How to start preparing for GATE

Once you are decided to take up GATE exam and read important information related to it, you are ready to go ahead with preparation. I have few suggestions for students who are serious about cracking GATE exam.

I divided the whole process of preparation in few steps and every individual student who aced the GATE will follow these in one or the other way. These are just simple guidelines but the most important thing is your dedication and determination. If you read these steps and appreciate them but don’t follow them then these are of no use. Therefore, I recommend every student to be very sincere and give a good try. The steps are as follows.

• Buy or get a copy of previous year question papers if possible with solutions. Having a hard copy is very important and we are going to refer it again and again during whole preparation.
• Refer to syllabus and analyze the number of questions asked in each subject. As all subjects don’t have equal marks, few subjects are preferred over others. I mean few subject may have more questions asked in exam than others. I don’t have this subject break up for GATE. If you have done this exercise, please share with us to share with many other students and also we can have a discussion over its validity.
• Make a priority list of subjects based on marks or preference given it in previous exams. Marks distribution of subject will help you prioritize and allocate preparation time to different subjects. If distribution is not prepared we usually end up in a random preparation and finally will have tough time dealing with important subjects.
  Just for example, in GATE CS and IT paper, around 15~20% is from Mathematics, and then Programming and Data Structures, Theory of computation, OS and digital logic.
• Allocate realistic time for each subject. And read it all, as there is huge to cover and it’s easy to ask few marks question from anywhere in a subject.
• Finish through reading of a chapter of subject, make short notes of important points, this will help you at last moment to revise what you have read.
• Once finish a chapter, go back to GATE Question papers and solve the problems from that chapter. These days there lots of question banks available in market for GATE do buy one and practice. Also to try to get Test Series from other friends. Solve all of them. This will help you to assess yourself for level of understanding of the chapter you read. Use a single note book for question answer solution because you may refer it while revising.
• Finish detailed reading at least one and half month before. Keep one month for revisions and clearing leftover doubts. Have a look of question you solved during preparation for GATE and remember how you solved them.
• Keep last 15 days for fast practice and revision. Solve as many papers and question banks as you can get from any source.
• Keep documents related to GATE like, acknowledgment of application, like hall tickets, application number and other details, in a safe place. Give it to mom or someone responsible, who can give that back to you when you need them. This is to avoid last minute tension for obvious things.

I hope these points will help many of to take a start off. Please don’t waste time and take a start. The one who start early and work consistently reach early and hope see IITs for M.Tech. GATE is a simple exam just needs constant effort to crack it. Don’t worry about competition by number of candidates appearing for GATE, make highest marks as your competition.

This post is a part of a series of posts called GATE Preparation: A complete Guide. You may find many useful articles related to GATE there. This series is made to help students appearing for GATE exam and want to score really high to join IITs and NITs.

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Wish you all a wonderful luck…