GATE Topper Interview – Aashish Aggarwal (AIR16 ME, 2017)

With an aspiration like other aspirants of working in PSU’s, AASHISH AGGARWAL in his final year engineering from NIT Kurukshetra has created a success story of his own by securing AIR 16(ME), GATE 2017. Aashish has been instrumental in his success. He shared his views about how he went about GATE 2017 with Aglasem to help other aspirants in achieving their goals. Read the complete interview to know more about Aashish Aggarwal.

About Aashish Aggarwal

He hails from a family of 5 people including his Father who is an English Lecturer, Mother who is Mathematics mastermind  and a housewife as well, a younger brother who is pursuing his own dreams under great guidance of his own brother from NIT Kurukshetra (B.tech CSE) and a grandmother. Aashish enjoys trips with his friends and credits them as well for his success.He stated his motive behind appearing for GATE 2017 as :

“I wish to work in the Public Sector and GATE is the best avenue to go through for me. Many leading PSU’s have announced their recruitment through GATE so I made up my mind and started focussing on fulfilling my wish.”

Aashish has surely made his parents proud. He says that:

“I am feeling self satisfied after seeing the fruits of my hard work but the thing that makes me feel proud of it is seeing the happy faces of my parents.” 

GATE Exam  Experience

When asked about the GATE exam experience, this is what he said:

It’s even better than pen and paper type because red color on “unanswered questions” and purple color on “marked for review” questions helps a great deal and saves a lot of time.

Other questions asked to Aashish were :

1. There are lot of students who are apprehensive about online exam pattern. In your opinion is the format something to be worried about?  

The main thing to worried about online exam is on- screen calculators; Its my advice to stop using conventional calculators in November and install GATE calculator app on mobiles and make yourself comfortable with it.

2. According to you how was the exam? Was it tough or was it easy?

I was assigned set 2 and it had 70% of questions from previous years and the rest 30% were new and tricky.

3. On the exam day, what was your experience like? Please elaborate it as it will be extremely helpful for the students.

My exam was from 2 pm-5 pm. As the exam started I was very calm as I was able to so 10 questions flawlessly and that did the trick for me. So my advice is, start with the section that you you are most comfortable with, that would certainly act as a performance booster.

GATE Preparation and Strategy

“I started my preparation in February 2016. Apart from coaching over weekends, I studied for 2-3 hours on college days and 7-8 hours on holidays and  other days.”

Books Recommended

Last minute GATE Preparation

Go with a positive frame of mind . It may happen that you never scored in a mock test but you still manage to crack GATE. It’s all about the level of calmness and concentration at that point of time.

Future Plans

As I’ve already said , my main motive behind appearing in the exam is to work in Public Sector so I’ll opt for PSU’s.

Success Mantra

Persistence, Hardwork and my ability to cope up with failures had a huge hand behind my success. The trick is to stay motivated and try to overcome those tough times. I followed my targets deligently.

Remember “Tough times never lasts but tough people do”