67-yr-old retired teacher from IIT-Madras zone cracks GATE

67-yr-old retired teacher from IIT-Madras zone cracks GATE

17-Year-Old From IIT-Kanpur Zone Youngest to Qualify

Yogita.Rao@timesgroup.com

Mumbai:23.03.2021 

A 67-year-old from the IIT-Madras zone and a 17-year-old prodigy from the IIT-Kanpur region were among the only 17.8% candidates who cracked Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) this year.

Ritik Sharma, 17, a thirdyear mechanical engineering student from Dayalbagh Educational Institute in Uttar Pradesh is the youngest to qualify. Usually, BTech graduates or final-year students take the exam.

Sankaranarayanan Sankarapandian is a retired teacher from the IIT-Madras zone and has qualified in both computer science & engineering and mathematics. He had completed his MSc in 1976 from AVVM Sri Pushpam College, Thanjavur. The organising institutes do not impose an age bar on candidates. An 88-year-old was the oldest to register for the test this year but did not appear for it eventually.

GATE is a qualifying exam for those seeking admissions to masters and PhD programmes in science and technology and placements in public sector undertakings. The success rate in the exam is usually below 20%.

Of more than 1.2 lakh candidates who cleared the exam, one-fourth are currently in their final-year, also the highest numbers in any category, said Deepankar Choudhury, from IIT-Bombay, organising chairman of GATE 2021. This could be probably because the final-year students are in their regular studies and GATE is mainly based on undergraduate syllabus, he added. Due to the pandemic, IIT-Bombay, the organising institute for GATE 2021, allowed thirdyear students to appear for the competitive exam too. Close to 10,000 students in this group have qualified in the test. Around 26,000 who qualified, completed their graduation last year and 3,837 candidates graduated in 2015 as well.

GATE, jointly organised by the seven older IITs and IISc-Bengaluru, was conducted in 27 subjects this year, with the addition of humanities & social sciences and environmental science & engineering. Toppers in at least six subjects are from the IIT-Bombay zone, including the linguistics paper under humanities. The institutes had opened the exam to humanities students for the first time. The success rate in each of the subjects varied from 8.4% to 29.5%.

Sankaranarayanan Sankarapandian, 67, has qualified in both computer science & engineering and mathematics. He had completed his MSc in 1976 from AVVM Sri Pushpam College, Thanjavur