Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering

Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is an entrance exam conducted annually for admissions to various science and technology post-graduate programs in India. Administration and conduction of the exam is supervised jointly by the Indian Institute of Science and seven Indian Institutes of Technology on behalf of the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. In recent years, a sharp increase has been observed in the number of candidates appearing in GATE exam.

Examination

The GATE examination consists of a single paper of 3 hours duration, which contains 65 questions carrying a maximum of 100 marks. The question paper consists of only multiple choice objective questions each having four choices for the answer. Out of 65 questions, 55 are based on candidate's chosen specialization or branch, while remaining 10 are to test his/her general aptitude.

Admission to Post-Graduate programmes

GATE qualified candidates with Bachelor’s degree in Engineering/ Technology/ Architecture or Master’s degree in any branch of Science/ Mathematics/ Statistics/ Computer Applications are eligible for admission to Master/Doctoral programmes in Engineering/ Technology/ Architecture as well as for Doctoral programmes in relevant branches of Science with MHRD or other government scholarships/ assistantships. To avail a scholarship, the candidate must secure admission to such a postgraduate programme, as per the prevailing procedure of the admitting institution. However, candidates with Master’s degree in Engineering/ Technology/ Architecture may seek admission to relevant PhD programmes with scholarship/ assistantship without appearing in the GATE examination.

Some institutions specify GATE qualification as mandatory even for admission of self-financing students to postgraduate programmes. 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” awarded by CSIR. Some government organizations prescribe GATE qualification as a requirement for applying to the post of a Scientist/ Engineer.

In recent years ,various academicians have recognized GATE as being one of the toughest exams in its category. Moreover it has strikingly similar toughness like Joint Entrance Examination held for students entering IIT for undergraduate engineering courses. Many universities like National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and some technical universities in Germany, do identify GATE score card as a parameter for judging the quality of the candidates for admission into their Masters and PhD Programmes.

Most Indian institutes do not specify cut-off marks for previous years. So there is a general confusion in terms of selecting institutes and specializations. But in the recent years IIT Kharagpur and IIT Guwahati have been specifying last year cut-off mark list. Typically the Indian Institute of Science is the most selective, very closely followed by the IITs and the NITs.

Eligibility

The following categories of candidates are eligible to appear in GATE:

• Bachelor degree holders in Engineering/ Technology/ Architecture (4 years after 10+2) and those who are in the final year of such programmes.
• Master degree holders in any branch of Science/ Mathematics/ Statistics/ Computer Applications or equivalent and those who are in the final or pre-final year of such programmes.
• Candidates in the second or higher year of the Four-year Integrated Master degree programme (Post-B.Sc.) in Engineering/ Technology or in the third or higher year of Five-year Integrated Master degree programme and Dual Degree programme in Engineering/ Technology.
• Candidates with qualifications obtained through examinations conducted by professional societies recognised by UPSC/AICTE (e.g. AMIE by IE(I), AMICE(I) by the Institute of Civil Engineers (India)-ICE(I)) as equivalent to B.E./B.Tech. Those who have completed section A or equivalent of such professional courses are also eligible.

GATE score

Each candidate appearing in the exam is issued a GATE score along with an All India Rank(AIR) which is the basis for admissions to various institutes. The GATE score is calculated using a specific formula, where the marks obtained by the candidate, average of marks of all candidates in that paper, standard deviation of marks of all candidates in that paper, global average of marks of all candidates in last 2 years and the standard deviation (global) of marks of all candidates in last 2 years are considered. The GATE score is set to zero if the value calculated by the formula is less than zero and the GATE score is set to 1000 if the value calculated by the formula is more than 1000.

GATE Score is calculated using the formula $10(a_{g}+s_{g}{\frac {m-a}{S}})$

Where

m = marks obtained by the candidate.

a = average of marks of all candidates who appeared in the paper mentioned on this scorecard in GATE for that year

S = standard deviation of marks of all candidates who appeared in the paper mentioned on this scorecard in GATE for that year

a_g= global average of marks of all candidates who appeared across all papers and years

s_g= global standard deviation of marks of all candidates who appeared across all papers and years

GATE score remains valid for up to two years from the date of issue.

Qualifying Score

The Qualifying Score is the minimum mark that needs to be secured to become eligible for availing assistantships provided by MHRD, GOI. The qualifying score for general category in each paper is (a + s) or 25, whichever is higher, where a and s are the average and standard deviation of marks of all candidates in a particular paper, with all marks less than zero, converted to zero..

For qualifying in GATE 2011 mark to be obtained is given below.

Paper	General	OBC	SC/ST
EC	26.11	23.5	17.41
CS	25	22.5	16.67
ME	30.81	27.73	20.54
BT	41.78	37.6	27.85

All India Rank

The All India Rank of the candidate in a paper is determined based on the descending order of the marks obtained by the candidates in that paper.

Changes in recent years

• From 2009 onwards, the IT and CS papers have been merged and there will be no separate IT paper.
• From 2010, Pharmacy is no longer on the GATE subject papers list, with GPAT as the replacement. Also, the Biotechnology section of the XL GATE paper has been removed and replaced by a separate Biotechnology paper (paper code BT).
• In 2009 the GATE score was valid only for one year but later the GATE committee made it valid for 2 years in 2010.
• From GATE 2010 onwards, an additional section of General Aptitude has been introduced in GATE. A total of 10 questions carrying 15 marks makes up this last section of GATE.
• Based on a trouble-free pilot project in 2010, four of the GATE papers in GATE 2011 will be run using computer based online mode. The four online papers for 2011 are Aerospace Engineering(paper code AE),Geology and Geophysics(paper code GG),Mining Engineering(paper code MN) and Textile Engineering(paper code TF)and Fiber Science.
• For 2011, GATE will be held in morning (9-12) session for some papers and afternoon (2-5) session for others. Also, the computer based tests will be held on a different date.
• From 2012, only final year students and passout students are eligible to write GATE exam.

Number of students appearing for the examination

The number of candidates appearing in GATE is increasing every year.

Year	Number of Students
2012	1239395
2011	552530
2010	414093

In 2011,the number of students appearing for various papers differed largely.

Paper	Number of Students
ECE	137853
CSE	136027
ME	81175
BT	16425

In 2010,list of different engineering streams and total number of student appeared is:

Discipline/ Course / Stream	Number of students appeared
Computer Science and Engineering and IT	107086
Electronics and Communication Engineering	104291
Electrical Engineering	52246
Mechanical Engineering	59338
Civil Engineering	19406

Applying to PSUs based on GATE Score

Many Public Sector Undertaking like Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, National Thermal Power Corporation, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd. are using GATE Score for selection but due to process.

References

http://gate.phodubanda.com/psus-to-recruit-through-gate-2012

External links

• GATE 2012 to be organised by IIT Delhi
• GATE 2011 site at IIT Madras, organizing GATE 2011
• GATE 2010 site at IIT Guwahati, organizing GATE 2010