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:
- Be careful about time. Try to time yourself right
from the beginning of the prep.
- Be equally good at both Objective and subjective.
Nobody gets through with out being good at both.
- Have a strategy. You should know how you want to
spend the three hours in the two sections.
- 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.
- There is negative marking from 2002. So be careful
about guesswork.
- Have an attitude of hardwork. Don't leave many
things to chance or don't be a fringe player.
- 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.
- 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....
|