Well, let me start with introducing myself.
I am Ashutosh Jani doing M.Tech in Thermal Engineering from IIT Madras.

While writing this post I keep in mind the aspirants for GATE 2010.

So, first of all you should ask a question to yourself.

Why GATE?

How will your academic life be once you clear GATE?

I would request all the students preparing for GATE to get rid of a mental block that IIT is a place where only NEWTONs and EINSTEINs can reach. IITs are not supposed to be the places for THE GENIUS,they provide you with a platform to make a Genius out of yourself.

Now comes the question. Why GATE?

If you want to write GATE seriously, aim nothing less than IIT, it is not so difficult as it is thought to be, but you can work sincerely in that direction, only if you are conviced about yourself pursuing a PG in your respective field.

Normally you can opt for M.Tech. or MS course after clearing GATE.

I would request all to spare at least a few hours in surfing the websites of all the IITs before opting for GATE.

Get some myths clarified.

"You will get a very good pay package once you finish your PG."
If you are after a good salary, you should better opt for MBA and not M.Tech., MS or M.Pharm. Of course you will get a brighter package compared to the one you may get after your UG, but the difference may not be salivating. Basically you should continue your technical education, only if you feel the longing to remain connected to your field, or you feel like innovating.

"Another myth is that you will be doing research in your M.Tech. course."

M.Tech. is NOT about research. In most of the M.Tech. programmes across all the IITs, theory subjects are taught during the first year, and project is carried out in the second year along with a few courses in the third semester. You cannot expect anyone to come up with a feasible innovation leading to major improvement in a short span of one year. By doing M.Tech. you are specializing your area of interest and getting deeper into it.

MS is research oriented course, where you get enough time to carry out your project work, which starts from the first semester itself and above all MS does not have any time restriction.

"You can get a job of a lecturer only after doing M.Tech."

To get this myth clarified, you should have a look once at the placement statistics of IITs. Normally more than 70% to 80% of M.Tech. students get jobs in the industries, and very few opt for teaching profession, this is not an attept of proving anything inferior or anything superior, but it is a general trend that I would like to reveal.

Now once you are convinced about writing GATE, let me share some tips for preparation of GATE.

When you are about to finish your graduation, or you've already finished, keep yourself away from asking the Childish questions like HOW MANY HOURS SHOULD I READ DAILY? HOW MANY MONTHS ARE ENOUGH TO GET A HANDSOME SCORE IN GATE?

One of our seniors could secure an IIT admission without a dedicated preparation for the exam; why? Because he was thorough with his fundamentals and the approach towards the exam.

Normally a month of serious preparation should suffice.

When it comes to competitive examinations, your approach has to be practical.

Out of my experiences of writing GATE twice, I can claim that it is not all conceptual knowledge that is required. You should be clear about all the concepts, but try not distracting yourselves from the other aspects of the syllabus. Keep in mind the structure of GATE syllabus.

Do not rely solely on any printed material for preparation. Do refer the books that you used to refer during your UG course. Along with that keep solving multiple choice questions. You may refer to G.K.Publisher's book for GATE preparation. GATE Forum also provides with some set of MCQs, but do refer the books simultaneously, as the credibility of the answers provided by them is not reliable in a good amount of cases.

That's it for now. Will come with something more soon.
All The Best.

Pre-preparation for the GATE preparation

In this post I will try to answer some of the important questions that usually arise in the mind of a GATE aspirant.

PHASE 1: To become familiar with GATE exam.

I think I should start with the very basic question, “What is GATE all about?”

You can get the answer of this question by simply visiting the website of any IIT or IISc. For your reference I am providing one link below. One can go through that.

http://www.gate.iitb.ac.in/gate2k9/index.htm

Please note that this information is about GATE09 only. It may be subjected to change for GATE10. The websites will be updated as form for GATE10 will be available. Generally form is available in the month of October or September end.

PHASE 2: Preparation.

For a GATE aspirant after getting answer of first question the chunk of questions will arise regarding preparation. Now I am trying to answer all those questions one by one.

1. What is the correct time to start preparation for GATE?

Ideally one should study all the courses thoroughly at the college level. It means that the preparation for GATE starts as soon as one takes admission in the engineering college. But I know this is the ideal thing and only few can do this.

As in beginning no one can decide whether he want to do M.tech or not. This maturity comes in the 2^nd or 3^rd year only, as now one can decide whether he is interested in the technical stuffs or not.

