Hi friends,
I am neither a GATE 2016 topper nor a very intelligent student. I am just an average (or may be below average) student from a tier three college. I am 2015 batch B.tech CSE pass out, and after that for me, there was not a good choice rather than preparing for GATE 2016. Yes, most of the people prepare for GATE Exam just from final year, but I was from a college where there was no proper guidance, so after reading many articles on Quora, I decided to prepare for GATE 2016.
But the problem with me was that I was not good even in a single subject of Computer Science GATE syllabus. As I was from very poor class engineering college, so during B.Tech. days, forget about standard books but we used to study from question banks (generally of 100-120 pages) before exams. So, technically I had a degree in Computer Science and Engineering but I didn’t know anything about the subject.
So, self-preparation was not my cup of tea without any knowledge of the subject. So, I decided to join a good coaching institute, for that, I Googled again the best coaching institute and following that I landed in many Quora articles who were praising the Ravindra Babu Ravula Sir’s e-classes. After reading so many positive reviews regarding Ravindra Sir classes over Internet, I was totally influenced and had taken the classes by depositing the fees of Rs 23,000 in the month of July.
Now coming to the honest review of Ravi sir’s eclasses for GATE 2016 :
Good Points :
- He is really a great motivational speaker for not only GATE but also for life. He keeps motivating the students regularly with videos which are also uploaded to Youtube on his channel.
- His Online E-Classes are comparatively cheaper (Rs 28k for GATE 2017) than any good classroom coaching institute’s classes which costs around 45-55K.
- Subjects like Computer Networks and Operating System are taught by him very nicely in-depth, and you will be liking these two subjects after watching his lectures on these two subjects.
- Subjects like T.O.C and Compiler Design are taught normally i.e. neither bad nor good, just average.
- Set of questions is provided for each subject in PDF for practising along with the answers and explanation.
- Hand written notes are also provided by him of all the subjects (but those notes are not of his classes, he said that he found these notes good, so he has shared them to read).
Bad Points :
- Though everything is important for GATE but still Algorithms, Data structure and C Programming and Mathematics (Discrete + Engineering) are considered most important subject for GATE, but I found that lectures of these subjects are not good and you may feel getting bored while watching these videos.
- Database lectures are good if you will start watching them and he has explained the concept very well for ER Model and Relational Model, but as you move then after few videos of Normalisation, he has used Pen paper explanation videos in which he explains in A4 sheet with pen rather than in Board, and then you may feel losing the interest in rest of the topics. Moreover, out of these topics, many of them are just explained by taking the print out of notes on an A4 sheet and he can be found explaining those printed notes, which is really irritating and quality is really very bad. (I requested him to upload On-board videos since the month of September by emailing him, but he always said we will upload shortly but till the date (April 2016) videos are not replaced. Moreover, due to the hope that he will upload on-board explanation videos, I left a major portion of DBMS, costing me around 4-5 marks in GATE 2016).
- Complete Syllabus was not covered even till February 2016, though while advertising on his website it was promised that whole syllabus for GATE 2016 would be covered till August 2015. For GATE 2017 aspirants, still the syllabus is incomplete, and many subjects are covered partially. Moreover, subjects like Graph Theory, half portion of Digital Logic and more than half portion of DBMS is just explained through printed notes.
- Coming to aptitude section, 5-6 videos are uploaded just for the name sake, and videos for Calculus are also not available.
- Generally, if you have any doubt on any topic or question, then he is not going to reply it in your mail (he has also mentioned this on his website while registration)
- Videos are not downloadable and you have to watch them online, so if you have a poor Internet connection or unreliable connection, then you may face problems in streaming the videos.
Test Series :
- Test series interface was not good at all, in moving from one question to another only it was taking around (8-10 seconds) to load, in my 1Mbps broadband connection. So for 65 questions, (65 X 10 = 650 seconds) nearly 10-12 minutes were wasted just on navigating the questions for a full length paper.
- Approx 30-40% of the questions in test series were copied exactly (same to same without even changes in digits) from the Made Easy test series (as I have also registered for made easy test series so I know this fact).
- The solution was provided to every question of test series in detail along with the explanation.
Conclusion :
He was claiming AIR 1 just by watching his complete video lectures(in one of the videos on Youtube), and in fact, I don’t know how many students of him are even in top 100 out of around 2500-3000 registered students for GATE 2016. I have heard that 3-4 students are in top 100 from his coaching but there is no update regarding the same on his website, he may update it later. So choose your decision wisely, and I have written this review just to make aware of the reality, as there is no detailed review is available about his courses, so I thought to write reviews, so that like me, other students don’t get into the false influences. Moreover, he has a great number of FAN following and anyone who even tries to speak even a word against his classes or him, he is tortured, abused and thrashed. Many of his fans treat him like a God (might be due to the influence of his great motivational videos).
PS : I have come to know about Gateoverflow and other of its sister sites, in the month of November, I wish I have found them earlier, so that I have really got many tips for GATE 2016, but now I am again going to prepare for GATE 2017 with the experience and guidance of toppers provided in GATECSE.IN and GateOverflow community.
PS: For free lectures http://playlists.gatecse.in
