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santhi
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Quote santhi Replybullet Topic: Article(GATE)
    Posted: 21Apr2007 at 1:02am

Disclaimer

The author of this article is in no way responsible for any unhappy circumstances arising out of following any advice listed herewith.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of numerous people who have helped me in achieve the good GATE score and in my getting admitted to IITK thereof. Primely, Amit for introducing me to GATE and for keeping my inspired through out my preparation time. I am also thankful to Bhanu for helping me with all those books and being infinitely patient with them. Then my parents for tolerating me through out the nocturnal life that I lived during GATE prep. Of course, I am grateful to IITK for finally selecting me. This list, is by no means, exhaustive. I am thankful to every soul that helped me, and I possibly cannot list them, even if my memory manages to maintain their identities.

Credits to me - Charity

If you believe that this article, in any way, helped you to any positive gains, you can either thank me by doing a good deed or a deed of charity to the needful. I will be grateful if you can let me know how it helped you, so to improve the article for future use.

What is GATE?

Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineers (GATE) is an all India test conducted by one of the IITs or IISc to test the Engineering aptitude of Engineers in their specific field of Engg. The GATE score is used for many purposes - admission to MTechs, MEs, PhDs through out the country. It may also be used for recruitment by some Govt. Agencies such as ISRO, BARC etc.

The GATE is held on the second Sunday of February every year. It can be taken in one field of specialization only. The results are normally declared at 1400 hrs on 31st March the same year. The result is a combination of your rank and your percentile. Some institutes look for your percentiles while others may use your rank. However, since Percentile is arrived from your rank, it is good to aim for a definite range of ranks (such as 1-150 or so).

The forms for GATE come out about 1st week of October the previous year and the last date is about 31st October. Details of the same can be achieved at the GATE sub-site of any IIT site.

The Exam...

The GATE exam is for 3 hrs with maximum marks of 150. 75 marks is from Objective questions - (25 MCQ of 1 mark each with 1/4 negative marking, and 25 MCQ of 2 marks each with 1/2 negative marking) and 75 marks from subjective questions (20 questions of 5 marks each out of which you can solve any 15). It is normally assumed that anybody around 100+ normally gets a rank good enough to get him through IITs. But it is purely speculative and students are advised not to read too much into this stat.

Prospects after GATE

Before going into more details, it is important, what you can do after clearing GATE. First of all, you can do MTechs at many top institutes of the country including IITs and IISc, Bangalore. then you may apply for PhDs at those institutes and may get through if you have a good undergraduate score, an aptitude for research and a good GATE score. You may also apply for certain jobs in the Govt. in the field of Engineering, Science and Technology. GATE score is considered highly by many top R&D organizations such as ISRO and BARC.

MTech is not for those who are looking for a job at the end of the course, specially if you think getting to IIT means that. Getting a job after IIT is not as important as utilizing the opportunities and facilities provided at the IITs to study more advanced topics in Computer Science and to get your feet wet into Research. A seat into IITs may mean high amount of course work in first year and even more work in research in the second year. The impetus here is on creating productive work through assignments and breakthroughs through research. If this is not the profile you are looking for, please do not dream to come here.

For BITBIS guys - Please do not come to IIT just because it is another alternative to CAT/GRE etc. The stress on research may surprise a lot of people. Also, IIT means continuous education, so if you come from a background of Last day studies, I advise you to explore other options.

The reason I am advising some categories not to blindly do an MTech is because it will not directly help you get a better pay package at the end of the course. If you wait for the IT situation to get better, you may end up with a better salary at passing-out-of-MTech-time than when you pass out of MTech.

As for PhD, one important note - PhD may mean a lot of patience. Scholars work here for as long as 6 years with the average being 4-4.5 years. The stipend is abolished after 5 years, but still scholars continue till end of thesis. At some foreign universities, you may do your PhD in 2-3 years on average and 4 in worst cases. Please chose your options carefully.

Preparation

The preparation for GATE should be highly focused. I suggest that GATE must be taken in isolation and not with GRE/CAT etc if you are seriously interested in it. However, if you have the stamina to study hard, you can complete the work in probably 6 months or so. However, as ever, this is a completely speculative stat.

The preparation should ideally be done for the entire course. However, if you can carefully plan your distribution, you can afford to be weak in one topic. However, I ideally suggest that nobody does that. Its kinda risky.

I had used a combination of many books and the Brilliant Tutorials (BT) GATE set of 9 units (1-8, 8s). Alongwith the course here, I am indicating what books I had used. I also used the ten year paper from G. K Publishers. Be careful that only papers after 1994 are of the present format of the exam.

The course of the exam is as follows:

CS - COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Basic Mathematics: Elements of probability, matrix algebra, numerical methods: interpolation, root finding, differentiation and integration. Discrete Mathematics: Sets, relations, functions, mathematical induction, counting, groups, graphs, partial orders, lattices and Boolean algebra, propositional logic.

