1.
Gate 2008
2. All
about Gate
3. How to prepare?
4. What
your IISc/IIT seniors say
GATE
- Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering
Post Engineering, all Engineering
students come at crossroads, where they have to make
a choice – a choice that defines their career
for the rest of their lives: to choose one amongst
the options of a job, management or M.Tech. The three
most widely used options are management, M. Tech or
a job. Given the current situation in India, most
of the engineering colleges are not able to give a
100% placement, which results in the candidate making
a choice between management and M. Tech. This article
is about choosing the second option : M.Tech, and
the exam that holds the key to the most important
institutes for M.Tech, the GATE.
Why does one choose
CAT over GATE or vice versa? To quote the Bible, “A
feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but
money answereth all things”. Most of the students
choose management because they perceive that a management
person makes more money than a research person. This
might have been true in the past. But now that companies
like Motorola and Honda are beginning to outsource their
R&D to India, the demand for Research oriented people
is on the rise. "Virtually every single global
IT major is rapidly expanding its footprint into India,"
says Sunil Mehta, vice president, Nasscom. As of now,
100 Fortune 500 companies - including Delphi, Eli Lilly,
General Electric, Hewlett Packard, DaimlerChrysler and
others - have put up R&D facilities in India over
the past five years. Considering the scenario, M.Tech
is no longer the underdog. And the number of students
giving GATE has been increasing every year.
One needs to consider
factors other than monetary as well before he makes
the choice. CAT is for management, and management means
management of people, finance, affairs of a company,
strategizing etc. So people who are good at management,
and have interest in pursuing this should take management
as a subject. M.Tech, however, entails a research oriented
job or a faculty position in a university. Down the
line, these people may even take up a management position
in a research based enterprise. However, essentially
both kinds of careers are for a completely different
persona and interests.
Though the number of
GATE aspirants is equal to or probably even more than
CAT aspirants, it has largely been neglected by the
media as well as the coaching institutes. Till date,
to my information, there is not a single GATE coaching
institute with pan India presence. Though there are
so many mock test series available for CAT, the first
of its kind, an all India Mock GATE test series is being
introduced only this year by an organization called
GATE Forum (www.gateforum.com). GATE Forum also offers
online tests, CD based tests, and last few years’
GATE question papers to GATE aspirants.
After one makes
a choice as to what he would take up as a career, he
needs to prepare well for it. And to prepare well, he
needs to know and understand what GATE is all about.
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