Saturday, June 6, 2015

My Gate Story


Hii I am Piyush Hurpade from Maharashtra. I got AIR-18 in GATE-2015 exam.
In this post I am going to post my experience while preparing for GATE. with preparation One also needs mentor for continuous motivation and right direction. For me My brother swapnil with 6D team and Toppers blog was mentor. instead of scrolling FB I used to read toppers blog till exam month. It always gives me motivation. I am writing this post so that Gate Aspirant will be benefited.
    
For every competitive exam all we go through some steps/situations Like following:

1. Background
2. Decision
3. Learning Time
4. Preparation
5  Exam
6. After Exam
7. Result
8. After Result

I am going to explain every step here i.e what I did in each situation.
If you are interested in preparation strategy only then directly go to step no.4 and can skip 1,2,3


1. Background:

I. Was very Confident while solving problems and developed decent Analytical skills.
II. Was among the best when it came to programming in my college(Tier-II /local college)
III. Enjoyed Programming ,DS,Algo,DMS and was very good in them.
IV. Passed Engineering Only because there is some word like “Backlog”. Other than my final year, I had backlogs every time.
V. IMP (Being from a local engineering college where there is no environment for GATE, means getting a rank around 6000-8000 in fourth year or rank below 1500 after gap ended up being recognized as an achievement(I'm mortified to type it, but that was the scenario. However, for me, my dream college was always IIT B)

2. Decision:

When I was in 4th year of my engineering(2013). I had set two goals 1. Getting a decent placement 2. Crack the regionals of ACM ICPC . But I failed to achieve either of them. 2Nd one was a bigger failure for me as I already screwed up my academics because of that and still I failed in what I was preparing for. Then third goal that automatically got created was “GATE-2013”. Our University exam finished on 7th jan and without holiday our strict schedule college started on 8th jan . then I started preparing for GATE attending lectures and skipping practicals. I prepared for ds,algo,c,combinatrics,dbms from standard books but without practice. I ended up with 4-digit RANK- 8XXX. With some hope I decided to prepare for GATE-2014. On the very next day of my last paper I underwent a Kidney stone removal surgery. And I had my ticket to Hyderabad canceled.(I can still remember the pain I felt because of the unexpected circumstances.)
         After operation I started to search for a job. But because of being in a post-op stage, I wasn't in a position to move to pune(IT city) just like all my friends. All this led to me taking up a job in my home town with a low salary. Now that I look back, i'm happy things turned out the way they did because I had the comfort of living at home and my dream of cracking GATE was still alive. I brought gateforum course dvd + test series. But company + preparation strategy failed for I wasn't able to study well enough while working. I did not watch a single lecture. I solved only 1 test out of 16. Again prepared for DBMS from standard book for last 5 days. I still remember that it was last day of project before gate exam. I forgot to bring a calculator to exam. solved only C,ds,dbms,apti questions(some of which were not correct). Again i ended up with a 4-digit rank 6XXX. My health was good then. hence I started thinking about switching company and thinking about settled package in pune. We were three junior programmers in company. Both of my partner left company in April.
Then this THINKING-THINKING-THINKING situation started. Reading blog of gate toppers like http://www.ankurgupta.net/ (ankur gupta), https://sujithkumarb.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/a-gate-air-1s-preparation/ (sujithkumar) and many other. while working here, It was hard to go for an interview in pune. And also I would not be fresher more after May/june. On the other hand, My sister started thinking about GATE-prepartion in Hyderabad. Again “GATE-KEEDA ACTIVATED”. So finally I decided to leave job and go for GATE-preparation hyderabad. Mainly because of:
1. Single junior programmer in Company equals more workload.
2. I wanted to give a single full-fledged chance to my Analytical and problem solving skill.
3. My cousin also wanted to go to hyderabad for gate preparation.
4. Wanted to convert my THINKING-THINKING-THINKING situation into DOING-DOING-DOING situation.
5. and I had got 33 marks in 2014(w/o calsi and w/o preparation) which motivated me a lot.

