How to crack ISI entrance exam for M.stat? Which reference books should be used?

Hi Chaitanya,

The exam mostly tests Analysis and Linear Algebra along with some Combinatorics in group A, along with questions from various areas of Statistics with some probability questions thrown in (Group B). The problems are (mostly) not hard, but require sound subject knowledge, and can be tricky. As such, any book from the areas tested should be good enough as long as you practice: I would recommend Casella and Berger / Goon-Gupta-Dasgupta (more comprehensive) for the Statistics and probability portion, Rao - Bhimashankar for Linear Algebra (feel free to choose an easier book and/or skip portions that seem too difficult: the questions asked require clear thinking and basic concepts, not knowing the formula for Moore-Penrose inverse wouldn’t hurt much) and pretty much any undergraduate level combinatorics and calculus book for the Math portion - in fact it would be inadvisable to go overboard on the combinatorics part. If you have covered it in high school or college courses, just practice some questions from TOMATO (the B.Stat entrance question paper collection) and that section should be fine as well. If not, you might want to delve a bit more into it. For calculus, you might want to try out Apostol’s Calculus Vol.I: it covers the concepts well and, more importantly, has a lot of problems that are actually doable.

Please remember: Multivariate Calculus is not included in the syllabus, nor is Abstract Algebra.

Source:Quora

Thank you

All the very best!!