Opportunities Through GATE

GATE qualified Candidate are also eligible for the award of Junior Research Fellowship in CSIR Laboratories and CSIR sponsored projects 


GATE is an objective type test with multiple choice questions with total time duration of 3 hours.

One of the toughest examinations with intense competition but rarely in the news is the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), administered by the IITs and IISc for admission to all the post-graduate courses in engineering in the country.

These courses are offered as M.E., M.Tech. and M.S. courses depending on the university and the institutions that design the courses.

Entrance

Though in some States, including Andhra Pradesh, a separate entrance is held for M.Tech and ME courses and those qualifying in that are given a seat after the GATE qualifiers are exhausted.

Some institutions specify GATE qualification as mandatory even for admission of self-financing students to postgraduate programmes.

The GATE qualified candidates are also eligible for the award of Junior Research Fellowship in CSIR Laboratories and CSIR sponsored projects.

Top rank holders in some GATE papers are entitled to apply for “Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Fellowship”, which is awarded by the CSIR.

Also some government organisations prescribe GATE qualification as a requirement for applying to the post of a Scientist or Engineer.

Before applying candidates must ensure that they have chosen the right paper, which qualifies them to become eligible to seek admission to the specific programmes they are interested in.

Online test

In all the papers, there will be a total of 65 questions carrying 100 marks, out of which 10 questions carrying a total of 15 marks will be on General Aptitude (GA), which is intended to test the Language and Analytical Skills.

GATE 2020 would contain questions of two different types in all the papers:

• Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) carrying 1 or 2 marks each in all the papers and sections. These questions are objective in nature, and each will have a choice of four answers, out of which the candidate has to select (mark) the correct answer.
  Negative Marking for Wrong Answers: For a wrong answer chosen in a MCQ, there will be negative marking. For 1-mark MCQ, 1/3 mark will be deducted for a wrong answer. Likewise, for 2-mark MCQ, 2/3 mark will be deducted for a wrong answer.
• Numerical Answer Type (NAT) Questions carrying 1 or 2 marks each in all the papers and sections. For these questions, the answer is a signed real number, which needs to be entered by the candidate using the virtual numeric keypad on the monitor . No choices will be shown for these type of questions. There is NO negative marking for a wrong answer in NAT questions.

There are 21 different papers (one for each stream) in GATE including engineering streams such as ECE, CSE, EE and pure sciences such as Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

For each of the streams, the syllabus is different and therefore the question paper is different as well. The syllabus for engineering streams includes four years of engineering syllabus and general aptitude.

Initial hurdle

Once the initial hurdle (GATE) is cleared, an aspirant is faced with another – that of the admission process of various colleges.

Each department of each college has a different selection procedure which often creates confusion and indecisiveness in the mind of the aspirant.

“For example, The ME program at the IISc has direct 

admission whereas the M.Tech program has a written

 test followed by an interview and the MS program has 

only an interview.

Hence a candidate has to prepare for all processes 

thoroughly,” says Mr. Aditya Reddy.

Counselling procedure

Also, one has to apply to each of the departments separately since there is no common counselling procedure. Hence each candidate has to judiciously select departments where getting admission is easy based on the GATE rank.

A rank of below 100 would guarantee a seat in either the IISc or top IITs, but those securing a rank above 100, the options get confusing, especially while choosing the combination of institute and specialisation and also in cases of inter disciplinary admissions.

This is where a student will do well to take expert guidance. (Gateforum has comprehensive admission guide on its website - ‘www.gateforum.com').

Top institutes

The top institutes which offer admission based on GATE score are IISc Bangalore and seven IITs.

There are several other good colleges that take students for masters program through GATE -

The NITs located across the country, the university colleges such as Jadhavpur University, Anna University, IT BHU and Osmania University.

All the private colleges offering M.Tech. course in India admit students in their college based on the GATE score.