Topper’s talk – How to study for Gate Biotechnology?

-Saivi Singh, IIT Madras ( AIR- 69, GATE BIOTECHNOLOGY 2020)

Like most UG students, I had no idea where I’ll end up after my bachelor’s. Hello dear Readers, my name is Saivi Singh and I have secured an AIR- 69 in GATE-BT, 2020.

 I knew I had to appear for GATE, but I always had a notion about it being a very strenuous exam to crack, for which nearly 10,000 students sat (for biotechnology), competing for very few seats in the top IITs. Biotechnology being a growing subject, doesn’t have a lot of seats in top colleges in India. GATE’20 was in February. I started my preparation roughly during the September end of 2019. Till half of December, I was done with my basics. Since then till the exam date, I started to brush up, improve myself, and put my whole dedication to it. It was during that one and a half months when I studied really hard.

My advice for the aspirants is to- 

Start as early as possible. Especially for UG students who have to manage regular college studies with GATE preparation. Remember you are competing with many who have dropped a year or two to prepare with full dedication. I started late, but you can manage if you devote your full concentration and time while studying.

Keep a printed copy of the GATE syllabus. Pick each topic from it, one at a time, and study that topic from the very basics. GATE usually doesn’t ask very high-level questions, instead, it focuses on how deep your roots for the subjects are!

Start with going through question papers from the last 10-15 years. Although GATE-BT started in 2010, you can find questions in the “Biotechnology” sections of life sciences papers from before 2010.

Study the subjects keeping those questions in mind. GATE tries to keep the difficulty level roughly constant, to make it fair since the GATE score is valid for 3 years. Hence most questions are asked from the topics from which questions were made for the earlier years.

After studying each subject, go through the previous years’ questions for that subject again and again till you’re confident with those. The syllabus and last years’ questions are the pillars for your preparation. For the first attempt, I suggest focussing on your basics, studying and revising repeatedly till you’re confident, and solving last years’ papers are more important than giving mock exams. Mocks are good for those who are thorough with their studying, and just need more and more practice to improve their GATE scores from previous years.

Make short conceptual notes from the material that you read. Include figures and schematics so that you retain the concepts and it’s easy and quick to revise.

Don’t target completing the whole syllabus. Target making the subjects you’re studying even stronger. Choose the subjects to be studied based on the number of questions that come each year from those subjects. And for the subjects you’re planning to skip, I don’t recommend skipping the whole of it. At least go through the topics from which questions have appeared, and definitely go through previous years’ question from those subjects too! Gate preparation is really easy if you do it the smart way.

Most biology students fear mathematics. Even I did. Don’t think of skipping mathematics. The engineering mathematics for GATE BT is really easy. You get very basic questions. You’ll trust me when you go through the previous years’ questions. This goes for aptitude as well.

A very important point to keep in mind while your exam is, DON’T mark answers unless you’re 100% sure of it. No matter how much you’re tempted to go for a guess-work, just don’t! Getting a 50 on 100 can get you a seat in an IIT. Obviously, target for a very high score, but trying to get one by guessing answers even if you’re 90% sure is a strict no!

I studied from the book: Biotechnology, a problem approach, by Pranav Kumar. Watching YouTube videos helped me a lot in clearing my concepts.

Following the above ideas, I was able to get a reputable score in the first attempt itself. I ranked 69 all over India, with a GATE score of 714. This score fetched me a seat at IIT Madras for my Master’s.

All the very best to the future aspirants of GATE!

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