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)

6/25/07

ADVICE PAGE 2
4) Do solve questions given at the end of every chapter in reference book. This will boost ur morale. 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.

Regards,
Vijay
9890121515

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

(not a single part should remain vacant)

ANALYSIS OF PAPER

First of all, go through all previous papers. Especially, the papers of the year when organizing institute is
same as that of GATE09.

GATE08 was organized by IISc. The previous years when IISc was organizing institute were year 2002,
1996, and 1990. When I solved these papers, I found out that there are some concepts on which IISc was
focusing more. E.g. In each of these papers there was question on:
B/B+ tree,
Newton-Raphson Method,
More stress on CO and Digital,
Mathematics is more inclined towards Calculus than Discrete Maths
On the contrary problems on Probability, Networks and Compilers were not much difficult..

If u solve GATE08 paper u ll find the same thing here also.

So we can say that GATE paper is much predictive. so first task to do is go through all the papers (I think
the organizing institute this time may be Madras and prev years when madras was organizing institute were
1991, 1997, 2003) and find out the similarities.stress on them.
I m not saying to skip all other topicsbut practically its really difficult (not impossible) to focus on all the
subjects.so, I just want to say, if u want to skip some topics dont skip the topics stressed by the
organizing institute. Also dont underestimate the remaining topics . here comes my first mistakeI
under-estimated

3/30/08
... AIR 98

]Probability and solved very simple problem wrongly .result was -2.5 marks [
But warning is if u skip some topics u must be perfect in all the remaining topics. And the definition of
perfect, here, is there must be only one person to solve particular problem on that topic before
u.the paper setter!!!.....no one else

Now next point is,

Every GATE paper contains three kinds of questions:
1. problems on tricky concepts
if u know the concept, ur done
2. Difficult problems
U ve to put ur brains to solve these problems
3. Practically unsolvable problems
U may find totally unknown and new concepts which couldnt be solved in 3hrs time this typically includes
problems on CO and probability.

To crack the GATE u ve to solve correctly ALL the problems of first kind.for 2nd kind, the more the problem
u solve, lesser the rank u ll get!!!
Now while solving the paper, I solved it in 3 passes.

1. Solve all the problems that u can solve undoubtfullymeans answer only when ur 200% sure about the
ans .for this pass I ve given 2hrs during the paper which is quite sufficient
2. Check all the problemsRemember while checking have thorough checking.check whether u ve
marked correct optioncheck question-to-ans correspondence is correctmany times it happens that we
solve Q.30leave Q31 blank and after solving Q32 we mark option in front of Q31.here comes my
another mistakeI havent checked three of questions for which I thought no checking is
necessarybut I lost 7.5 marks.this pass may take 15-20 min
3. after careful checking only turn towards problems for which u are doubt fulltry to rethink on
these problemsu may solve 3-4 of them

I ld like to explain u how much imp ur hit ratio.in GATE08 I attempted 54 questionsout of which
14 are of 1 marks and 40 are of marksout of 14, 11 are correct and 3 came to be wrongand out of
4028 came to be correct and 12 came to be wrongso my score, I think is round about 60/150.

3/30/08

Now if I ld ve attempted only 11 one marked questions and 28 2 marked questions.for which I was
200% surethen my score ld ve been 67/150.means surely I ld ve got rank <50

Continuing the discussion about marks

I think, for easy paper(like GATE07) 75/150 = IIT
For difficult paper(like GATE08) u can see even 60/150 is done!!!

So in general attempt 50-60 questions with hit ratio >90% and ur through!!!

Well,
Now I ll come to preparation part of the GATE

BOOKS and SUBJECT ANALYSIS

Discrete Mathematics
MOST IMP subject as far as CS is concerned

First order logic:

prepare it from Trembley-Manohar and solve exercise from Discrete Mathematics and Application by
Kenneth Rosen. Easy topic. Once concept is clear marks are urs.
Important rules of thumb are given in Kenneth Rosen

Probability and Combinatorics:

I skipped this part. But Kenneth Rosen again has variety of problems on this topic.

Set Theory:
Trembley-Manohar
Boolean algebra,Groups, Lattice, Relations:
Kenneth Rosen has good discussion on Relations and Lattice.
Book by K.D.Joshi on Discrete Maths has good derivations regarding enumerating the relationsgo through
it, it ll surely help to build up the ideas
For Boolean Algebra and Group Theory again book by Trembley-Manoher is good, but for exercises I used
book by Ross(I dont remember the full name of authorsorry for that)
Trembley-Manoher includes good theorems in Group Theory

Linear Algebra, Calculus and Numerical Methods:

For these subjects I used the course books by local authors which we used for semester exams
There are some quickie methods to find out inverse of matrix, eigen values and eigen vectors,
determinantunderstand those from Profs in ur college

Recurrence Relations:
Kenneth Rosen includes some rules of thumb for Particular Solutions of Recurrence Relationsonce u got
them solving problems on RR is work of few secods
Particularly for Recurrence Relations, try to find ans by eliminating wrong options

3/30/08

i.e. if u know f(1)=a and f(0)=btry to put 1 and 0 in options and see where u get correct ans.believe me
in most of cases u ll get quick and correct ans by this way.

Graph Theory:
MOST IMP topic for CS
Try to go through all possible books and material for Graph Theory.
Note down the general formulae/theorems given in booksread them frequently
Kenneth Rosen includes good discussion in most of the concepts of GT.
Graph Theory by Douglas West is also gr8 book.

