Indian Graduate Admission based on GRE?
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.
Firstly, its strength is it 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.
Let me sum this situation with a cartoon I made some time back
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.
[Disclaimer: This is NOT a rant. This is not to undermine the untiring efforts of the premier institutes to bring quality education to our bright and brilliant Indian generations. If the post anywhere indicates to the contrary, I apologize and shall stand corrected. But kindly reflect on the points that I am raising.]
Dr Arunn,
While I don’t have any experience with GATE, I’m not so sure about the ability of the GRE to predict grad school performance. In fact, I think this would especially be a problem if implemented in India.
First, IMO, the mathematics part of the general GRE is laughably simple, and could be easily attempted by most high school/middle school students. Next, I’m not sure why a graduate student in engineering would need to have a knowledge of *many* of the words that appear in the verbal section. In India, it’s possible that an otherwise talented student would suffer because he/she’s not a native speaker of english, and not familiar with some of the words which some of us might consider common, but is not relevant to a specific graduate program anyway.
But the major issue I have with the GRE is that, like most standardized tests, it’s easily coachable. As most of my fellow students in our institute would know, a few weeks with Barron’s is all that’s required to get a good score, once an individual identifies the pattern to the tests.
So, does it really test the originality, creativity and reasoning ability of a prospective grad student? Also, like the JEE, this would mean that people who are economically well off, and have access to guide books will end up doing well.
I don’t know what the solution to the difficult problem of admissions is, but I have a personal dislike for standardized tests.
parseval has rightly pointed out the problems with GRE in the Indian context . (Add to that the fact that a large fraction of people hardly learn any ‘engineering’ during undergrads, and maybe at least some people do put an effort to get the basics right for the sake of GATE only). So it seems replacing GATE with GRE is not going to help much in selecting the ‘right’ candidates for those few M Tech seats in those few instis.
But even GATE is plagued by many problems. Like JEE it’s also ‘highly coachable’. Currently I am doing M.Tech at an IIT, and I was amazed to find that more than half of of the students in my branch had undergone ‘coaching’ for a yr after finishing BTech (at Hyderabad/ Delhi ) !!!!
And now with all those reservation policies and proposed new institutes etc, the issue is getting only trickier .
GATE seems to be similar to AGRE (which dramatically increases chances of assistantship in fields like CS in the US)
I agree – maybe a quota stream for students interested in continuing education (their companies can pay) is an idea worth exploring.
I had cleared both GATE (for my Masters at IISc) and GRE (for my PhD at US) and so I guess I am more qualified than many to comment on these exams. Please note that GRE is nothing but a joke (!) and it in no way tests anyones analytical skills; at least not anymore since they have removed the analytical part some years back. Don’t tell me that the Quanti and the Verbal parts test anything about a prospective graduate student. The reason GRE exists (at least one of them) is that the US education system needed one standard exam to judge students across all spectrum for admission to grad college (engg, science, liberal arts, et al) and GRE kind of serves that purpose. Most top ranked schools here in US use the GRE score as a tie-breaker, and that is never ever considered as a primary requirement. This is particularly true if someone has a Masters and applying for a PhD through GRE.
As someone has pointed out GATE is necessary to standardize the undergraduate engineering education, which varies widely across the country. A mere 3 months of slog can get one a good GRE score, but to get a good GATE score one needs to know the fundamentals — whatever coaching one takes for it — if he/she has learned nothing during the 4 years of undergrad the path to GATE won’t be particularly rosy! And regarding specialization stuff, that doesn’t happen right away. After one enters the Master’s program various new ideas/avenues normally emerges in front of a student and based on that he/she might completely choose a new stream to specialize than intended while entering. It is in that respect a thorough fundamental understanding of the whole stream becomes important and GATE tests that too.
Besides GATE does not ask lengthy questions anymore. The whole exam is now multiple choice based — which in my opinion is the right direction.
The point made for the GATE to be subject exam and thus ” 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. ” is completely valid. I for one agree that GATE does identifies those fellows who have done undergrads well but it also leaves out the fellows who have potential for Grad studies but not slogging for GATE .So there should be some seats for such candidates also.
Dr. Arunn,
This issue needed thought and it is really nice of you to have raised it on a public platform (if I could dare to call this so).
1. GATE was a good exam before its questions were accompanied with multiple choices. I don’t see any harm in removing this current trend and reverting to the original.
2. GRE is an examination, in my opinion, that demands the use of a language that cannot be spoken. More seriously, TOEFL could be a better option if one wanted communication skills to go hand in hand with technical capacity.
3. In my opinion, the higher one studies, the more of mathematics he faces. But the mathematics section of any GATE paper is generally too simple and this is where one could actually question if GATE is still credible enough as an entrance examination.
4. I do have a solution in hand. If equal weightage could be given for both – GATE and the interview that follows, it should do a lot of good. IITM mechanical engineering branch does not have any interviews before admission while all other IITs do. But those interviews again end up filtering students with lower scores and admitting the top rankers.
5. The admission process is another joke. A top ranker gets a seat in every IIT and blocks the seat till the end of the admission process. People with slightly lower ranks don’t get a seat anywhere, though they are qualified enough to do so. My AIR was 324 and I got a call for interview from all IITs except IITM. And the interview dates clashed and I could attend only one out of four interviews, where more than 500 students were being interviewed in a single day for a little more than ten seats. I was about to take admission at PSG tech, when fortunately, the spot admission process came up and I was given a seat. Now, does this mean that IISc and all the IITs put together cannot offer 324 seats in the general category for an M.Tech in Mechanical Engineering with all specializations put together?
These are some major issues I found with GATE and I have added my thoughts on the admission process that follows. Again, this is just my opinion and I shall stay updated on this through your wonderful site.
Dear guys who have commented until now: Thanks for your thoughts. Shall respond soon in a separate post.
Cheers,
Arunn
Dr Arunn,
Like some of the others in the replies, I cleared both GATE and GRE. I did a Masters at IIT and am now in a PhD program in the US. I think, what accompanies GRE is also the detailed applications and the essays and recommendations. The US system, in a way, checks for the motivation of the student to pursue a masters. In India, (from what I found), many of the students coming through GATE are not that interested in the degree or research, but for the employment opportunities (in Govt sector or Software). That the intake through GATE is more of the un-interested student than a student with genuine interest, is the bigger problem.
In my opinion, IITs should continue with GATE, but should think up of better policies (vis-a-vis recruiting by good research companies and a good pay, or even a passport to top 10-20 schools in the US for a PhD) to retain the good non-IIT BTech students, who are keen on a Masters. Right now, I personally believe that a lot of good students end up in not so good US universities, because IIT has not positioned and sold its Masters and Doctoral Program as well as it has done its Undergrad program.
Kaushik
Thanks for sharing your views.
I concur.
Cheers,
Arunn
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