GATE CS Preparation Experience (Admission to IIT Roorkee)

After B. Tech, I joined a college as a faculty to learn more about computer science and prepare for the GATE exam. I taught a lot of subjects in that college and learned a lot while teaching. I mostly referred to the following strategy to prepare for the GATE exam.

• Did not join any coaching or crash course.
• Prepared mostly from the standard books
• In the last 2 months solved all previous papers

While solving the previous year’s papers, whenever I used to get stuck, I used to refer to that concept from a standard book. I finally got above the 99 percentile and applied to all IITs. I couldn’t clear IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, etc. I got admission to IIT Delhi’s interdisciplinary branch and got computer science at IIT Roorkee.

I chose IIT Roorkee and joined there. In IIT Roorkee, they took an interview of the shortlisted candidates. I attended an interview at IIT Kanpur also. Basically in these interviews, mostly professors just laugh at the students like us coming from tier 3 colleges but I was used to this after my degree :). The IIT Roorkee interviewer looked at all my certificates and then asked a few questions.

One of the questions was

• Why are you going for higher studies, you might get a job after B. Tech in Computer Science.
  To which my answer was “I am more interested in research”

He simply laughed at my answer saying your marks do not seem to match with your goals. Anyways it was not true also as I had mainly joined for a better job. It was a fun experience for me to stay at IIT Roorkee and learn there.