4 years on, arts, commerce draw 2% of GATE applicants

MUMBAI: Four years after GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering) opened its doors to commerce and humanities students, their participation in the exam remains minimal. Though up by 30%, from 14,000 in the first year (2021) to 18,762 in 2025, the aspirants in this category still account for 2% of the total.

GATE is conducted by the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, for admissions to postgraduate programmes.Atul Negi, the head of mechanical engineering department at a leading GATE coaching institute, said not many aspirants know about the GATE offerings in humanities. "Most aspirants associate GATE with engineering and may have never thought of applying. Some may believe that the difficulty level is high too.

Also, except for the humanities' departments at IITs, not many institutions consider GATE scores for their masters or doctoral admissions.

The central govt also introduced another national university-level examination, Central University Entrance Test (CUET), for admissions to postgraduate courses," he said. "The IITs need to promote the humanities papers more aggressively."Of the humanities subjects, psychology, English and economics are most in demand, shows data from the GATE 2025 report, largely reflecting the trend in humanities' admissions across many universities in the country.

In GATE 2023 and 2024, English was the most popular humanities subject. Meanwhile, interest in computer science and allied fields has risen sharply, with applications more than doubling, a rise of nearly 110% over just three exams. Computer science and information technology has driven the overall growth in total applicants, overtaking civil engineering to become the most popular choice.Data science and artificial intelligence, a paper which was started in GATE 2024 and preferred by students with computers and mathematics background, is already seeing registrations from close to 76,000 candidates.

Registrations for GATE 2026 concluded recently; a statistical report will be released only after the results are out.A professor from one of the IITs' GATE offices, said the organising institutes conduct outreach programmes to create awareness among students, but specific ones to promote humanities papers could be considered.A humanities professor from a leading institute said GATE can become popular if more institutions start accepting its scores, adding that for IITs, too, GATE is one of many routes for admissions to humanities programmes at the postgraduate level. "Many who are aware about it would rather take the CUET route for masters' admissions as GATE is considered to be a tougher exam," he said.An admission official from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) told TOI that GATE scores are used for admissions to certain technical programmes and the eligibility criteria are based on the decisions taken by different departments.