will have atleast d+1 vertices. Take any vertex v, color it with c1. Color all it's d adjacent vertices with color c2,c3,...,cd+1. Then make a set for each color. Put vertices having color ci in set i. Now take any vertex which is not colored yet. It will be adjacent to exactly d-vertices. Which means there is atleast one set j to which it will not have any adjacent vertex. So we can reuse the color cj. So d+1 colors are sufficient.
I: OK, what can you say about any two vertex in the same set?
Me: They will not be adjacent.
I: In other words? 
Me: They will be completely disconnected.
I: Yes they will form a independent set. Can you say anything about any two vertex which are in different sets?
Me: (Made a huge blunder) Each vertex in a set i will be connected to all vertices in set j.
I: One of the interviewers drew a 1-regular bipartite graph on the board.
Me: (Realized my mistake)Oh I was wrong!!
I: Can you now say the modified statement?
Me: For any two sets i and j there will be at least one vertex in set i which is connected to one vertex in set j
I: Why??
Me: Because if they were not connected then we could use the same color to color the vertices in both sets and this means we need less than d+1 colors.
I: Ok Now what can you say about a 2-colorable graph?
Me: It is a bipartite graph
I: Right, can you come up with an algorithm to find if a given graph is 2-colorable or not?
Me: (In my mind: Ohh my god!!) Thinking...took a lot of time. Take 2 empty sets. Start with a vertex. Put it in set 1. Put all vertices adjacent to set 2. Then take any vertex from set 1. At this point I started struggling. They asked me some questions. I got confused and I doubted my approach. Then I came up with a new approach. One of the interviewer gave me a graph where my new approach fails. Then I resumed the original strategy. Start with a vertex. Put it in set 1. Put its neighbors in set 2. Now pick a random unprocessed vertex from set 2. If any of its neighbors is already in set 2 then graph is not bipartite. Otherwise put those adjacent vertices which are not in set 1 into set 1. (However I did not state this as clearly as I have written it. )
I: Ok, Can you prove that this algorithm is correct? 
Me: Struggled but could not come up with the proof!
I: Tried to help me. Offered me Sandwich and asked me to relax.
I: Alright you can solve this problem Offline. Thank you! We are done. You can have the sandwich.
Me: (About to take the sandwich) 
I: Ok we will just ask a question on ds. Do you know about arrays?
Me: Yes 
I: How will you find the intersection of two sorted arrays.
Me: May be we should use merge procedure of merge sort. Explained how to find common element (but not so clearly).
I: What will be the cost?
Me: Explained that. Linear time and Linear space.
I: What if we don't want the extra space?
Me: We can use binary search. for each element in Array A search it in B.
I: How much time will it take?
Me: mlogn. m - size of smaller array, n - size of larger array
I: What if we want to use constant space but also want linear time?
Me: (Thinking)
I: (Gave a hint) Think about the merge technique you first said
Me: (Got the idea)Yes we really do not need extra space. We just need two pointers into the array.
I: can you state what action must be performed if i is pointing to A[i] and j is pointing to B[j]?
Me: If A[i] == B[j] then it is a common element otherwise move the pointer pointing to the smaller element forward.
I: Thank you. 
Me: Left without having the sandwich
Overall it was a wonderful feeling of being able to approach these problems, but I wasn't sure of getting selected since I made too many mistakes and was taking too long to think. I am happy that I got this year itself :)

57

Hello my mates here. Last day i just shared my thoughts in our 'Computer Science Careers Group' about what should keep in mind while preparing for GATE. It was an overwhelming response from you members there. After that i also shared that as my first Ouora answer with help of Rajesh Kumar Pandey sir.

Bikram Ballav sir strongly insisted me to put that as blog here on GateOverflow. My post was much bigger than size contraint of GO blog. I tried to cut the content. I made it under the limit of constraint, but still GO was not allowing me upload a blog. So i am just here sharing the link of that Quora answer.

 

Thank you.

 

https://www.quora.com/What-Should-be-done-to-achieve-rank-towards-AIR-1-in-GATE-CSE-2018/answer/Sheshang-Ajwalia

58

No use in ruing about the past. We may or may not get through this year but no one can take away the knowledge that we've gained over the past few months. I completed my undergraduate degree in a mediocre institute and I did not even know the basics properly. Almost all of us focus only on our programming skills and ignore everything else. But the journey we went through over the past few months changed all of that. Let's be happy for that. Remember friends our success is not denied its merely delayed. GATE is not the only way to reach that. Thanks to GATEOVERFLOW community for playing a big role in my GATE 2017 journey. 

59
GATE 2017.. :-

Apptitude section :-  I think its a gud mixture of easy n tricky questions .

Technical Section :- Few Question are easy n few are really tough but what i found is options were to complex to choose as all are really close but in all paper was quite length personally my speed is low bcoz confuse while attempting the options but in all if more time i will able to attempt more question.

PS:- GATE is just an exam of gud presence of mind and be tensed free while attempting the question, i found gate overflow test is quite harder than actual gate but still i m nervous while attempting the questions as GATE word itself make the people scary, every one did good prepartion but it just the pressure that make the differnce.

VOTE OF THANKS :- I just want to thank each n everyone who have contribute to gateoverflow as you all do commendable job its not just a site for a gate aspirants it is everthing i never found such think that make learning so easy n enjoying.... your answers n advice , comments helped me alot. for me its everthing . ARJUN sir n bikram thanks so much for your help n guidence you both were awesum .

I dont know i get a good rank or not but learning is my passion n i am person who is happy with learning new things n helping others n yeah during my preparation i learned alot n with the help of you all... i am happy after my exam as i know things its not like i have mug up the things so just forget  no its ....which is bcoz of gate overflow and you all... EVERYONE here is a hero for me really a big cheers to all of you....

So i just want to continue my gateoverflow journey always bcoz m being crazy about it

Lasty we can discuss here about set 2 and  want to know after gate   what to do next  ?? as want mtech from a good college so kindly share your views and which is better possibilty to explore next ...
60
today,i have appeared in one of ME full length test(5) and while checking , i found ,,made easy crossed all limits.. questions are wrongly answered in almost regular interval..

like 2^35 B is =48GB

16KB=2^17 (someone kill me)

in hashing they are considering key not even in quetion

in apti,clearly right answer (synonym) they are making wrong

wrong answer of hashing,master method,incomplete question and many more

 

ALL THESE IN  A SINGLE TEST

i think ,after exam,you need to evaluate yourself throughly ,without looking at the answers..which is quite disgusting..

so i deviated my self to TESTBOOK and RAVULA test from now on... worst experience in 2017(more massacre than 2016)