Need advice in balancing full time job with GATE
Hi. I'll start with a little background/rant. I gave GATE CS for the first time in 2025, scored 50 marks in around 2 months of preparation (GATE 2025 was notoriously easy). I was a decent student in my BTech CS so that helped as well. I got placed oncampus as a cyberSec analyst in Hyderabad, 7LPA. But the company ghosted me and didn't give offer letter until December. I graduated in May, prepared for GATE 2026 in the mean time while awaiting offer letter. I would say I had prepared pretty well, but I had to move to Hyderabad in January. So the last 1 month phase before GATE went down the hill for me, I got crazy caught up with trainings, assignments from office and could'nt revise for GATE. I flunked my GATE 2026 attempt. That was heartbreaking. Particularly because, everything was falling at once. I had to move to Hyderabad for this job because my dad had lost his job since 1 year and we were on the brink of burning up all our savings. I used to teach tuitions alongside my GATE prep, teach my brother who's in 11th because he couldn't understand school work, I was basically all caught up in external responsibilities before moving to Hyderabad as well. and then When i moved here I was caught in job responsibilities straight away. I realised how life's making me give up on my one dream, by creating new emergencies everyday. Now, if looking at my wasted potential wasn't enough, after my training in cybersecurity, they changed my dept to Finance instead, and dumped me into finance training. Now, this was my last straw. Now not only I had to give up on my masters dream, but also on my entire Tech career. But I can't go back home jobless so I competed those trainings as well and in April they put me into a very busy project as Jira/Scrum support. Not relevant to finance, my previous trainings, my job role/job desc, nothing. Now it's been 3 weeks into this project and its clear to me how toxic this project is. I have been working MINIMUM 12 hours daily without fail and still somehow there's more work left than completed. I'll genuinely get sick if this goes on, my family is concerned for me as well so since past 2 days only I have started to draw a line there. I tried appying elsewhere because I dont want my Tech career to die before even starting, but the job market is scary AF. If I quit this job before 1 year, I'll have to return my joining bonus and other bonuses as well which I dont want to. Going for masters will give me an easy re-entry into tech, so I have decided to give GATE another shot. I know, there are many reasons not to go for 3rd attempt, accept its destiny blabla. But I've been cornering my dreams for too many reasons, I dont want to keep doing it forever. I'm only 22, this is not the age where people give up. I know i have it in me and i cant see it go to waste. So, here's where I need your help.
→I have completed all syllabus except discrete maths while studying for GATE 2026. I have done PYQs for the same as well, almost twice , some thrice. But I've been out of touch since quite some months now.
→My job is roughly from 11am to 10pm . So I can study in morning on weekdays and easily study for 8-10 hours on weekends.
→I don't think I want to remake all notes and stuff, instead focussing on question solving will be helpful because GATE 2027 will definitely be highly conceptual basis.
Pls guide me on how I should go about my preparation, how do I motivate myself to study after this reckless job, If anyone here is preparing/ had prepared for GATE alongside full time job then pls share how you did it. I really really need your help here.
Sorry for making you read so much and Thanks in advance for your help!