POST-RESULT PHASE.

Hello friends,

My name is Pawan, the new contributor (thanks pk! :) ).
The results are out, you know your rank. You want to know how to proceed from now on.
There are two important steps you need to think about:
1. Decide if you want to do a research oriented programme (M.S) or a course-oriented programme (M.Tech)
2. Decide on your areas of interest. You must know them by now.

A little more on the first point: A course-oriented programme is much like B.Tech and you explore the breadth of computer science. Typically, you will have to take around 10 courses spread over 2 to 3 semesters. For a research oriented programme on the other hand, you need to take lesser courses, and spend most of your time in doing research in a domain. As in, you will have to read the literature, find out what problems are feasible to be addressed and then solve one (or more than 1) of them. You explore the depth here. So, the purposes are different. See which one of these purposes better suits you.

Opting for a M.S or M.Tech programme is crucial, a wrong choice can prove very costly. Also, you would not want to be stuck in an area which does not interest you. The caveat here is that both the decision points mentioned above must be exercised with proper judgment.

To know what all programmes are available at every IIT and IISc here is a pointer:"http://karthrags.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/iit-pg-admissions-part-2-the-interviews/".
Don't get stingy over applications. Even if you apply for one or two more than required, its okay! They might come in handy as back-ups when things don't go your way.

Lastly, "GATE results are out. I bagged a good rank. Now I can breathe easy!" SAYS WHO? NO YOU CAN'T. You will be put in a class of 60-80 students who have performed as good as you have. The competition will be high. If you relax, you will become rusty by the time you enter. So a week (or two) of relaxation is fine. But after that, patch up things, fill in the gaps, if you felt your GATE prep was incomplete, finish it. For those who are thinking about M.S programmes, there are written tests and interviews. They are not cakewalks. Those test how strong your ground floor is. So basics must be at fingertips. Please don't forget after doing all this hard-work in securing a good score in GATE, the last thing you would want to do is mess up your interviews/written tests. So pull yourself together, and keep it sturdy for few more months.

I shall get back on more, but that's all for now.

GATE PART-2 by anish, karthik, pawan & prasanna karthik

        We are back again with some interesting encounters to share with you all. Who said GATE is all about MCQ. A taste of success,a bit of failure and loads of fun makes up GATE part-2. Yeah we are moving into the second part of the Ad(mission)  process. Here is our story :-  scary IIT profs, comrades battling as tough as ourselves, with a single mission, "to get into the IITs".

Thanks to blogger for giving an option to add multiple authors to the blog.

New Authors:

Name	Institution	Gate Rank
Anish S Kumar	IIT Madras	157
M Pawan kumar	IIT Madras	162
Karthik Raghavan	IIT Madras	242

Well, i still haven't informed anish and karthik about it. May be i am confident that they wont refuse :D

14th Feb : D-Day

With 14th Feb fast approaching, you must be in high spirits. Couldn't they select a better day for conducting the examination. Well lets not think about that. Here are some points that might just come in handy on the D-Day


Day before the Examination

• Have a few chocolates, ice creams etc. and try to keep yourself cool and composed.
• Prepare a list of inventories that you should take to the exam hall. This list includes Hall ticket, 2 Pencils, Erasers, Sharpener, a pen, 2 calculators( Advanced + Basic one), lucky kerchief etc.
• Decide on the mode of transport and have a back-up plan as fail-safe. 
• Do not forget to think about the worst thing that might happen and develop the mental strength to overcome that. Expect a really tough paper. If the paper turns out easy, you win. If it is tough, then too u win.
• Revise all the topics. Do not try to remember them. Just browse through the material you have. Do not criticize yourself if you are not able to remember certain things.  Because it happens !!
• May be you can go to your terrace(or some lonely place) and have a peaceful few mins there.  

On the Day of the Examination

• Reach the Examination hall 1hrs(ideally 1.5 hrs) before the examination time. This is very essential. After all, who can take up the examination in a surrounding that one does not feel comfortable in.
•  Take one of your reference books(preferably a small one) so that you can get into the rhythm (warming up) well before the exam starts. Do not forget to leave the reference material outside the exam hall.
• Once you enter the exam hall, check your pockets for unwanted material. Also check if you have all the necessary items.

During the Examination

• Try to remain flexible in your approach to answering the paper. If your strategy doesn't work, realize that it JUST DOESNT WORK. Try to adopt a different strategy before it is too late.
• Quite often people(like me) tend to self-criticize themselves during the examination. Some even think about what they should have done in the past. Some have the urge to think about some concept(not asked in the paper) that they studied 2 days back. Such Things SHOULD BE AVOIDED.
• If the paper turns out to be Really Tough, do not lose hope.  "If it is tough for u, it will be tough for the others too". Sooner one can understand this fact, better is the possibility of him/her emerging out successful. 
• Last but not the least, mark all the answers properly. IF you mis-mark 1 answer, all the following answers will also go wrong( marking the answer for Q37 on Q38's slot will shift all your answers by 1 slot).
• Ensure that you darken the bubbles properly. IF you are unsure, erase it and mark it again. Sharpen your pencil from time to time. Most likely you wont realize that it has gone blunt

Wishing you all Success in GATE 2010. More than anything, think of this exam to be a game and Enjoy it !!

