Where did I come from and what was my reason?

Let me give some background first. I passed my B.E. in Electronics and Communication
Engineering in the year 2014. I had few financial liabilities to fulfill immediately after my
graduation, so I never gave a thought to prepare for GATE (I wasn’t really aware of PSUs
through GATE that time) and was clearly aiming for college placements. Like most of us
do, I got placed in Infosys, TCS and Wipro and decided to join one of them. Everything
went fine and I was done with all my liabilities within 2 years. I was enjoying the financial
independence but that wasn’t my true north (code > Bugs > Fixes > repeat) and the
hectic schedule which followed every other day (project was quite demanding). I started
looking for stable jobs to change my field where I could finally settle.

Realizing soon that almost every engineering recruitment is through GATE, I must have
thought a thousand times to decide what I really wanted. Not to mention that I had
forgotten each and everything about EC by now. I finally decided to give it a shot and
started the preparation in April 2017 with NPTEL lectures and making handwritten notes
along. I came back from office around 8 in the night, would start with the videos around
9:30 and would continue till 1 or 2 in the night. The routine followed but soon I got a
new assignment which demanded my late evenings also to be spent on client calls. I
continued with other subjects but only for 1-2 hours daily and rest on weekends. By
September I realized that what I studied in April had become entirely new once again. I
continued to work hard but God had other plans. I was assigned with a new client
requirement in October which continued till January i.e. I was fully occupied in the most
critical time of GATE preparation. I was essentially left only with the weekends and finally
gave GATE 2018. Albeit I tried my best to touch all the subjects, the preparation was
quite shallow and I realized soon after those critical 3 hours that it’s taking me nowhere. I
got AIR 1462 in GATE 2018, not good for anything but good enough to boost my
confidence to make that happen what I had in mind.

There comes the most challenging part when my family and friend insisted to give an
honest attempt and give up on my job. After good number of discussions, I decided to
quit my job. It became even more difficult when I was promoted just 15 days before my
date of exit but I had already decided to call it quits.

(I am not encouraging here to give upon your job but I was already late in my decisions
and I knew what could work for me and hence the decision. It’s always good to have
backups so make your choices carefully)

After putting my 4 years of corporate career at stake, I knew there should be no look
back. I spent my time while being on notice period to collect all the necessary resources.
I joined test series in the beginning only, purchased Made Easy handwritten notes from
nearby shop of Made Easy Centre in Hyderabad and arranged Kanodia series from my
friend, parallelly I was preparing important topics in EMT like Transmission lines, wave
propagation.
I was back to my place in mid-May and started the preparation in full swing. Networks
and Signal and Systems were the first two followed by communication, EDC, Analog,
Control Systems, Digital Electronics, Math and EMT in this specific order. I kept the most
demanding subjects for me in the middle so that I feel confident enough and to avoid
the chance of letting go difficult portions of these subjects at last due to lack of time. I
was quite confident about control, digital electronics and hence put them at the last.
EMT is known for its vastness and toughness in ECE so I put it in the end to cover
whatever more I could in the remaining time (Electrostats and Magnetostats).

I followed books only when I was not clear about any concept or was not able to solve
problems in any particular area, otherwise I stuck to my notes, purchased handwritten
notes and YouTube lectures. My advice would be to not change your resources once you
have finalized the same, there are too many of them to confuse you.

Below are the books I followed:

1. BP Lathi for Communications.

2. Sedra and Smith for Analog Electronics.

3. None of the books but only NPTEL lectures by Prof M. Gopal for control system.

4. Sadiku for EMT.

5. BS Garewal for higher Engineering Mathematics.

6. Morris Mano for Digital electronics.

For rest of the subjects I relied on notes.

I practiced problems from the following books:

1. Schaumm outlines for Analog and Digital communication. BP Lathi only for the
concepts I lacked.

2. Schaumm outlines for Signals and Systems.

3. Sadiku to practice EMT problems.

4. Made easy previous year math question bank.

5. Kanodia series for all subjects.

6. Gate Academy previous year question bank for both EC and EE.

I have listed below challenges I faced during my preparation and how I overcame
them.

1. I was self-studying and lacked the studying environment as I was all alone in this plan.
Motivation is temporary but discipline is permanent. You can’t be motivated throughout,
so make a schedule which suits you and the demand of the examination. I prepared my
schedule and followed it almost every day, give or take a few days due to unavoidable
circumstances.

2. Somedays I felt the need for guide/teacher who could answer my doubts and advise
how much in detail do I need to tackle any particular topic. I chose not to go for
coaching as that would have added a huge financial burden on me.

I bought Made Easy handwritten notes and followed them to make sure I do not deviate
much from the actual syllabus. FB groups very well serve the purpose for doubt solving
but don’t spend too much time on them.

3. I was in a room of small town, completely unaware about the level of competition and
the intermittent fear questioning me frequently “Am I on the right path or Do I need to
change anything?”

Test series is the ultimate solution to judge the level of competition and where you
stand. The marks you get after giving subject tests is an indicator of your command over
the subject. Please pay close attention to the feedbacks you get after giving tests and
take it positively. I joined Made Easy, Ace Academy, Gate Academy, Kreatryx test series (I
got some of them at much lesser price because of my performance in GATE 2018/other
tests, so I went for all of them). You can’t complete them all but complete those which
serve your purpose best and that you will come to know through your experience.

4. Fear of failure and what if I don’t make it.

If you are often thinking about this then trust me you are not working hard enough,
however these thoughts are obvious once in a while. I used to think “I am an engineer
and hence educated enough so even if I fail, I can earn my bread and butter.” This line
relaxed me a lot.

