:: GATE GUIDE BY AIR 9 ::

• GATE GUIDE BY AIR 9 

I have got direct admission to IITB. (Score 810 Rank 9)

Here are my suggestions:

( These are purely based on my experience n it tells the way i would have prepared if I had to take GATE again this year.
I would explain in observation & solution manner)

1) Most of the question patterns are repeating & nothing much is left to ask concept wise

What I would have done :

Collect questions & answers (however time the solution might take, but understand the concept first & get the solution trick) subject wise.
eg If you collect Operating System problems from all GATE papers & solve them yourself after going through reference books, its more than sufficient.
Do this for all subjects & you will see the repeating pattern.

Solve papers (each n every questions). I bet this would cover ur 50% marks in GATE 2008.
U can devote ur first month of preparation for this.
It will work.
These notes would be precious & would help u in final phase.
Search answers urself.

2) Questions are in the form of problems based on key concepts. ( eg spanning tree concepts in network switches)

Collecting questions would uncover the problem statement tricks, solutions would help understand the approach & u will get to know what is really expected from the student.

This would help u study topics from GATE perspective when u will start studying (reading n understanding). U will, yourself, be able frame questions.

3) I found most of the problems unsolvable at first site.

Each problem is taken from some reference book. I have attached reference book list.

( I had prepared the list for one of my friends who is preparing for Subject GRE. U can also give a chance to it,its during November & April (twice a year). my seniors have actually got very good (stanford etc) universities only on Subject GRE score)

ADVICE PAGE 2

4) Do solve questions given at the end of every chapter in reference book. This will boost urmorale. I tell u,there r really interesting problems.

eg Computer Networks (Tanenbaum & Farouzan) problems (esp Data link layer)

One mail is insufficient for explaining.
I have tried my best.

Best of luck.
Be in touch.

Feel free to ask any questions.
Spread these suggestions if u feel worth.

Please leave comment at community thread for others to make choice.

P. S. Collect formulae on blank paper & paste them on your walls.

(not a single part should remain vacant)

.Before starting solve 2 full-time papers

Looking into the books, understanding the concept & formulae

Algorithms:

#Horowitz & Sahani – complete, exercise

(yellow coloured front page)

6hr a day * 10 days

Automata theory:

Cohen – quite easy & its good for theory as well as problems

#Martin – good for exercise problems & you can get the solutions over net

Ullman – good for theory & some critical problems & again u can get the ans & some exercise really really important, get the approach for solutions

All three books

5hr * 10 days

Discrete mathematics:

(collect formulae, write them down on blank pages & go on pasting them over room walls, & read them daily)

#Tata Mc –  ROSEN solve as much as u can

This single book to solve 5hr * 10

Graph theory –  douglaswest (first 4 chapters)

Trembley & Manoher ( first 2 chapters are good)

Overall

15 days

Data organization & program control & structure first two points:

(from start to end)

#Tanenbaum (green colour) – complete

(doorway tourall data structures related part)

(try to cover it parallely with data structure part from sahani)

8hr * 3 days

C:

Systems:

Compilers

#Ullman, sethi – Principles of compilers (esp parsers & its techniques)

(very detailed explanation of every theory)

10 hr * 4 days

Operating systems:

(also covers virtual memory , segmentation, paging, I/O systesm)

#Galvin – complete & very good for synchronization (but get the problems from net or try to solve sync problems from different papers)

Tanenbaum – MOS(modern operating systems) very good for os examples ( paging,memory management,cpu scheduling & utilization)

6 hr * 4 hr

Networking & distributed systems:

#Forouzan – Data communication & networking (do only networking part, & some algorithms are sensibly explained in only this book eg “swith spanning tree”, execise problems, protocols)

Also covers Internet structures

8 hr * 2 days

#Tanenbaum – very interesting & critical for problems esp data link & network layer problems

(essential for net problems)

8 hr * 2 days

Databases:

#Navathe: good for SQL( & for general query languages) & normalization part ( it includes some terrific techniques & tests to solve normalization problems)

5 hr * 2 days

#Korth: ER model & Transaction management

6 hr * 1 day

Computer Organization

#Zaki – pipelining & cache 10 hr * 1 day

Stallings – CPU design

Henssy patterson also

Digital logic  6 hr * 2days

Morris Mano – problems

350 hrs / 10 hrs = 35 days

I suggest give 40 days to get thorough knowledge

Have 2 phases .