Written by: Express News Service
3 min readMumbaiApr 17, 2014 10:36 AM IST
First published on: Mar 16, 2013 at 04:52 AM IST
WITH 9,951 candidates making it,Maharashtra is among the top five states that have the largest number of students who qualified this year’s Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) of the Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs). Andhra Pradesh (22,476) and Uttar Pradesh (22,400) have the maximum number of students who qualified, followed by Maharashtra,Bihar (9,820) and Kerala (8,992).
While there are 21 papers in all for respective disciplines in GATE,candidates from the IIT Bombay zone have qualified in the top 10 in 13 papers.
The all-India qualifying number has,however,dipped as compared to last year. Only 13.88 per cent or 1,36,699 qualified the exam. “The qualifying percentage is usually between 13 to 17 per cent. This year’s percentage has gone down slightly as compared to around 15 per cent in 2012,” said Prof Umesh Bellur,organising chairman of GATE 2013 from IIT Bombay.
While over 12 lakh candidates registered for GATE 2013,9.85 lakh candidates appeared for the exam. While women candidates comprised 39.75 per cent of the total applicants,20.9 per cent qualified. Last year,21 per cent women candidates had qualified.
A senior professor of engineering said while it was tough to ascribe reasons as to why only a small percentage qualifies GATE,“poor quality of undergraduate education across the country” could be a factor.
The dip in qualifying percentage is despite the fact that the number of candidates registering for GATE 2013 had gone up significantly — from 4.6 lakh in 2010 to over 12 lakh this year. “There has been a 300 per cent jump in the number of aspirants since 2010. An increase in the number of PSUs (from four in 2012 to 15 this year) who have signed an MoU with IIT Bombay to accept GATE qualified candidates is a reason for a huge rise in registrations,” said Bellur.
Around 88 per cent of the registered male candidates appeared for the exam,as compared to 72 per cent female candidates,this year. “This year,81 per cent of the candidates who appeared for GATE 2013 were from four papers,which includes Electronics and Communication Engineering (2,56,135),Computer Science and Information Technology (2,24,160),Mechanical Engineering (1,65,814) and Electrical Engineering (1,52,381),” said Bellur.
According to information from GATE office,among those who qualified the exam,72,125 are from the general category,41,237 from Other Backward Classes (OBC-non-creamy layer),18,936 from Scheduled Castes,and 4,401 to Scheduled Tribes category. The number of physically challenged candidates in various categories was 1,136.
The three-hour test was conducted on two days over four sessions. The computer-based online exam for 2,02,223 candidates in 15 papers was conducted in 572 centers across 123 cities. The offline exam for 9,98,505 candidates in the remaining six papers was conducted in 992 centres spread over 183 cities and towns.
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