Let’s start with Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), it is surely for those who really are passionate for sticking to the technical aspect involved in the bachelor’s degree which they are pursuing.
To begin with GATE, is a competitive examination which is conducted by the IITs and IISCs on behalf of the MHRD in the month of January end or February start. The examination can be given by any student who is in his/her final semester. The forms have to be filled online only and are available at the end of September. For eligibility you can go through GATE’s official site gate.iitr.ernet.in (for GATE 2017). It’s a 3 hour single paper consisting of 65 questions carrying a maximum of 100 marks which also has negative marking depending on the marks of the particular question. There is no negative marking for the numerical answer type question. The final score will be a normalized score out of 1000 and will also contain your percentile. An AIR under 170 and you don’t have to sit for any PI, above which you might have to go through counselling and Personal Interview round. There is no upper limit age bar and the candidates are eligible only after their Bachelor Degree achievement.Hence,say no to age restrictions for the GATE Exam. The test can be given for any one of the 22 papers, which means 22 different areas in which one may excel. One has to decide at the start only which field he might want to take and fill the form and take up that respective paper in particular. In the past too there have been many instances that students of EXTC or CS take up CS or EXTC respectively as their domain of interest for Post-Graduation.
GATE scores are also being used by several Indian public sector undertakings (i.e., government-owned companies) for recruiting graduate engineers in entry-level positions. The test score is valid for a period of 3 years from the year in which your result is declared. The validity cannot be extended at any cost and you will have to re- take the examination once again. In recent years, various academicians have recognized GATE as being one of the toughest exams in its category. Some non-Indian universities identify GATE score as a parameter for judging the quality of the candidates for admission into their Masters and Ph.D. programs.
Some management institutes like NITIE, Mumbai offer admission to Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Engineering on the basis of GATE score.
The benefits that come in are:
GATE qualified students are paid a stipend of 12 grand to a maximum up to 28 grand/month for pursuing post-graduation.
Learning from amongst the best, being a part of the best of the faculties, students can also carry research, if interested, in their own field.
Many PSU are also letting only GATE qualified students in their companies.
What many students don’t know is that one can also take up various fellowship programmes (5 years) in any of the IIMs through GATE. The added advantage is also that study of GATE also makes it slightly easier to study for other exams like SAIL, DRDO, BARC, SAIL, IES, etc. which have their very own different criteria’s from that of the GATE and are at much higher level in terms of difficulty. Also one may appear for state level CETs but towards the end you may end up being a teacher, most of the times.