Many students of CS/IT who are going to appear for GATE are always worried about which study material should they follow. They always ask should I go for gate forum ,brilliance or other coaching institutes study material or should I follow the standard books.GATE requires you to have a deep understanding of subjects ,coaching material gives a highlight of important topics and provided you some questions. I feel that it better to go for standard books than coaching institutes material . Because if you look at the history of GATE you will find that 95% of questions are from standard books.Most of these question are from the unsolved exercises which are given at the end of each chapter.Which we usually don't solve or its better to say that most of us even don't look it .Here I am presenting a list of standard books recommended by GATE gurus for CS/IT students .



1 . Mathematical Logic: Propositional Logic; First Order Logic.

Set Theory & Algebra: Sets; Relations; Functions; Groups; Partial Orders; Lattice; Boolean Algebra.

Textbook : " Discrete Mathematics " by Tremblay and Manohar .

2 . Probability: Conditional Probability; Mean, Median, Mode and Standard Deviation; Random Variables; Distributions; uniform, normal, exponential, Poisson, Binomial .

Textbook : " Probability , statistics and queuing theory " by S.C.Gupta & V.K.Kapoor

3 . Combinatorics: Permutations; Combinations; Counting; Summation; generating functions; recurrence relations; asymptotics.

Textbook : " Intermediate Mathematics " , S.Chand publications , authors : B.V.Sastry and K.Venkateswarlu ( if i remember )

" Higher Engineering Mathematics " by B.S.Grewal for generating functions and recurrence relations . ( Bessel's formula , Lagrangian Polynomial )

" Introduction to algorithms " - Cormen etal ( CLRS ) for recurrence relations and asymptotics

4 . Graph Theory: Connectivity; spanning trees; Cut vertices & edges; covering; matching; independent sets; Colouring; Planarity; Isomorphism

Textbook : " Intoduction to Graph Theory " by Narsing Deo

5 . Linear Algebra: Algebra of matrices, determinants, systems of linear equations, Eigen values and Eigen vectors.

Textbook : " Higher Engineering Mathematics " by B.S.Grewal

6 . Numerical Methods: LU decomposition for systems of linear equations; numerical solutions of non linear algebraic equations by Secant, Bisection and Newton-Raphson Methods; Numerical integration by trapezoidal and Simpson's rules.

Textbook : " Numerical Methods " - by S.S.Sastry

7 . Calculus: Limit, Continuity & differentiability, Mean value Theorems, Theorems of integral calculus, evaluation of definite & improper integrals, Partial derivatives, Total derivatives, maxima & minima.

Textbook : " Intermediate Mathematics " , S.chand publications , authors : B.V.Sastry , K.Venkateswarlu ( if i remember )

8 . Formal Languages and Automata Theory: Regular languages and finite automata, Context free languages and Push-down automata, Recursively enumerable sets and Turing machines, Un-decidability;

Textbook : " Formal Languages and Automata theory " , J.D.Ullman etal

9 . Analysis of Algorithms and Computational Complexity: Asymptotic analysis (best, worst, average case) of time and space, Upper and lower bounds on the complexity of specific problems, NP-completeness.

Textbook : " Introduction to algorithms " - Cormen etal ( CLRS )

" Computer Algorithms " - Horowitz and Sahani

A very good textbook on " Algorithms " coming soon from Dr.M.N.Seetaramanth ( Tata Mc Graw Hill publications )

10 . Digital Logic: Logic functions, Minimization, Design and synthesis of Combinational and Sequential circuits; Number representation and Computer Arithmetic (fixed and floating point);

Textbook : " Digital Logic circuits and Design " by Morris Mano

11 . Computer Organization: Machine instructions and addressing modes, ALU and Data-path, hardwired and micro-programmed control, Memory interface, I/O interface (Interrupt and DMA mode), Serial communication interface, Instruction pipelining, Cache, main and secondary storage.

Textbook : " Computer Organisation " by Morris Mano

" Computer Architecture " by Briggs and 2 chinese authors ( blue cover pad ) { for pipelining }

12 . Data structures: Notion of abstract data types, Stack, Queue, List, Set, String, Tree, Binary search tree, Heap, Graph;

Textbook : " Data structures " Schaumm's outline series

" Data structures in PASCAL " by Horowitz and Sahani

" Data structures and Algorithms " by Weiss etal

" Introduction to algorithms " - Cormen etal ( CLRS )

13 . Programming Methodology: C programming, Program control (iteration, recursion, Functions), Scope, Binding, Parameter passing, Elementary concepts of Object oriented, Functional and Logic Programming

Textbook : " Programming with C " - Byron Gottfried , Schaumm's outline series

" Principles of Programming Languages " by Robert W Sebesta , Addison Wesley

" Programming with C++ " - Balaguruswamy

14 . Algorithms for problem solving: Tree and graph traversals, Connected components, Spanning trees, Shortest paths; Hashing, Sorting, Searching; Design techniques (Greedy, Dynamic Programming, Divide-and-conquer);



Textbook : " Data structures " Schaumm's outline series

" Data structures in PASCAL " by Horowitz and Sahani

" Computer Algorithms " - Horowitz and Sahani

" Data structures and Algorithms " by Weiss etal

" Introduction to algorithms " - Cormen etal ( CLRS )

15 . Compiler Design: Lexical analysis, Parsing, Syntax directed translation, Runtime environment, Code generation, Linking (static and dynamic);

Textbook : " Principles of Compiler Design " , Aho , Ullman etal .

" Systems Programming " by John . J . Donovan

16 . Operating Systems: Classical concepts (concurrency, synchronization, deadlock), Processes, threads and Inter-process communication, CPU scheduling, Memory management, File systems, I/O systems, Protection and security.

Textbook : " Operating system concepts " by Abraham Silberschatz and Peter Galvin

" Advanced Unix Programming " by W. Richard . Stevens

" Advanced Unix Programming " by N.B.Venkateswarlu , BPB publications

17 . Databases: Relational model (ER-model, relational algebra, tuple calculus), Database design (integrity constraints, normal forms), Query languages (SQL), File structures (sequential files, indexing, B+ trees), Transactions and concurrency control;

Textbook : " Database Management systems " - Raghu RamaKrishnan

" Database system concepts " - Silberschatz , Korth , Sudarshan

" Database systems " - C.J.Date { normalisation is very lucidly written }

" Principles of Database Systems " - J.D.Ullman { This is a very good book }

18 . Computer Networks: ISO/OSI stack, sliding window protocol, LAN Technologies (Ethernet, Token ring), TCP/UDP, IP, Basic concepts of switches, gateways, and routers.

Textbook : " Computer Networks " - Tenenbaum

" Data communications and Networking " - William Stallings



Some more important books :

" Multiple choice questions " - Timothy . J . Williams , TMH publications

" Gate Question Papers " - G.K.Publishers { follow it only for questions , answers are all wrong in it }