How to Crack GATE in 4 Months

“Success is less about luck and more about practice” – Robin Sharma. This quote stands perfect when we discussing one’s GATE preparation strategy.

GATE preparation not only boosts engineering students’ technical knowledge making them employable but also makes them eligible for multiple other opportunities like PSU jobs, postgraduate courses in top premier institutes like IITs, IISc, IIIT, NITs etc., postgraduate programs abroad, the fellowship program in IIMs etc.

How to Prepare and Crack GATE Exam 2024 in 4 Months

With 4 months remaining i.e. 120 days, the preparation should be intense and to the point. Categorically, there can be three types of GATE aspirants at this moment -

1. Those who are preparing for a long time
2. Those who started recently and
3. Repeaters

So for the first and third type of GATE aspirants it would be a matter of more revision for GATE exam and taking as many mock tests as possible.

For the second type of student, those who have just started their preparation, they will have to be very focused and self-motivated, follow a tight schedule of learning concepts, making notes, revising important topics and solving as many past exam questions possible. Thus, in all the cases, making a daily study schedule and committing to the same is all that is needed.

To keep yourself focused, think about these three factors – “WHY, WHAT and HOW”; which means WHY do you want to do this, WHAT will you achieve by doing this and HOW are you going to do this.

Understanding the GATE syllabus

The GATE syllabus consists of 10-12 subjects including General Aptitude and Mathematics (common to all branches of Engineering). Understand the weight-age of the subjects identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Start with subjects in which you score the highest and remember to allocate time for each subject. You might have to consciously leave a few topics in which you are not so confident or topics which are completely unknown and rather focus on your strengths.

General Aptitude and Mathematics carry 30% of the total weightage and rest 70% is core technical subjects. These two subjects can play an important role in your strategy to crack the GATE in 4 months’ time.

General Aptitude is by far the easiest subject in GATE, which tests basic aptitude, logical reasoning and little bit of English. Practice general Aptitude and mathematics from past exam question banks, try to understand the pattern of questions and gain confidence in these two subjects in the beginning. These 30% marks will surely play a vital role in achieving a good GATE score.

What the GATE tests

Questions in the GATE exam are based on four parameters viz. Concepts, Application, Problem Solving & Time Management. You will be tested on how good your understanding of concepts is, if you can apply concepts to the problems asked, your accuracy in terms of problem solving and of course your time management skills. So, to master all of these you need to read, understand concepts, revise, and practice a lot of questions, especially through mock tests.

How to design a study schedule

In the 4 months that you have i.e. 120 days, dedicate your time as per your preparation strategy. For example, if your plan is to study and revise 10 subjects in 120 days, you will have 12 days for each subject. Along with learning and revising topics, you should also consider taking at-least 30 online mock tests in these 4 months.

Target based preparation is what is advisable. Give targets in terms of number of questions you should solve in a day, in a week and hence in 4 months’ time. The target should not be anything less than 70 to 80 questions daily, excluding the mock tests. So, in 4 months you should at-least target to solve 5000-6000 GATE questions and take at least 30 mock tests.

The best resource to solve questions currently is past exam question papers. In summary, your study schedule should be target based which should include the number of subjects you want to prepare, the number of days you need to dedicate to each subject, the number of question you should solve and the mock tests.

How to prepare

If you are someone who has started preparation recently, the first and the foremost thing that you should do is make the list of subjects, topics and sub-topics that you plan to cover and gather all the required study material for those subjects.

Start from subjects with the highest weightage and make a compendium of important concepts and formulae. A five to six-page compendium of formulae and concepts should cover an entire subject and this document will come in handy during last minute revision.

While solving questions of a particular topic or analyzing mock test, one should also make a notebook of mistakes, in which you should note down all the mistakes that you have made during practice and its correction. This notebook of mistakes should be referred to daily during the last 7 days. This will help to improve accuracy level as well as time management skills – the two keys to crack GATE

Consistency, self-motivation and health

The last 4 months are very crucial when it comes to preparation for a national level technical competitive exam like GATE. It is very important to remain consistent & self-motivated. Always remember what you are trying to achieve; what a good GATE score can get you and keep going.

Read some good motivational blogs or articles by achievers and past rankers; and learn from their journey to success as it is rightly said – “great things never come by staying in your comfort zone”

Health – both physical and mental is equally important to handle the amount of pressure and stress. So, eat healthy, take short and consistent breaks in between study time, do some stretching exercises, stay hydrated and sleep well. Enjoy the process of hard-work and results will follow.