🚂 My Gate CSE 2023 Journey (March 2022- Feb2023)
Gate score:690 (GATE CSE), Marks:62.67
Date: 04 July 2023
B.tech: Major in Mechanical and Minor in CSE
2017: Second semester of my college, along with my major in mechanical engineering, I took up minor in CSE as my roommate in my college was from CSE, and I learned a lots of things from him, which generated a huge interest for CSE, in me.
2019: I made a plan to join ISRO after btech, instead. Me and my friend from civil engg. started our preparations for GATE(ME) & ISRO. We prepared notes, studied from NPTEL and YouTube channels.
2020: Corona came and all my notes were left in hostel, as we were said, college is off for 7 days, I didn't carry my notes home, my college was more than 1000 kms away from home, and it never opened until we graduated.
2021: Without any preparations went for GATE ME 2021, only solved apti questions, and could not qualify. I joined the company I got from college placements. I didn't like the work there.
2022: My friend, gave me the idea, about try GATE in CSE, and after some research, the lost CS engineer in me, revived back to life.
Early 2022: I made a plan and started to study along with work, I studied from Gate Smashers, Jenny's Lectures and Neso Academy. I talked with my HR, but our company only allowed to do mtech from BITS Pilani, and in mechanical, and preparing with job was not working out at all. Getting exhausted at the end of the day, and then, preparing for a national level exam, with full dedication was not being feasible, so I resigned from my job.
Now some people will say they can manage, I get it, It's definitely possible with job, but I was a bit unsure about the outcome, if I do it that way, for myself.
March 2022: I joined Made Easy, Delhi center and started proper preparations. My timetable there used to be
- 8-2 Class; 2-6 Eat&Sleep; 7-12 make short notes, solve workbook and refer textbook if needed
- [ GO classes are equally good, also, according to some of my friends, GO classes are indeed better, but I did not take, so I do not want to rank them, both are good, your input matters more ]
I had a plan to study there only upto October, as I know the last few months in preparations need to be in a higher pace. My TOC was incomplete there, and I managed it myself.
Actually, for a good rank, there is more role of the aspirant than the coaching institute. Coaching gives the direction and the aspirant is the magnitude.
I had used a handful of CS Engineer's ideas in my preparations.
I had 3 level hierarchy of notes.
- HDD Level: Class notes & Textbooks & NPTEL & MIT OCW & others
- MM Level: Short notes (I had total of 6 short-notes notebooks with 12 subject's short notes)
- CM Level: I made a single sheet for every subject, having all important stuffs of the entire subject, and I used to stick it in the wall, I called it wall cache
** This wall cache was very helpful, to get a better big picture and interconnect all subjects (specially COA,OS & DBMS, have lots of ideas same) **
[ My Wall cache pdf (for reference): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NnMfAddS4D92vld9mnXCIb37exM1Ne99/view?usp=sharing ]
** I also made a stack of important stuffs, which needed constant revision, in a 22 page pdf, which I called the stack sheet, start reading it from page 1, and put it at the end, and continue, untill page 1 reappears, this is a cycle, repeat this process, it is better if you print it out and study, it would be easy to mark and highlight on it.
[ My stack sheet (For reference) CAUTION:: Some thing may be wrong, I did some revision on the hard copy of the sheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1giHzgVHU9JZ8b7RVCH2Km_B8a3pPF-7K/edit ]
Mid-October to Mid-November I solved all PYQ's and made a collection of all good questions in a folder
[ My good questions collection folder (for reference): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Dw7C7VnQchiTK5EcGuMQKoqx0L9Rk28G?usp=sharing ]
- IMPORTANT, PLEASE SOLVE PYQ’s ONLY FROM GATE-OVERFLOW, this is a community curated place, where you’ll hardly ever encounter any error in an answer, hard copy PYQ books, have lots of misprints and wrong answers in them. And some questions are ambiguous, if you encounter such question, chances are high that people got marks for free for those questions, do not waste your time on them. (MTA: Marks to all)
- Do mistake and understand what went wrong, you’ll find people here who did the same mistake like you and found out the weak point, do not directly watch the correct answer, find what went wrong.
Last 3 months, I used pipelining concept, i.e. everyday I need to do a specific amount of all 12 subjects.
I made a folder of 10 subjects, and my timetable was (60 questions per day)
- 30 questions during day (5 subs) [* then *] stack sheet [* then *] 30 during night [* then *] Maths & Apti
After every two days, I gave a full length test, schedule on those days were,
- wall cache for full revision [* then *] the full length test [* then *] Analysis [[ Analysis is very important, do analyze every question, wrong or right, this process may take up the entire day, but let it be. Correcting error is more important than ignoring and moving on ]]
Some tips,
- If tests are hard give them, if they are too easy and you are getting very good marks & rank in it, it is of no use, you need to learn, test series are not to estimate your marks in real exam, it is for you to improve.
- Do not consume heavy food, the last 3 months, keep your health good.
- Make adjustments with your body to be active during your time slot of actual exam. like if your exam is from 9-12, your body should be trained to be most active during that time, and that training starts before 3 months atleast.
- Take very less sleep on the night of D-2 day, (sleep deprive) such that you get a good sleep on the D-1 day and you are atmost active on the D-day.
I also used some apps to have a countdown to real exam and also to monitor my time with phone (screen time). It is highly advisable to keep phones away, specially get out of social media, use YouTube for motivation and studies only.
- Last 3 months is the game changer. Make a good plan for it and you will nail it.
- Prepare for a hard test, such that if the test is easy or hard, you’re ready for both
- Make your own execution plan and strategy, a plan is very important to strategically win a war.
- IIT’s are always hard to get into, otherwise you would have IITians in every house and street, but we don’t right, so fight until you get there.
- All the best, give your best shot and make it to the top IIT’s and NIT’s
There is a website created by a member of this community, which displays a random PYQ question (it’s advisable to be in that site in your free time):
Link : https://khushit-shah.github.io/gater-frontend/
Some motivational Videos for you guys:
