Building an "IIT Environment" in a Tier-3 College: Abhijeet’s AIR 452 Group Strategy 🏆🏆🏆

This podcast features Abhijeet Raj from Darbhanga, a final year student at UIT RGP Bhopal who achieved AIR 452 in GATE 2026 CS, improving significantly from his third-year rank of 1880. Abhijeet emphasizes the critical role of time management while balancing college (10 AM to 5 PM, three days per week) with GATE preparation by studying early morning (4:30-8:00 AM) and late night (10 PM-1 AM). His strategy centered on completing the entire syllabus in third year through consistent effort, then focusing on practice and PYQs (Previous Year Questions) in final year.

A key factor in his success was building a strong friend circle of five GATE aspirants who studied together, creating an IIT-like environment in their tier-3 college. This group provided mutual motivation and conducted mock interviews for each other. Abhijeet's preparation strategy involved watching lectures, making detailed notes, and solving PYQs topic-wise without rushing into test series initially. He advocates for keeping preparation simple: lectures → notes → PYQs → eventual test series.

For time management, he maintained different plans for different phases - January to October for syllabus completion, and November to January for intensive practice and test series. He emphasizes the importance of regular revision (minimum 3 times) and maintaining touch with all subjects through random practice questions. His approach to PYQs was methodical - attempting questions multiple times over different days before checking solutions, and understanding each step thoroughly rather than memorizing answers.