Which Subjects to Concentrate on ?

As u all are already in the Revision phase, u must be confused which subjects to concentrate on. You can look at the areas where IITG is good at. Ashok Gautham has done some research on this, which i am sure will be useful. Here is a LINK to his blog.

Make sure u dont read much of new topics. Just concentrate on perfecting what u have already learned.

What Next??

"I have studied with all my might over the past 5 months."

"I am well versed in 10 subjects."

"I have been getting within the top 100 ranks in the mock tests."

"I am better than my friends in most of the subjects."

All these statements do not make any sense if you are not able to perform in the 3hrs of the final Examination. All that matters here is your performance & if you dont give that, you just become one of the losers (doesnt matter if you've worked hard or not).

Preparation is like a pipeline(the computer architecture one ;)). What u feed into the pipe is your hardwork. what you get as the output is the degree of your success. More the hardwork u feed in, the better will be the success rate. That is not all, people forget about what happens inside this pipe. This is where i would place the purpose of this post.

It is really pathetic to lose out on achieving success, inspite of the enormous hardwork you ve done. Yes, it does happen at times. what happens if the pipe has a hole? what happens if the pipe has lesser capacity? Yes you ve gotta build this pipe such that your hardwork doesnt spill mid-way inside the pipeline.

Now again this pipeline can be thought to be made up of many connecting pipes. First, the "Revision" pipe. Second, the "management" pipe. Eventually your outcome can only be as large as the smallest pipe(bottleneck). ie, if your Revision is fool-proof and your management skills are pretty bad, then dont expect a 100% success. Similarly, having great management skills without revising the concepts might be of no use. In this post i just quote some of the management techniques that we came up with during our GATE preparation.

You are given say, 65 questions. Which ones do i answer first? say i start from the last, what if i am not able to answer 10 questions in a row; it sure will affect my confidence. what should i do? Now just think. If you are in such a situation during ur GATE exam. Here are some strategies tested by us. First, the one proposed by karthik. Once u receive ur paper, just scan the paper with a neutral view(dont look forward for questions from subjects of ur interest). scan them one by one and look out for the easy ones that require the least time to answer. Remember, in GATE papers such questions will always be there. Note: there might be questions that are very familiar to u but time consuming. just tick mark them and dont answer them for now. At the end of the FIRST PASS, you wud ve answered all the free hits. Now go for a second PASS, where u answer the questions u had marked previously. ie those which u know but are time consuming. Then go for a THIRD PASS, attack the tougher problems, these are just icing on the CAKE. u get them, its gr8. u dont get them, dont worry, after all those taking GATE are of ur caliber only. It wud be tough for them too. If u spend more than 3 mins on a question, u shud know, it is a TIME KILLER. Immediately skip to the next question. I know it is difficult to skip. But this can be mastered with a little bit of practise. This Strategy can only be used in GATE if u have answered atleast 5 papers before using the same.

Second, this is my own strategy. Start answering from the first, one mark questions. These are simpler and can be finished soon. So the strategy is to finish them within 30 mins after the start of the exam. Now start the paper from the last. (ie) the linked answer questions(questions that do not hav negative marking, something that shouldn be missed). The logic behind this is that, we are better suited to answer them when we are calm rather than postponing it till the end. Now we can proceed to answer the center part of the paper. This strategy has its own flaws. I also tried the alternate logic of answering the questions from the subject that i like the most. ie Networks. Then move on to answer all questions from say, TOC. But i should mention, it didnt work out well as i expected it to.

Third, this is again something that i came up with. The Guessing strategy. What are we writing the exam for? Marks. I am not that kind, who says i wont take up the marks that i dont deserve. I am not the kind like anish and pawan who only mark an answer if they are 100% sure. I was always ready to go for them as long as they dont get me into trouble(negative marking). There was a time when i was able to eliminate 2 out of the 4 choices. Now i have to choose 1. I usually went for such question. Yes i used to take a guess. :D. More often than not, u get many such questions. There is a possibility that this might back fire. Coming back to the strategy, mark ur guesses on the question paper, like say with a "G" besides the question. Dont mark them on the OMR sheet. after u complete the paper, take a percentage(like 10 %) of the questions u have correctly answered(say i answered 40 questions, then i can guess 4). U ve gotta mark only those number of guesses. Now from all the G's u have marked, select the most promising "G" questions and mark them. Another logic here is that if u get even one of the 5  G questions right, it will cover up for the rest. (ie) 2 * 1(correct) - .5 * 4(wrong ones) = 0.