5. Do test series marks matter?

I had heard uncountable number of times that they don’t. None of the test series is in
par with GATE etc... I chose to disagree. If you are getting 30 in test then you can’t expect
60 in GATE. I tried to give all the tests (including subject tests) with at most sincerity and
soon it became an obsession to be in top 10. If I was not scoring good then I had to
sweat the details to know what went wrong. Believe me, you have got to fix this before
you go for your next test/subject, a series of continuous low marks in test series will pull
you down and it’s not very easy to stand up again and again against the odds, that will
fill you with tiredness, so make sure you identify the root cause.

6. I was forgetting what I studied after every 15-30 days.

This is the most brutal aspect of examinations like GATE where we already have an ocean
of syllabus but revision becomes equally important. I assigned 5-7 days after completion
of every 2 subjects to revise previously studied subjects. Revisions were detailed covering
every nook and corner. I will suggest not to leave any subject unrevised for 2 months or
so else it will become entirely new. I must have studied each subject in detail at least 5
times before attempting GATE. Keep short notes for the last month.

7. I can’t deal with a particular subject anymore, I am not getting what it’s all about.

This is normal. Take a break (Not of days but of few hours). This will rejuvenate your
mind and there are enough resources online to clear our difficulty. Digital
Communications troubled me a lot and it’s reasonable to have slower pace, understand
that you are a beginner and don’t be too hard on yourself, it takes time to grasp difficult
stuff. Accept and don’t fight it!

8. I committed hell lot of calculation mistakes.

This was the consequence of working in corporate for 4 years. I wouldn’t have solved
more than 100 calculations in those 4 years. I was deeply frustrated with these so called
silly mistakes and was checking every solution twice during tests to ensure if I had done
the calculation part correctly, certainly a lethal habit that I needed to overcome. I simply
stopped using calculator for trivial calculations and would do all of them manually while
practicing problems and finally it helped me in the long run.

9. I lacked satisfaction even after studying enough. I was saturated by October of this
monotonous routine.

Nothing satisfies as much as good scores in the tests. Even if you aren’t among the
toppers, seeing yourself growing with every next test is truly motivating. I installed
‘clockwork tomato’ to track if I was too lenient on some days, it used to worry me
whenever I clocked below 50 study hours for a week. I might have studied 4 hours on
one day but 12 hours on the next day to make up for it, the app really helped me in
maintaining discipline.

10. I was under confident and panic every now and then.

Here my friend, Susmita helped me a lot. She rebuked me for being inferior and under
confident and made me realize how it could spoil the entire game. Full length tests will
make you comfortable and will train your mind to work for those 3 hours. I gave 29 full
length tests and 2 CBTs to mitigate my tendency to panic. Alas! Despite all this, I
panicked in GATE but of course the intensity was less.

Finally, the D day:

I didn’t study anything a day before but was rather maintaining my calm. On Feb 9, I had
my exam in the morning slot. I reached the venue well in advance. Not so positive
thoughts and fear were lurking, it’s obvious as we have given our everything only for this
day. I convinced myself, saying it’s normal and I just have to solve a question on my
screen and everything else on this planet can wait to get my attention. I entered the hall
and the screen with timer was right in my front. I started deep breathing and removed
the burden of all expectations from my mind. Examination started and I started solving
1-mark technical questions with the best possible speed. I finalized the order of
questions that worked best for me in test series, which was 1 mark technical then 2
marks technical and then aptitude. All was going well for the first 20 questions but I was
taking a bit more time than I used to.

Difficult time started when I was seeing every other question on MOSFET. I prepared this
topic well but wasn’t prepared for unconventional and unbalanced paper. I couldn’t solve
3-2 marks questions in a row, it kicked me into panic mode. After 45 minutes from the
beginning, the only line which was playing in the back of my mind was “It’s finished, I am
gone! What will I do now!” I stopped for a minute and gathered myself with the thoughts
that there was no other way out, I had to fight what’s in front of me that too in the best
possible way. This episode already costed me 2-2marks questions of control system
which were not at all difficult. I continued to work my tail off and was rigorously trying to
attempt the questions. 2 hours and 45 minutes finished in such a short stint like never
before. 15 minutes and I had to go for 15 marks aptitude section. I could fetch only 9
marks where toppers don’t miss any.

The exam was over and I remained depressed and disappointed for a couple of days, I
didn’t know what all I had done in the exam. I could not recollect any of my answers to
check my fate, could not remain stable and felt exhausted. I was in top 10 in most of the
mocks across different coaching institutes and was AIR-12 and AIR-2 in Made Easy CBT 1
and 2 respectively, this made it even worse to accept the reality of D day. Responses
were released by IIT-Madras and I was getting 70.33 marks which reduced to 68.67 after
IIT-M released final key. I felt somewhat relieved and much satisfied that the damage
was in control. Rank predictor was showing AIR 124 and I could only hope to remain in
top 200.

The ultimate outcome!!!

I had many people waiting for the outcome of my venture, to check upon the
consequence of crazy decision that I took a year before. Results were declared on March
15 and I secured AIR-136. I was no GATE topper but was indeed very happy that my hard
work paid off. A huge number of calls and messages overwhelmed my cell phone and I
was stuck to it for the next 2 days and was thoroughly enjoying the returns. To sum up, I
felt proud of my decisions, my choices and my hard work.
I will most probably go for M-Tech in VLSI from one of the IITs.

I conclude this article now and Thanks for reading!

May you all get as big reward as much efforts you are putting in! Good Luck!

Persistence and perseverance is the key. Luck might not favor you but hard work
will always sail you through.