GATE 2014: Student Reactions
Chhavi Sharma & Madiha Jawed | shiksha.com
Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2014 which is being conducted by IIT Kharagpur commenced on February 1, 2014 and the exam will be conducted on every Saturday and Sunday till March 2, 2014. The exam is being conducted in two sessions, that is, the morning session (9 am to 12 noon) and afternoon session (2 pm to 5 pm) and will be held at 118 cities of the country. This year around 10.34 lakh students will be sitting for the exam.
Shiksha.com caught up with few students who gave GATE 2014 to get first hand information of how their exam went. The exam was conducted in a glitch-free manner and there were no errors. The common verdict was that students missed the multiple-choice questioning format and felt that the exam was more practical experience related this time. Most of the students we came across were working professionals and so they knew how to attempt this style of a question paper and deal with the exam related stress as well.
GATE 2014 Exam Analysis: What students have to say
“There were 60%-70% numerical questions in the exam, we had to solve the questions and write the answers there and that too up to three decimal digits. There were lesser MCQs which made attempting the paper difficult”, said Mohammad Zahid Akhtar who gave GATE in 2012 as well. Zahid who is currently working as an engineering consultant at L&T ramboll consulting engineers limited felt that since he is a working professional the exam was easy for him but had a fresher attempted the paper he would find it difficult. Elaborating on the exam pattern he said, “For me the easiest section was general awareness since I was preparing for CAT and XAT. I gave my exam in the morning session and the topics covered in the morning and evening session were different, so the topics I prepared on the basis of previous years question papers such as transportation engineering and geo-technology did not have many questions. In fact, there wasn’t a single question from irrigation engineering which I studied in-depth. Even mathematics section was a little difficult.”
Another engineering consultant of L&T ramboll consulting engineers, Arun A. found the exam to be easy, “Most of the questions were pretty direct and most of the questions were from topics like re-inforced concrete design, transportation engineering and surveying had 3-4questions. But maximum questions were asked from the traffic engineering. I managed to finish the exam in about three hours and I think I did pretty OK.” Arun who earlier gave GATE when he was pursuing B.tech did not join any coaching to clear the exam this year and just went through study material of Krishna Coaching institute. He is expecting to score 40 plus in GATE 2014.
For Neera Vishal, a B.Tech graduate the exam was a hard nut to crack, “I couldn’t complete the test in time, there were far too many numerical questions and it was taking me a lot of time because the questions were tricky and calculations were long”. But she isn’t heartbroken, “I will join a good coaching institute and give the exam next year”.
Anu Malik, a highway engineer shares her experience of GATE 2014 by stating, “I found the general knowledge section to be very very simple. Other than that civil one was easy too and I think I could have done better if I would have studied more”. Regarding her preparation for the exam she said, “I did not join any coaching to give the exam and I don’t think it is required if your basics are clear”.
Keeping her fingers crossed for the results, Nusrath an engineering consultant, who gave the exam on February 2, 2014 said, "I found the paper had more questions from RSS and Steel section. As far as previous trend of GATE question papers, topics like irrigation, water rsources, soil mechanics have more weightage but yesterday's question paper had less questions from these subjects... from highway engineering more questions from traffic section were asked, which I was unaware about".
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