It is expected that u figure out ur own strategy and practice it over time. It is possible that the strategy suitable for me doesnt work well for u. Well, which strategy did i finally use in my GATE. thats the subject of my next post. :)

Flash Cards - Preparation Strategy No 2

Here is your Long awaited sequel. I know i should be writing at a faster pace to cater to the needs of those writing GATE 2010. Given the fact that you have already mastered the usage of Terra Incognita, all that remains is resolving TI. What is the use of documentation if the data is not put to use. Yeah it is the abstract point "resolve your TI" (from my previous post)that i am going to elaborate here.

TI resolution can be done in many ways. Brute force method of randomly picking the topic and completing it really works fine(for a change :)). However, as u climb uphill, the burden of remembering things increases. What use is learning if you are not able to remember anything?? Here comes the flash cards/bathroom notes or whatever u call that.

Some people might want to argue that revision phase comes during the last month of preparation. But well, with syllabus as vast as GATE, i guess it should go hand in hand with the preparation phase.  

For most of you, this isnt a new strategy. You just needed someone to remind you of the strategies that you used in the past. That is precisely what i am doing now. For the others, well, lets see how it is done.

Take an A4 sheet, keep folding it in halves until it reaches a size that can fit in ur pocket(the reason for which can be found later). Now cut the edges so that it forms discrete pages. Pin it in the corner. Yipee !! your flash card is made. Make a book for each subject, probably u can use another A4 sheet and make a bigger booklet. Now as and when you resolve your TI, write down all that you want about that particular topic. Remember, your TI doesnt have detailed information, it is used for just documentation purpose.When does your TI entry become obsolete?? The moment you resolve that topic, your TI "entry" loses its value. So your flash cards are the only ones that are going to help you remember things. So make sure you note down all the important points(you can also include the silliest of the details).

Now that your booklet is made, u can carry it wherever you want, in ur pocket. This really helps if you are attending a boring lecture in your college.

U can use familiar techniques that you use in computer science to enhance your Flash card usage. For example,while revising the topics, on the first day lets say u revise one booklet. On the second day, u revise the first and second together. On the third day, u revise the second and third together etc.What is this strategy called(a well known technique u know)?? However, this ensures that you revise each booklet atleast twice.

At the end of your preparation make sure you have atleast 10 booklets for each subject. And let it be comprehensive. If you are able to do this, i am sure you will be break into the top 200 ranks.

Why toppers choose IIT Bombay over IISc??

Over the past 3 to 4 years, constantly AIR 1 has chosen IIT Bombay over IISc. In the top 50 ranks, almost 25 have chosen IIT Bombay. And the rest distributed between IISc and the other IITs. Newspapers say that the Mecca for Technical education in india is IIT Bombay(they also point out that before 10 yrs it was IIT Kanpur and before that it was IIT Kharagpur). Whatever may be the reason behind this trend, it certainly makes us feel that IIT Bombay is on par or better than IISc. But the truth seems to be quite different from what we hear.

The first and the most popular reason why people choose IIT Bombay, is nothing but what people call "life" and "lifestyle". Life at IITB is fantastic is what they say. "In IITB we can enjoy a lot " is what u hear from most who chose IITB. Just to give a real incident : People discussing outside the Exam hall in IISc, "hey, life at IISc is boring yaar. See no one is coming outside. IITB is not like that. We can enjoy a lot."(source : vaibhav, my classmate). However as this very reason conflicts with the purpose of coming to IIT(gaining knowledge), the genuineness of this reason is in question.

The second reason is the food factor. Food, i have to agree, is very good here in IIT Bombay. The third reason and one of the most unknown reasons is probably  the most important contributing factor too. There are many many MSc students in the top 100 ranks. Such students do not have the choice of going to IISc and other IITs as they have an anti-MSc policy that imposes strict constraints on them. But IITB does not impose any such restrictions, and with IISc rejecting them, they come here right away.

With the three main contributing factors, along with the fact that 60 out of the top 100 JEE students opting for IITB, really makes IITB the mecca of technical education in india. Does that mean IITB does not deserve that title? Well, we cannot say so.

With top students selected in GATE and JEE coming here to IITB, most of the professors are attracted to this institute. An evident fact that is proven by the faculty strength in CS dept of IITB, 45. The highest number in any CS dept in India. This powerful combination of students and faculty can result in good quality of research. So this vicious cycle continues and i can say for sure that for the next 10 years atleast, this institute will be on the top. Though IISc is clearly the most sought after institute, it seems like it needs to offer something more than just quality education to be the top institution in the country. :)