Students’ Speak: Make the most out of previous years’ questions

By: T. Deepthi

As you know, GATE is one of the most important and toughest competitive examinations in India. GATE is also recognised by various institutes outside India, such as Nanyang Technological University located in Singapore. This year, IIT Delhi had released the exam pattern of GATE-2020.

Each and every topic is very important. By practicing and revising the previous year’s questions, we get an idea about scoring topics or important topics. Because every year, there is a lot of change in scoring topics. We can’t say exactly about the scoring topics or important topics. You can have better analysis through reviewing the previous year’s papers. Previous years’ papers give you confidence and analysing capacity over the topics. Most of the successful candidates’ secret was revising and practicing previous years’ question papers only.

Study Plan

A proper study plan may give you great success ahead. In GATE, we come across the vast syllabus, we have to remember each and every topic. Without a proper schedule, we can’t complete the topics because we may forget or skip some topics. If we have a proper time table, we can learn topics and we can keep tick as a sign of completion. After completion of entire topics, revise each and every topic as many times as you can. After completion of revision, give as many mock tests as you can. Writing mock tests is not important but self-examination is very important. Try to improve your performance level by giving mock tests.

How to source correct study materials and books for your stream/branch?

Getting notification and applying for exams is easy, but gathering sources of appropriate study materials is difficult. Nowadays the Internet is a good source for any competitive examinations to access and get useful content. Standard materials are also a good source for any course. I suggest not buying more and more books. Take suggestions from your elders or seniors or go to any Institute. Better to buy standard books that are important to your syllabus. If you joined any Institute, take those books and read and practice them. If you are unable to go for Institute then it is better to use technology. For basics, you should go through engineering standard textbooks, they may help you. If you are very interested, you can learn from online studies. You can utilise many educational apps like Shiksha etc., for aptitude and reasoning, R.S Agarwal is good. You can go through your engineering running notes, they may also help you. And you can refer to self-made easy notes & materials also, they are good enough. You can take toppers’ materials such as self-made notes.

Examination Structure

Many of you would be aware of the GATE examination structure. I will explain briefly. GATE examination duration is 3 hours (180 minutes). GATE paper consists of 3 sections (except for AR, CY, GG, EY, XLXL, PH and MA papers). They are:

1. General aptitude
2. Engineering Mathematics (for XL paper it is chemistry)
3. Subject-specific section

GATE paper consists of a compulsory General Aptitude section consisting of 10 questions. Among those 10 questions, 5 questions carry 1 mark each and 5 questions carry 2 marks each. If you prepare well, you can easily get 15 marks from this section. Coming to the marking scheme. For MCQ carrying 1 mark, 1/3 mark will be deducted. For MCQ carrying 2 marks, 2/3 mark will be deducted for every wrong response. Moreover, there is no negative marking for numerical answer type questions. The weightage for General Aptitude is 15%, Engineering mathematics contains 15% and the subject of the paper contains 70%. For non-technical branches such as AR, CY, EY, GG, MA, PH, ST and XL, there will be 15% weightage for the general aptitude section and 85% weightage given to their preferred subjects.

I hope you will understand each and everything which I mentioned above. And surely you people will perform well in the upcoming examinations.

About the Author:

T. Deepthi is a student at Sri Padmavati Mahila Vishvavidyalayam Tirupati. She is pursuing Bachelor's in Technology with a specialisation in Electronics and Communication.