Theory of Computation

Book by
John C. Martin
This is gr8 for Regular Languages, Finite Automatatheory and problems
Cohen
This includes variety of problems on every other concept of TOCtheory is also very perfect (as good as
spoon feeding) especially for pumping lemma

Peter Linz
Again good theory easy to understand.problems on Turing Machine are tricky

Michel Sipser
This book is good especially for Un-decidability, Recursive and RE languages, NP-completeness
For NP-completeness book on Algorithms by Sahani is also good

I suggest u to read these books in following order

1. Read concepts from Cohen.u also can refer Peter Linzsolve exercises
2. Solve exercise from John Martin
3. Read Michel Sipser for advanced concepts

statutory warning: TOC book by Ullman is injurious to brain but do read this book oncethis contains,
exclusively, concepts of Homomorphism, HALF of LANGUAGE etc

Digital Logic:
Morris Manomorris manomorris mano!!!!!!!!
There are ppts on the department website of IIT-D regardin this coursewhich contains good discussion on
some concepts like Fault Detection and Hazards in Circuits
Walkerly is also good book
There is also a book Fundamentals of Digital Circuits by A. Anand Kumar which includes thorough
discussion on Number System(dont under-estimate this pointthere are many tricky concepts in it!!!)

3/30/08

Computer Organization and Architecture:

Book by Morris Mano(not the same as Digitalthere is separate book for CO)it contains good theory and
problems for Addressing Modes, DMA and IOrefer latest edition coz previous editions doesnt include
concepts of Register Window.so I could not attempt problem on it
Book by J. P. Hays contains good discussion on Micro-programming and Hard-Wired Design, also it
contains good formulae for Pipelining
J. P. Hays also contain thorough discussion on Floating Point number formats.
Good and exclusive formulae for Secondary Storage
Book by Zaky
It has good theory for Pipelining
Also thorough discussion in Cache memories. Dont skip any word and any problem written about
cache in this book

Algorithms

Read each and every word written in book by Cormensolve every other excersies.this is enough
solution manual is available over the internetsearch on esnips.com

Also there is one book, I found on flazx.com, named Problems on Algorithmsthis book contains only
problems no theory..but good book
Book by Sahani is also good

IMP subject for CS

Get perfection in:
Master Theorem and Asymptotic notations

Data Structure and Programming

For programming u must be great in concepts of Pointers and Recursion. For tricky problems
related with programming visit department websites of various foreign universities and solve the
assignments given there

For data structure

Book by Alan Weiss is great and sufficient for theory.
For problems on Data Structurenothing is sufficient.solve as many as u can
To understand various operations on various Trees and Heaps there are many Java Applets available
over the internetthey will demonstrate it

Compiler Design
Ullmannothing else!!!
For lexical analysis some problems are asked on C program like: a C program is given and we are
asked to find out number of tokens generatedso to understand tokens in Cbook by Denis Ritchie
is good

3/30/08

Read each and every word given on Parsers in Ullmanthere are many tricks given to find out whether
grammar is LL or LR or CLR or LALR
statutory warning: this book requires too much patience to understand
Many students skip this subject but Ullman is best for
Parsers, S-attributed and L-attributed SDT, Scopes of variables, Passing of Parameters, Code Optimization
(defn only)
Prepare at least these points

Operating Systems

Book by Galvin is very good for concepts

Modern Operating System by Andrew Tanenbaum is the best book for OS. It contains great number of
problems. Also includes some of theory that is not included in Galvins book.
Operating Systems by Stallings also contains tricky problemssoln manual is also available on esnips.com
I also suggest Schaums Series (author: J. Archer Harris) book on operating systems for problems. It is a
very good compilation of problems from Galvin, Tanenbaum and Stallings. Also soln are given.

While preparing prepare operating system along with CO. it will be helpful for Memory Management.

statutory warning: while solving problems on OS keep ur head cooool and.recheck them thricebetter
not to attempt problems on OS in doubtful situation

Database

For physical database organization (theory) and SQL, RA, TRC

Book by Raghuramkrishnansoln manual is available

For transaction management and Normalization

Book by Korth soln manual is available

For ER diagrams and problems on physical database organization

Book by Navathe.available on ebookee.com

Once u finish reading topics in Korth and Raghuramkrishnan and ur concepts are clear, then onwards I
suggest u to read and stick up with Navathe coz it contains lot of techniques and algorithms not given any
where else

Computer Networks

For application layer protocols

Computer Networking A top down approach by Kurose and Ross available on flazx.com
TCP/IP by Forouzan

3/30/08

For Frame Formats, TCP and IP Header formats

TCP/IP by Forouzan

Data Link Layer, Network Layer, Transport Layer

Computer Networks by Tanenbaum
Go through all the exercises given in the booksoln manual is available on esnips.com

Some Suggestions for Preparation/Study

1. Strictly use Reference books, dont rely on any class notes.

2. In first phase of ur study (in month of May-June) go through all GATE papers. Solve them by ur
own. Once problem is solved try to find out similar problems from refernce books and solve them.
This will fix up the concepts well.
3. Use department websites of various universities to get latest assignments.
4. plan ur schedule in such a way that u ll be able to finish up whole syllabus in month of Dec. from jan
onwards try to solve papers.
5. keep ur feb first week for revision onlydont read any new concepts ( I tried to do calculus in month of
Febi couldnt even solve simple problem on limitstotal time-waste)

hope this was not too boring and will be helpful to all of u.
if u have any doubtsfeel free to ask me anytime

also i request all those who have cracked GATE to add their experinces here to help out those who
are going to appear for GATE'09