GATE 2014-No More An Engineering Test

 Every year, the number of candidates appearing for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) are rising by a large number and surprisingly, this year the number of GATE candidates enrolled in the examination increased from 7 lakhs to 13 lakhs. But an interesting point to note here is that all these examinees do not appear in the test for merely getting entrance into the various M Tech  or M.E. courses, many of them go through this entrance test to achieve a high GATE score for getting  a Job  in  Public Sector Units PSU’s. Majority of these candidates aim for a high GATE score to make their Resume more appealing and interesting. To eliminate this, a senior IIT Kharagpur official said that changes will commence most probably in the year 2014 and these changes may include the introduction of prelims and mains for the GATE exam from the year 2014.

A committee consisting of nine members from the IIT’s and IISC Banglore has been set up to look after these changes and this committee feels that only after securing a certain cut off marks, the candidate will be allowed to sit in the main exam. These changes will mainly focus on reducing the number of candidates appearing for the exam. GATE is primarily held for MTech or M.E. programme aspirants and not for the job seekers. Hence, the committee members are designing the new rules keeping this objective in the mind. There is an inadequate infrastructure to hold the test on the same day for all students. Thus, the committee members have also been entrusted to modify the course model. An IIT Kharagpur official informed that the first meeting of this committee is yet to be held.

The committee is looking to make some more efficient changes in the system for example the committee might look for holding the examination for multiple days instead of commencing it on the same day. Till now the online test was held on one day and the written test was conducted on the other day. As per the new test scheme, the screening test shall consist of aptitude test and physics, chemistry and geology and the candidate will be allowed to sit in the main test only after clearing this screening test. Biswajit Maiti, convener of the GATE restructuring committee said that the date for the GATE 2013 test has been fixed and these changes if made will be implemented in the 2014 examination.

Looking forward to these abrupt rises in the number of candidates appearing in the GATE test the committee feels that some changes are extremely necessary to be made in the GATE examination procedure as in the year 2011 GATE had nearly 6 lakh aspirants while in the year the number of candidates increased by one lakh and in the year 2011, this number reached 11 lakh. The committee strongly feels that this rise in the number of candidates appearing is directly related to the PSU Job seekers.