Ritu's Biology Hub

So in this post I’m going to share my journey right from my preparation for NET and GATE to writing the exams and the declaration of results. I will share my strategy that I devised to crack the exams, the approach to study, the study plan I had made to allocate a specific number of hours to each topic, how to strategically frame as to how you are going to solve the final paper and how to keep your mind cool before the exams and face them confidently.

At first, I was strictly against doing a PhD since, as we all know, it is a long-term commitment and you are required to stringently devote those few years of your life to a novel invention that you contemplate, cut-off all your social networks, abandon your social life, remove all sorts of distractions from your life, etc. etc. I do not think it’s that scary, or maybe I’d like to think it that way 😉 (a cushioning from the harsh reality). I was quite determined to settle for an industrial job and lead a more peaceful life. But as it turns out to be, finding a good-salaried subject-related job was really a tough job in itself. I then decided to go with the flow of life’s course and landed up deciding on becoming a professor. For that I needed NET-LS. Hence, I quickly applied for the CSIR-NET LS entrance test as enrolments were open at that time and wasn’t long before the last date. On second thoughts, I also applied for GATE thinking, ‘What if I changed my mind and wanted to do a PhD?’

I began my preparations from 21^st August, 2015, so I got almost 3 and a half months to build my concepts and get myself ready for the challenge. Another point which cannot be ignored is that my friend gifted me a book on simplified ways to crack NET (Trueman’s UGC-CSIR Life Sciences by Pramod Singh), without which this could not have been possible. Thanks a ton to him. I am not actively endorsing the book as its possible there are other books as well. But personally I felt that this book has all the necessary extra information based on which questions are asked in these competitive examinations and eliminates all those who have not put in efforts to study these materials. I would not recommend you to study for 20 hours or 24 hours. Study as and when you feel like with few hours of refreshments in between. Don’t overstress but don’t take it too lightly as well. I studied for about 12-13 hours every day in those 3 months.

So I started out with inheritance biology which is a topic from zoology. It took me nearly 3 weeks to prepare for this topic thoroughly. It includes these sub topics –

• Basic Principles of heredity
• Sex determination and Sex-linked characteristics
• Extensions and Modifications of Basic Principles
• Pedigree analysis, Applications and Genetic testing
• Linkage, Recombination and Eukaryotic Gene Mapping
• Bacterial Genetics (I’m including it here as it will be easier to study along with these chapters or else you will have to come back again and study while doing genetics)
• Chromosomal variation

I read all these chapters from Pierce Genetics Conceptual Approach, 4^th edition. You can refer to the latest edition if that’s available. Although coaching classes and various blogs and articles on NET syllabus that you will read, will recommend difficult books for the M.Sc. level which are overflowing with plethora of information, I really feel that this elementary book is just enough. It is extremely simple to understand and it really helps to build up your concepts strong enough for you to be able to face and answer correctly any question from this topic in just a couple of months. You can trust me on this!

Next, I moved onto solving all the questions from this book and the reference book, pertaining to these chapters. Please solve the problems based on these chapters behind each chapter in the textbook as they are the ones that appear in these exams, solve as many as can and do revise the different types. You must mark the questions which you could not answer or you think you need to absolutely look at, at the time of revision. Solve the questions related to this topic from the previous year question papers as well.

Then I moved onto developmental biology. I had this topic in my M.Sc. under molecular biology and cell biology. I read the chapters and made my personal notes apart from the ones that I had made during the semester exams. Of course this time from an MCQ point of view and not for the 5 marks lengthy answers 😛

These small little keywords or a sentence or two helps you a lot just a day before the exam when you have to revise in the panic mode. So make sure you do this for yourself. That’s important!! I also had a swift glance through my semester notes. After you’re done with this, again solve the MCQs given behind the chapter in your reference book and in previous year’s question papers. I am telling you to do this because it helps you to strengthen the topic and allows to assess how much prepared are you on that topic.

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