How to balance college studies with GATE 2018 Preparation

By Ankit Goyal

Since you will appearing for GATE 2018, you must have completed your sixth semester and that means you have almost 8 months to prepare for GATE exam. From the next semester you will have to deal with college assignments, minor and major projects, exams, campus placements and so on which means you have a lot to do in a lot less time.

In order to tackle all these issues you need to have a definite schedule for your preparation. So assuming that we have 11 months, I would recommend the following strategy:

1. From June to December cover all the subjects at least once using standard books/ class notes and question banks.
2. Once you have completed 6 subjects you have to start revision of earlier subjects simultaneously and for revision you can follow previous year question banks and subject tests in some test series. So, you can start revision from September.
3. The month of December should be mostly focused on revision and subject tests along with covering 1-2 less important subjects.
4. In the last month i.e. January you can start giving mock tests and simultaneously work on your weaker subjects which you will realize after mock tests. In each mock test, you have to remember to take note where you lost your marks so that you can improve upon that topic gradually.

Now, the question is how to manage time for college studies. Here are some tips:

1. Dedicate one hour each day to prepare for college exams so that you are burdened in the exam month.
2. Take small B.Tech project which does not consume majority of your time so choose the guide wisely. The guide should be the professor who will least bother you.
3. During exam month as well dedicate 1–2 hours each day for GATE so that you do not lose touch with GATE concepts.

The summer vacations after 6th semester are very crucial as during this time there will be a lot pressure from college end so try and dedicate 8–10 hours each day during vacations towards GATE preparation. Also, prepare Mathematics and Aptitude well as it will help you in college placements as well as GATE. I hope this article guides you in the right direction towards GATE 2018.

About the Author:

Ankit Goyal

Ankit Goyal is co-founder of Kreatryx which is an online and offline exam preparation portal. He completed his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering  from IIT Indore in 2013. He is gold medalist of his batch. He cracked GATE with an AIR-8 with final year of college in 2013 but joined Qualcomm. He again cracked GATE in 2014 with an AIR 1.

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