Every GATE aspirant has this question - How much you need to score to get a top 100 rank in GATE Civil Engineering.
How many marks?
How many questions can I skip?
If you know exactly how much to score, your mind will be at peace and can help free up a lot of mind space during your GATE preparation.
Unfortunately most of the times, the students get this answer: Well, it depends.
It is, in fact, true, there is some uncertainty in every GATE paper, and a lot of factors come into play which is why no one can give you a perfect answer.
Competitiveness for the paper
Difficulty Level of the paper
But, the good news is we have studied the past year statistics and we can in fact establish the range.
I will break down what you need to know, and how to free up this thought of how much to score.
Why should we know how much to score?
Previous year GATE marks vs GATE rank?
Marks required to get a top 100 rank in GATE
How many questions can we skip and still get a top 100 rank in GATE
Why should we know how much marks to score in GATE?
I. During your preparation
If you know, by scoring 60 marks you cannot get a top 100 rank in GATE - you will not be skipping topics during your preparation.
By this time, everyone knows the subject-wise weightage for GATE Civil. It almost remains the same every year. After knowing that, in a subject like Maths you can score like 13 marks - you just cannot ignore topics like Calculus or so on.
This sort of analysis helped me when I gave GATE. While I was preparing, I found steel structures extremely difficult - especially plate girders and such topics.
I knew from subjectwise weightage, steel is not asked much. I did study the bolt and welding part, IS code facts so that I can answer that 1 on 2 questions they ask. I already skipped a probable question in GATE, but just 1. It saved a lot of time and mind space in my preparation to prepare for the rest of the 98 marks.
II. During exam
During your exam, if you know that you can skip 10 questions and still get a top 100 rank in GATE, it makes you feel relaxed. You will not be wasting time in solving questions which are taking more than 5 minutes to solve.
You should use it as a guide, and not like okay I have to score exactly 75 marks.
If the exam is easy, you might have to attempt more questions.
If the exam is difficult, you can afford to skip one or two more questions.
GATE marks vs GATE rank for Civil Engineering
Going by the previous year GATE marks vs rank statistics, we can see that the range of marks to get a top 100 rank in GATE varies from 75+ marks to 80+ marks.
This is the score of 100th rank in GATE for the years 2017-2020. I have left out the decimal places, use this as an indicator.
GATE 2017 - 100th rank - 75 marks
GATE 2018 - 100th rank - 80 marks
GATE 2019 - 100th rank - 78 marks
GATE 2020 - 100th rank - 81 marks
Marks required to get a top 100 rank in GATE 2021
Now, what will happen in GATE 2021? How much to score to get a top rank in GATE 2021?
If you see over the last 4 years from GATE 2017 to GATE 2020 - there are certain aspects which have remained constant.
- Eligibility criteria to write the exam
- The pattern of the paper
- Resources to prepare for the exam
There are three major changes in GATE 2021 compared to the last 4 years.
- Third years are eligible to write the exam
- New pattern: Inclusion of Multiple Select Questions (MSQs)
- Pandemic Impact
The pandemic has resulted in closure of offline coaching centres. This has limited the resources available to prepare. But, at the same time, some of those students have moved to online coaching. Quantifying the impact is difficult in this regards.
The major change which can impact the marks is the new pattern - MSQs. We will have to wait and see how many questions of MSQs are they planning to include and how difficult are they going to be.
We all prepare based on the level of previous year questions. In these past papers, to get a top 100 rank - if you are scoring 75+ you are doing good.
Aim for 75+ marks to get a top rank
Remember, this is just a guide for you. It does depend on the factors which can change this.
How many questions can we skip and still get a top 100 rank in GATE?
The key to learning is to focus on improving your accuracy. You should be able to believe in what you are solving.
When you are underprepared - you will start doubting yourself whether what you solved is right.
Say, you have got your accuracy to a good level. You are rarely making mistakes. How many questions can you skip in GATE?
If you are going to score 75+ marks with 95% accuracy, you can actually skip 13 questions. Isn't that great?
Attempt just 52 questions to get 75+ marks
Attempt 52 questions with 95% accuracy - that means you can only get 3 wrong answers out of 52 questions you are attempting.
What happens when your accuracy goes down?
At 85% accuracy, to score 75+ you can only skip 5 questions!
Now that you know how much to score, and how many questions you can skip - just make a mental note of it. It is not set in stone. It is a guide for students who keep thinking of how much to score.
Yes, any aspirant with the right approach can score AIR under 100 within a year of preparation.
Will leave you with an example.
One of our students got APSEd Study Package for GATE - he faired average in GATE 2019. In 2020, he made sure he sees at least 5 lectures every day and solves a minimum of 1 question. He had only the early morning and evening time to prepare, he did this consistently every day and it resulted in improving his rank to 1000.
A lot of times we just assume that the top rankers have some extraordinary mind or were born that way and we should not even try to think of doing that. Some people may have an initial advantage with a better memory or the knowledge of the topic but with time and practice any of you can catch up with that.
Best of luck for GATE 2021!