3. Learning:

I left job on 12-May 2014 and took admission in PM-2 batch, ACE academy Hyderabad. For relaxation I went to my village for 5-6 days. I started sitting in ACE library before 3-4 days of class commencement. and started solving questions of my favorite topic “Probability”.
All lecturers and their lectures are awesome(That's what I experienced. there are some people who always cry). Classrooms are so big and accommodated around 200 students in a single class. For each day of tuition I just made sure that I would get to sit somewhere in the 1st three rows only. There was always a quarrel between gujju and (maha+ chattisgud) guys for seats. But after some days we realized that friendship and sharing can optimize our goal. NO HARM IF YOU SIT AT BACK BENCHES. IT TOTALLY DEPENDS ON YOU. I HAVE MANY BACK-BENCHERS FRIENDS WHO ENDED UP WITH A GOOD RANK.
I listened to the classes with full concentration and had given my undivided attention. if I got any genuine and GATE relevant doubt then I used to asked in lecture itself.
After Each class I was following 4 steps(Not so strictly ):
1. Revise Notes First
2. Read it from standard book
3. questions from their printed material.. many mistakes but at least tried.
4. solved previous year questions of that topics.
Not so serious about 3rd.
Many times I felt sleepy in classes(problem since 1st standard). If this happened I just made sure that I will get everything once I read it from book or Internet resources.
I used to switch my study place between room and library for optimum study.
If somebody don't get anything I was always ready to teach/discuss. In fact Everybody liked my teaching style.
Actually I planned to stay at Hyderabad till exam but our group(gujju + maha + chattis + andhra + orrisa + begal + bihar, in all, 20-25 people) bond had become so strong in fact it was like 4 year engineering friends. I was saddened at the thought of leaving them. I knew that we are not going to meet once again so I just made arrangement of a party to everybody. So finally MAMA(I was famous in class as Mama-- Courtesy Gurudev Aradhaye) took a decision to come back to home town. Because I believe that in last months of exam we have to prepare individually.
Special Thanks to kewada,shabo,mayur(i),vadapav,rajesh,indu,dolly(papu),guru,tatya,shruti,aditya,jay and each and every member belonging to my beloved group.
and Special Thanks to all Teachers. I never forget lessons got from teachers besides gate study.
Khaleel Ur Rahman Khan sir - My mind starts thinking like scientist when I sit for sir's lecture.Taught me how to analyze the problem before knowing solution.  
Srinivas sir - Sincerity and planned approach
Co teacher - probability of getting right answer is 1/4 and wrong answer is 3/4. before start solving any problem first think about wrong options(options to be canceled) also.
Lokhande Sir - Last day comment and Enjoy.

4. Preparation :


My entire preparation depended on the following points:
1. Hard work beats talent and proper planning and its executions beats Hard work.
2. One should know his/her energy level. Means after how many hours one gets bored. What is ideal for relaxation.
3. Never do targeted hours study. We are not a worker.

I will explain preparation strategy with the aid of the following snaps clicked during my preparation:


# 4 most needed attributes:


Saturday, February 7, 2015

set A questions and answers that I can remember(7th Feb post):
1. not equvalent to p-q ans C.. sure
2. total sum of edges in min spanning tree. : 69
3. worst case of BST: search, delete : both O(n) sure
4. difference betn STTF and Scan : I hit 10. if last track numbered is 99 then 9.
5. cyclomatic complexity of given program : 5
6. limit wala: 1
7. f{g(x)} ans is A. f(x)/g(x)
8. more than one TCP connection: FTP,HTTPS.. not sure
9. infinite sequence of process. periodically arrival: 9 Wrong
10. 10 vertices > each region of degree 3 edges.. solved but ambiguity in bounded and unbounded regions.
11. CO speedup 3.27
12. probability of any node to send in slot .. 0.4401
13. valid inorder: sure.. can'nt remember sequence
14. after inserting 35 heap sure.
15. min frame size 1370 something sure
16. max,min nodes of height 5 : 63 and 6
17. C 2-D array. Ans A . _,2036,2036
18. min. tables in 3NF: 4
19. SQL no of rows: 2
20. C code: no use of first function .. sure
21. (log n)^(1/2).. delete,search,increase key operation and n insert operation. prefered data structure.. I hit: doubly sorted liked list.. might be wrong. another option was min heap.
22. temporary variables in given expression: 3
23. no of different values of B at last:3
24: C code .. approximate value at last: nlog(logn) but might be nlogn..
25. se: equivalence partitioning: black. volume: performace. alpha: system
26: XML: is case sensitive and must be closed.
27: same ordering or close of ordering of some index: hit clustered
28: 3 address codes.. operand and process registered I hit not sure. about implicit address.
29: viable prefix at the TOP of stack only.
30: probality : set A: (4 elements) set B (5 element) probability of sum exactly 16. ANS: 0.2
31: 1/(x * (x+1)) 0.99
32: integration of (1/x)* cosx.. regret:could not use calsi for integration
33. worst case of quick sort: T(n) = T(n-1) + cn + 1
34. Total File transfer .. 2000 * (total I/o time)
35. recurrence relation : a(n) = a(n-1) + a(n-2) + 2^n-2
36: intersection of two DFA given : (|) phi min state is 1
37: PDA question might be wrong Question.
38: complement of CFG is recursive and union of Recursive and R.E is R.E
39: phi is element of 2^A. Phi is subset of of 2^A and {3,{5}} is element of 2^A.
god knows . I hit above three statment.
40: LU decomposition : l22=? sure..!
41: Eigen Values: -1,7 Ans: D.
42: BFS traversal shortest path: d(u) - d(v) could not be 2
43: match the pair :merge sort : DandC, prims: greedy, hamoltonian backtrack


APTI:
1. she had a terrific time at a party
2. statement one is sufficient of count steps
3. data interpreation: 12::.. can't remember exactly
4. average marks: 6.0759
Add questions if you know any.