BT unit 2,3 (revision of major topics of Engg. Maths), Matrix Algebra (BS Vatssa) Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists (Don't remember exact name, John XXXX, from some British Univ), Engg. Maths (Grewal, Gupta & Gupta) Numerical Analysis (our 6th sem course book)

Theory of Computation: Regular and context free languages, finite state machines and pushdown automata, Turing machines and undecidability.

BT Unit 4, TOC by KLP Mishra, Chandrashekar, TOC by Christos H Papadimitriou

Computer Hardware: Logic function, minimization techniques, design of combinational and sequential circuits using gates and flip-flops, design with integrated circuits including ROM and multiplexers, microprocessor architecture: programming, interfacing with memory and I/O devices (modes of data transfer and their implementation, serial and parallel communication interfaces). Detailed knowledge of 8085 microprocessor will be assumed.

BT unit 5/1 (combination of both), Digital electronics (Malvino Leach), Digital Electronics (M. Morris Mano)

Computer Organization: Number representation and arithmetic, functional organization, machine instructions and addressing modes, ALU, hardwired and microprogrammed control, instruction pipelining, memory organization, input/output.

BT unit 5/1 (combination of both), CSA (M. Morris Mano)

Programming and Data Structures : Structured programming with Pascal/C including recursion; arrays, stacks, strings, queues, lists, trees, sets and graphs; algorithm for tree and graphs traversals, connected components, spanning trees, shortest paths; hashing, sorting and searching; algorithm design and analysis techniques, big ?oh? notation, solution of simple recurrence relations.

Any damn good book. We are good at this.

Language Processors: Assemblers, loaders, linkers, macroprocessors, text editors, programming languages; scope rules and parameter passing mechanisms; compilers: lexical analysis, parsing, syntax directed translation, run time environment, machine code generation; interpreters.

BT unit 7, Compilers (Aho, Ullman, Sethi)

Operating Systems: Batch, multi-programming and time-sharing systems; processor, memory, device and file management, virtual memory, process scheduling, interprocess communication, process synchronization and concurrency, deadlocks, protection.

OS (Silberschatz & Galvin), BT unit 8

Database Systems: File organization techniques: indexing, B-trees, B-plus trees; relational and network data models; normal forms; query languages: SQL.

DBMS (C. J. Date, Elmasri & Navathe), BT unit 8

The following are some tips that may prove useful to you all:

  1. Be careful about time. Try to time yourself right from the beginning of the prep.
  2. Be equally good at both Objective and subjective. Nobody gets through with out being good at both.
  3. Have a strategy. You should know how you want to spend the three hours in the two sections.
  4. Also, plan your strategy for picking questions in both the Objective and Subjective sections. Attempt a minimum of 10 questions in the subjective. I have not heard of anybody getting a decent rank without attempting (with a good chance of getting all correct) at least 10-11 questions.
  5. There is negative marking from 2002. So be careful about guesswork.
  6. Have an attitude of hardwork. Don't leave many things to chance or don't be a fringe player.
  7. Aim for a higher rank, not a high percentile. Because the cutoff finally boils down to your rank and not percentile. The cutoff at IITK has remained at about 120 rank, in spite of percentile varying between 97%ile to about 99.4%ile.
  8. Remember, however high you may think of yourself, that there are a lot of many really good & hard working guys sitting for GATE each year across the country!

What happens after the exam

At about Feb mid, the notifications for various IITs and IISc will start coming out. You have to fill them up with your GATE score. IISc, IITM call people directly on the basis of their GATE score. IITK, IITD, IITB, IITG give direct calls to top ranking calls. That can vary between 1-100 depending on the IIT. IITK closes about 80. Then they call guys for interview. Not more than 30% weightage will be given to the interview. After interview, IITK closed about 133, while others may close about 150-200.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that there are various courses that a CS guy can take up. Apart from MTech (CS), you can also do MTech in Aerospace, Industrial and Management Engg., Computer Technology, Computer Applications, Reliability and Industrial Engg., and also MDes at various IITs. If any of you want to do these courses, you may get through with slightly lower GATE score. The exact score needed may be obtained through the sites of the various IITs. You can always mail a student who is doing it at any IIT to get more information. And always, you can contact me for some help.

Of course, after this, there are a host of other A grade colleges like the RECs, NITs, VJTI, DCE, NSIT etc. There has been a lot of talk about eligibility of BITBIS students. The matter boils down to your GATE rank. If you are good nobody cares, and if not, the Instt. has a good reason to reject you - they have others. So a good GATE score absolves you of yous BITBIS sins.

Once you receive your call, you send your draft and acceptance letter. And join on the said date!! Bingo, you are heading towards you MTech!!!!

I wish you all the very best in your attempt.

And on behalf of the IITK, I extend a very warm welcome to all GATE toppers....




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