Tech savvy: a workshop at IIT, Kharagpur

It is the gateway to higher technical studies in engineering and quite aptly, called the GATE. With the number of seats being restricted to less than 50 per cent of the total number of engineering graduates in the country, Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering, which you have to pass to study MTech, easily ranks among the toughest entrance tests in the country.

And it?s taking on a new look from this year. GATE 2006, which will be held on February 12 next year, will be a fully objective, multiple-choice test. According to experts, the exam is moving closer to a universal format in which concepts will be more important than learning by heart.

The GATE papers will now be divided into three sections for a total of 150 marks. There will be linked questions as well as questions on stand-alone statements/phrases/data. ?The format of such competitive exams is changed from time to time to retain the surprise element. But if your fundamentals are strong, you need not worry. For that is what they want to assess,? says Prof. B.B. Poira, director of Heritage Institute of Technology. GATE is conducted by one of the IITs every year and this time it?s the turn of IIT Kharagpur.

Negative marking was introduced a couple of years ago with one mark being deducted for four wrong answers. But there won?t be any negative marking in the third section comprising linked questions which is considered to be the most difficult. It carries 10 questions of two marks each. These questions are based on problems. A problem statement is followed by two questions designed such that the solution to the second question depends upon the answer to the first one. In other words, the first answer is an intermediate step in working out the second answer.

Then you have questions linked to a common problem data, passage and the like. Two or three questions can be formed from the given problem. Each question is independent and its solution obtainable from the data directly. ?Neither of these two sections is easy. The first part, that comprises 20 questions of one mark each is relatively easy. The rest will test your conceptual base rather than your memory, which used to be the case,? explains Anindyajyoti Pal, lecturer at the Heritage Institute of Technology (HIT).

?For instance, you could be asked to identify the difference between frequency and amplitude modulation in electrical engineering. You must know the right expressions to derive the difference,? points out Pal. But the new format, he adds, won?t lead to a major difference in the standard of questions which will still be of the undergraduate level.

Like CAT, the selection of questions now becomes important in GATE. It has been seen that more than half the questions are asked from a particular section. ?In computer science, for instance, around 55 per cent of the questions are asked from one section,? says Dr Satyajit Chakrabarty, director of the Institute of Engineering and Management.

In the new format, it will pay if you first identify the questions which you can answer correctly instead of going serially. But teachers warn that the multiple-choice format doesn?t make it any easier. Even though some portions of the syllabus can be left out since objective-type questions can?t be asked from them, it helps if you read the text extensively. ?Studying the entire portion makes your fundamentals strong. So, students should not change their preparation mode drastically,? says Dr Tapas Chakrabarty, senior teacher at HIT.

What could be a good score in the new format? Since students are evaluated in terms of percentile scores, the measure of success varies every year. But 100 right answers should count as better than an average performance, according to experts.