GATE 2015: What to expect in the exam

By Ankit Goyal

Since GATE-2014, the GATE pattern changed considerably from the pattern in previous years. There were a few significant and notable changes made by GATE committee like introduction of Numerical Type Questions, Online Exam, Removal of Common Data and Linked Answer Type Questions . The pattern for GATE-15 is announced to be same as GATE-14, so we can expect the same type of questions to appear this year as well. Hence, the method of preparation should be strictly based on the paper pattern as different type of problems require different sort of preparation and strategy.

Coming to the first point about Numerical Type Questions, these questions were introduced to check the level of understanding of concept to a candidate as these are more or less subjective type of questions and hence the preparation should be based on that only. Most of the practice problems or books that we chance upon are objective, so it becomes a problem as how to be prepared for Numerical Type Questions, the answer to that will be to solve the problems from the standard textbooks as you can practice the solved examples as well as exercises given at the end of chapter but the solved examples are more recommended as you can easily get to know by looking at the solution that where you are committing a mistake and if you happen to have a solution manual for some standard textbooks you can go about solving the exercises at the end of the book as well to give you a good practice.

Now the strategy while solving these type of problems for exam as well as during practice should be to focus on accuracy more than the speed of problem solving as if you try to be fast then you can land in trouble and these questions as per my general experience are lengthy as compared to Objective Type Problems and hence you cannot bank upon re-verifying your solutions as at the end of the exam, you may not have sufficient time left for that and so it is better to be sure that you are correct the first time that you solve a problem and that helps a lot. Also self-confidence plays a major part here as if you are not confident about you answer then you will end up re-checking your solution multiple times and that will cost I terms of time and hence marks and eventually your AIR. The self-confidence comes from your accuracy of problem solving during your preparation stages so prepare hard and prepare good for these type of problems as they will constitute around 40% of your paper.

The next major change that happened was that the exam was taken online which had major impact as exam is now conducted in multiple sessions with each session having a different paper and hence a different difficulty level. Most of the students will hope to give exam in a session where the exam is relatively easy and thus hope to end up scoring more and getting better AIR. But the truth is far different from this popular opinion as the students who end up giving the exam in a session where the exam is relatively difficult are in a better stead than most of other students. This happens because now the rank does not depend on your score but rather on your normalized score which in turn depend on the average marks scored in your session. So, if you happened to attend a difficult session then the average marks in your session are less and hence you have a better normalized score but if sat in an easy session then most students will obtain high score and your normalized score will be less than your potential and you expectations which can cost you in terms of AIR.

The last but not the least change that happened was removal of “Common Data” and “Linked Answer” type of questions and that actually is positive sign for the students as these questions were generally time consuming and if you did not understand the concept or if you are lacking in a particular topic, then you were actually losing two questions instead of one so as now “Numerical Type” questions are introduced so you can devote time to those without worrying much about the earlier type of problems.

The one different thing this time from GATE-14 will be that no calculators will be allowed inside examination hall and an online scientific calculator will be provided instead so students need to buckle up and download a few online calculators and start practicing on that as that will help you gain speed which will be crucial in the exam and can be one of the deciding factor on you AIR as the students who will have the ability to calculate faster on online calculator will save crucial time in calculations and can either spend that time in revising the paper or solving some left out problems to achieve a better rank. So guys, better watch out for it this time.

Thus, you can expect the GATE-15 exam to be on the similar lines as the GATE-14 exam except one or two changes and based on your understanding and my views, you can now be better prepared to face the GATE exam.

About the author:

Ankit completed his B.Tech from IIT Indore in Electrical Engineering in 2013. He appeared for GATE-2013 during his final year and acquired an All India Rank(AIR) 8. He again took the exam in 2014 and emerged as a topper with an AIR-1. Ankit was also a gold medalist in his batch. Currently, he is working at Qualcomm India Private Limited, Bangalore.