GATE to go online from 2014

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will take the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) online from next year because of its growing popularity.

The Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, on Thursday released a tender advertisement inviting service agencies to send technical and commercial bids to it as it is holding GATE this year.

"The growing number of applications we are receiving from candidates has prompted us to take the examination completely online. We have been in the past, conducting a few papers online," said a professor from IIT-Kharagpur.

In 2013, GATE saw a record 1.21 million registrations, the highest. Last year, 7,50,000 had registered for GATE.

With public sector undertakings shortlisting candidates through GATE, the number of GATE takers has swelled. Earlier, however, GATE was used as a qualifying examination for the ministry of human resource development assistantships.

"Conducting exams is an academic exercise and given GATE is a fairly standardised test and is conducted on an all-India scale, it brings economies of scale to public sector units and they can concentrate on interviews," Umesh Bellur, organising chairman, GATE 2013, IIT-Bombay had recently told Business Standard.

GATE is administered and conducted by the Indian Institute of Science and the IITs. Those passing this examination are eligible for admission to post-graduate programmes with government scholarships or assistantships in engineering colleges and universities.

Over the last few years, the exam has been gradually incorporating online mode in some of its streams. Out of 21 papers in GATE, 15 papers were conducted in online mode for GATE 2013. GATE 2012 and GATE 2011 had 6 and 4 online papers respectively, while there was no online component till GATE 2010.

According to the tender notice, examination for GATE 2014 might be conducted for 21 papers in 12 sessions with 2 buffer sessions.

According to the tender notice, examination for GATE 2014 might be conducted for 21 papers in 12 sessions with 2 buffer sessions. Out of the 21 papers, some will have multiple sessions, while for others there will only be one session. The dates for the examination barring unforeseen incidents will be 1st, 2nd, 15th and 16th February, 1st and 2nd March of 2014. There will be 2 sessions (9:00AM to 12:00 PM & 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM) on each day. A tentative list of 118 cities for conducting the exams was also disclosed in the tender invitation document.

"Though it is a new medium, Online mode need not be seen as a hurdle to students as most of them are comfortable with the online medium, and have attempted online tests like BITSAT/AIEEE at +2 level. Also, they will have access to the actual GATE exam interface with sample questions, months before the actual GATE," said Triumphant Institute of Management Education which trains students for qualifying GATE.

The government will request the central government to suspend such payment on loans from nationalised banks for a similar period.

Affected citizens are to each get 15 kg of wheat flour, 15 kg of rice, five kg of pulses, three kg sugar and some other things free of cost. The state is to take full reposibility for the upbringing, including schooling, of orphaned children. For the areas in the plains, there will be 50 per cent more compensation for damage to the sugarcane crop.