Gaurav Kumar is not a man of many words. A fan of the grind and of repeating the process until all flaws are ironed out, the youngster has topped the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2022 in the Electrical Engineering stream. His All India Rank (AIR) 1 is a testament to consistent hard work and working relentlessly to ace the exam process, he shares.
"The biggest challenge that I had to overcome was the gap of three months that I had taken. It was difficult to come back on track for the preparation. I was scoring just 65/100 on mock tests initially and it was hard to switch on," says the youngster who hails from the city of Bihar Sharif in eastern Bihar. He graduated from the Bihar Institute of Technology (BIT) in Patna in 2020 and has since focussed on the GATE exam. In 2020, he attempted the exam for the first time and managed a rank of AIR 988. An attempt in 2021 helped him improve that drastically to AIR 300. However, 2022 turned out to be the year for him, as he surpassed all competition to sit at the top. As they say, third time's the charm.
"I worked consistently on my silly mistakes. Mock tests are the way to go and I took them every day in order to improve my performance," says the 24-year-old. So, what did his study schedule look like when he started preparing for the exam this year, two and a half months ago? "I put in six hours a day. Three hours would be dedicated to the mock test and I would spend three hours analysing and revising my mistakes and studying concepts," says Gaurav, who relied on the Unacademy mock tests. "They gave me an edge because these were live All India Mock Tests. We could not relax in between and it does put us under a little bit of pressure. There is a leaderboard and we can view the results of all the candidates. The pressure to perform well builds exam temperament and goes a long way in helping deal with exam pressure," he shares.
The graduate in Electricity and Electrical Technology first started setting his eyes on the GATE prize in his third year of Engineering back in 2018. "I want to join the Power System Operation Corporation Limited (POSOCL). The postings are in metro cities and it has better facilities when compared to other public sectors," he shares. The POSOCL is a regulatory body for power management under the Ministry of Power.
Gaurav's mantra for cracking the GATE exam is an unerring focus on practice tests and analysing and attempting questions from the past years. Multiple attempts at solving these will put one right on track for securing a good rank in the GATE exam, he believes.
