Hello student,

As you are now in first year of civil, you have enough time to prepare for IES as well as GATE.

I don't think there is any difficulty in preparing GATE and ESE simultaneously, as syllabus of both the subjects are almost same except some non-technical subjects and some small portion of technical part. I have seen many students who have done well in both the exams even secured rank 1 in both the exams.

Let me share some strategy for preparation of both the exams simultaneously. In technical part, questions asked in GATE is usually numeric based (though theoretical concepts are also being asked), whereas in ESE, you should have in-depth knowledge of subjects and numericals are easy to calculate (As calculator is not allowed) if you know the concept. Summarily, both exams need in-depth clarity of concepts and can be easily qualified if you prepare with the sincerity.

Now, coming to non-tech part. Engineering mathematics and Aptitude-reasoning are same for both the ESE and GATE, so you do not have to prepare for these subjects separately. Apart from this, you can cover english for GATE as it has less weightage. For ESE, you will have prepare some extra non-technical subjects like Current Affairs, Energy & Environment, Material Science (It is easier for Mechanical, EE & EC students, as they read it in technical part also with bit difference in syllabus), Design- Drawing- Safety, Standards- Quality, ICT, Project Management, and Ethics. You may think how can one prepare these subjects in less time, but let me tell you these subjects have less syllabus and number of questions asked in exam is less also (Questions from 10 subjects are there out of 100 questions). So, you can cover this part easily. If you are not able to prepare for exams by self-study, I would suggest you to join any coaching classes as wasting of time and taste the failure are not recommendable. Many of my juniors had issues with preparation & at last joined Made Easy to prepare for both the exams.

All the Best!!!