As far as my personal opinion is concerned one should start preparation during the 3^rd year. And one should appear for GATE in the 3^rd year to have a feel about exam, but if one have not prepared well this will be of no worth. So try to complete as many subjects as possible (perfectly) before you appear for the GATE during the 3^rd year. This will help you a lot to find out where you are lacking in preparation, how to manage the paper in 3 hours, what is the effect of negative marking and all such important issues.

2. What is the authentic material for the preparation?

There are many different opinions for the answer of this particular question.

As far as I am concerned I had took lot of pain in the selection of authentic material for preparation. As this is the most important aspect of the preparation.

There are so many misconceptions that the book from GK publication is enough for the preparation or say various materials available from different coaching institutes do the work. Frankly speaking all these materials available in the market are supplements only. They are not at all enough for the perfect preparation for GATE.

The most important material is authentic books for a particular subject. Always prepare any subject from authentic books only.

I had approached to IITs’ professors for this and I had come to know about the various authentic books which probably I had not used during my college. And I had experienced the difference too between books used at our colleges and these books. Some of the books were same too.

I am going to produce a list of books to be used for different subjects of mechanical engineering.

1. Advanced Engineering mathematics by

a. Erwin kreyszig (John wiley & sons publication) (strongly recommended)

b. Dr.B.S.Garewal (Khanna publications) (strongly recommended)

2. Engineering mechanic (statics and dynamics) by

a. Beer and Johnston (the Tata McGraw Hill publications)

b. Prof. P.J.shah
(few but various enough examples - good book)

3. Strength of material by

a. G.H.Ryder (English Language Book society)

4. Theory of machines by

a. Amitabh Ghosh and Ashok kumar mallik ( Affiliated East –West press private Limited)

b. S.S. Rattan ( The Tata McGraw Hill publications)

Both the books are necessary for the preparation.

5. Machine design by

a. R.S.Khurami ( S.Chand & sons publication)

Though this is not the authentic book but for subject it is more than enough for GATE)

6. Vibrations by

a. V.P.singh

7. Fundamentals of thermodynamics by

a. P.K.Nag (The Tata McGraw Hill publications)

b. Van Whylen (John wiley & sons publication)

Both books are strongly recommended and necessary for total preparation.

8. Refrigeration and Air conditioning by

a. R.K.Rajput (thermal science and engineering) (Laxmi publications)

b. http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/

This is the website developed by the IITs. Here you can get web courses for almost all courses. But the psychometric processes described here are too good. Please go through that.

9. Applied thermodynamics

a. R.K.Rajput (thermal science and engineering) (Laxmi publications)

10. Heat and Mass transfer by

a. Yunus A.cengel (The McGraw-Hill companies)

To understand the fundamentals properly I strongly recommend this book

11. Fluid mechanics and machines

a. Dr.R.K.Bansal (Laxmi publications) (strongly recommended)

b. Yunus A.cengel (The McGraw-Hill companies)

To understand the fundamentals properly I strongly recommend this book

12. Manufacturing science by

a. P.N.Rao (volume 2 and 3) (The Tata McGraw Hill publications)

b. Amitabh Ghosh and Ashok kumar mallik ( Affiliated East –West press Private limited)

c. P.C.Sharma

d. S.Kalpakjian (Pearson Education) (very nice book) (fundamentally strong)

All these books are necessary for the complete understanding of the subject manufacturing science.

13. Management science and Operations management

a. Hamdy A.Taha (operations research)( prentice hall of India privet limited)

b. William J. Stevenson ( introduction to management science)(IRWIN pub)

c. B.Mahadevan (Operations management) (Dorling Kindersley (India)Privet limited)

d. J.K.sharma (operations research)

Note. The topic named “Probabilistic Inventory system” is nicely given in the Brilliant tutorials.

To understand the fundamentals properly I strongly recommend this book

Besides this previous 10 to 12 years solved GATE papers are needed.

Another questions regarding PREPARATION such as How to prepare? etc will be discussed in the next post.

Introduction

This blog has been made from the view of helping students who want to appear for GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineers). We will try to guide you on matters related to how to prepare where to get material from and other such queries. Personally all the authors being related to Mechanical Field it would be difficult for us to guide on other subject but we will try to rope in new contacts to help students who are really interested in the same. Also the procedure after clearing gate is the toughest one and making proper choices and filling forms properly can make a world of difference, we would like to give guidance regarding the same too.