There has been a significant drop in the number of candidates who have registered for the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), which will be held from February 1 to 9, 2020.
At the end of the registration window on October 5, about 8.58 lakh candidates had filled up applications for the test as compared to 9.27 lakh for the 2019 exam, a drop of 69,000 candidates, IIT Delhi said. It is conducting the 2020 GATE exam.
In 2017, 9.22 lakh candidates had registered for the exam and 9.92 registrations were received in 2018.
GATE is a mandatory requirement for seeking admission or financial assistance for pursuing Master’s programme and direct Doctoral programmes in Engineering, Technology, Architecture and Doctoral programs in relevant branches of Science.
Reason for the decline in registration number:
Several news reports quoting experts blamed it on a recent decision of the government to effect a 900 per cent hike in tuition fee of the M.Tech programmes in the IITs.
GATE 2020 organising committee chairman BR Chahar, however, refused to buy this argument. He said there are multiple factors for the decline in applications, media reports said.
IIT Bombay received the maximum number of registration (1.73 lakh candidates), followed by IIS Bangalore (1.31 lakh) and then IIT Delhi which received 1.30 lakh registrations.