Graduate admission in premier institutes in India is based on the performance of students in the Graduate Aptitude Test (GATE), a common in-house examination conducted by such institutes. The GATE is a subject exam, testing the potential graduate student in the undergraduate level of her chosen engineering discipline. The exam can be taken in several engineering disciplines and also under a general engineering category and a few others. But, in principle, all of them are based on a subject discipline.
Over the years since the inception of the GATE, the exam itself has been conducted exceptionally well, just like the JEE examination - cracking which has been the dream of many Indian children (and their parents).
Based on some ten years of teaching and as many years as student in four different institutes of varying academic standing and pursuit and the associated observations, I am of the opinion that the GATE, if not totally at least to a large extent, is not serving its purpose. I hasten to add such a claim is not to undermine the untiring efforts of the premier institutes to bring quality education to our bright and brilliant Indian generations.
Firstly, the strength of GATE is its weakness. It is a subject examination and this itself puts off many undergraduates who are fresh out from the scars of passing about forty to fifty such subject examinations to obtain their UG degree. Not that they don’t know the subjects in all cases, but it becomes one more run-of-the-mill examination resulting in no excitement to crack the exam.
Secondly, since it is a subject exam and involves concepts and number crunchers (questions) that require a thorough brushing up of the subject basics, potential students who have finished their UG degree some years back (and working somewhere) and want to take the examination are so apprehensive of what they need to study that they don’t even give it a try. This, even though they yearn for higher education.
Thirdly, GATE doesn’t check primarily, analytical reasoning and such skills of potential graduate students. Such skills definitely matter as one seek higher learning. On the other hand, since at the graduate level one is going to specialize in one’s subject discipline, a basic understanding of related subject knowledge is sufficient. Not the entire UG program. To give a n example, if one aspires for a graduate program in Thermal Science, it is sufficient to check one with one’s thermal science concepts. GATE, as such, doesn’t do this.
Fourthly, GATE, over the years, has become more like JEE. Passing it with high scores doesn’t necessarily mean the potential graduate student throughly deserves the graduate degree later. Of course, there are always exceptions, but this is a subjective opinion from my observations.
Of course, I don’t have statistics for what I am saying. To obtain that is obviously difficult. Only those who took GRE and not GATE has to come out and write on why they did so. I for one, took GRE and went to the US because I couldn’t qualify in GATE in two attempts. Simply out of frustration I wrote GRE and TOEFL. And over the past ten years I have observed and gathered several instances that are similar to mine.
Remedy?
Take the general Graduate Record Examination (GRE) (not the subject one) as an admission test for graduate programs in the premier institutes of India.
Listen to my reasons before you castigate me.
GRE is an international exam, which is proven to be a success while recruiting students into the US graduate programs. Those who are recruited do graduate successfully. Some don’t or drop out, but as the successful GRE based graduate candidates show, the important point is, for going through the rigors of a US (international, as we all love to call it) graduate program, a subject test need not be a must.
Testing of analytical reasoning and similar skills are sufficient to allow a student pursue a graduate program in India and that a GRE already does well. Of course, it also tests verbal comprehension in English, which, if necessary, could be considered proportionately as required for India.
If you are not yet convinced observe that a sizable portion of the faculty in the premier institutes which require its potential graduate students to pass GATE, finished successfully their graduate program, passing not GATE but GRE.
And a final point: Qualifying in GATE ensures stipend - scholarship or HTRA as it is called - for a student from the Indian government. If taking GRE cannot be compatible with the provision ofa government scholarship, then a separate stream (”quota”) for the graduate program can be opened wherein GRE qualified candidates shall be considered without government scholarship. After all, most of the GRE qualified students nowadays pay from their pockets or take bank loan for their education in the US (did someone say US is in recession because we eat more). Instead, a quality Indian graduate education is definitely cheaper.
And prosperous, in more ways, for India.
