Increasing Applicants for GATE

By Chandrakala Radhakrishnan

While for some time, it has been talked about that engineering education in India has been facing quite tough times, surprisingly on the other hand, the number of candidates subscribing for Master of Technology has increased. This is on account of the reason that a lot of engineering colleges have deteriorated in terms of quality of engineering education. While a couple of years back, there were about 12 Lakh students applying for the examination, it has considerably reduced.

Getting into the context, M.Tech or GATE cannot be the only solution to improve the quality of engineering education in India, quality education can easily bring about important changes at the knowledge and application level of engineering education. Getting into leading technical institutes in India such as IITs, IISc and NITs, would assume importance if a candidate is interested in pursuing M.tech Degree.

Unlike the previous year, mostly GATE Exams were offline, whereas this exam is online. Candidates would be required to answer a 100 mark paper, comprising of objective type questions in a three hour time duration. The newly introduced change would require candidates attempt questions which are not Multiple Choice Based. Negative marking would also help keep things clean.

Going through the syllabus and previous year questions would give the candidate a clear idea of what the exam is and where the candidates are in terms of the race. This kind of introspection would be required at all the times of preparation.

One of the most common question asked by candidates is when should they start ideally for preparation purposes. Is it fine to start right from the beginning of their under graduation or should it be done, once they complete their college education. In any case, the interest and aspirations of the candidate would matter at relevant stages. The candidates should take notes on important topics in GATE, which would help in preparation and revision just prior to the exam.

GATE Examination never asks any candidate to learn concepts by heart. The questions are mostly from the fundamentals concerned. Difficult questions of higher thinking order ability are scarce, or even if they are there, the candidate answering them should know their fundamentals well, and not concentrate on junk concepts.

Apart from the regular technical stuff,    GATE would be having questions to test the candidate's mathematical and linguistic aptitudes. Fifteen marks have been allocated in the test to check the language skills and problem-solving abilities of the candidate.

Coaching classes in GATE would give an overview to the candidate regarding his position of studies and would help him improve on the weaker areas.