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Reference

GATE DA syllabus & exam guide

Every unit and topic, with how much of the exam it's actually worth, plus the exam mechanics themselves. Use this to decide where an hour of practice pays off most, not just what's left unread.

About the GATE DA exam

3h
Duration
100
Total marks
65
Questions
3y
Score validity

Computer-Based Test (CBT) at designated test centres, conducted jointly by the IITs and IISc on behalf of the National Coordination Board – GATE

How the paper splits

15
General Aptitude · 10 questions
85
The core DA syllabus (Probability & Statistics, Linear Algebra, ML, AI and more) · 55 questions

Question types & marking

MCQ

Multiple Choice Question

One correct option out of four. Wrong answers cost −1/3 mark (1-mark questions) or −2/3 mark (2-mark questions).

MSQ

Multiple Select Question

One or more correct options out of four; the exact set is required for credit. No negative marking.

NAT

Numerical Answer Type

Type in a numeric value on a virtual keypad -- no options are shown. No negative marking.

Full marking-scheme reference lives on the Mock tests page; try the numbers yourself with the GATE Score estimator →

Who can appear, and what it's worth

Since GATE 2023 there's no separate minimum-qualification gate to clear first -- it's open to anyone pursuing or holding a degree in Engineering, Technology, Architecture, Science, Commerce or Arts, including final-year students who haven't graduated yet.

  • Admission to M.Tech / MS (Research) / direct PhD programmes at IITs, NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded institutes -- most of which also carry a monthly stipend for admitted scholars.
  • Direct recruitment by a number of Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) -- companies like BHEL, ONGC, IOCL, NTPC and BARC hire straight off GATE scores instead of running their own written exam.
  • A growing number of universities abroad (Germany's DAAD-linked programmes and a few others in Singapore) accept a strong GATE score toward certain postgraduate admissions.

Strategy

The Under-100 Ranker's Guide

70+
Target marks

Not everything is studied equally — high-weightage concepts, PYQ mastery and disciplined revision, run on a repeatable weekly cycle. PYQs are the single most important resource; everything else exists to make PYQ mastery possible.

The core loop

Step 1

Solve cold

Topic-wise PYQs, 2000–2026, no solutions in sight.

Step 2

Autopsy the miss

Every wrong, guessed or slow answer gets analyzed.

Step 3

Log it

Concept missed · mistake made · shortcut · correct approach.

Step 4

Re-solve later

Hard PYQs return after 7 days, then again after 30.

Don't just complete PYQs — extract the concept behind every single one.

Priority order

For every subject: Concepts → Topic-wise PYQs → Mixed PYQs → Subject test → Revision.

🔥 Highest priority

  1. Engineering Mathematics
  2. General Aptitude
  3. Programming & Data Structures
  4. Algorithms
  5. DBMS
  6. Operating Systems
  7. Computer Networks
  8. Computer Organization & Architecture

📌 Then master

  1. Theory of Computation
  2. Compiler Design
  3. Digital Logic

Daily & weekly rhythm

TimeActivity
2 hrLearn / revise concepts
2 hr⭐ PYQ practice
1 hrQuestions / test
1 hrRevision + error notebook
5 days
Subject/topic prep + PYQs
1 day
Mixed PYQs + weak topics
1 day
Full/subject mock + analysis

PYQ rules

First pass

Solve & understand

Work through it normally, absorb the approach.

Second pass

Solve blind

Same question again, no solution in sight.

Third pass

Solve under pressure

Timed, exam-speed conditions.

A · Easy

Can solve quickly. Goal: instant.

B · Moderate

Requires thinking. Goal: reliable.

C · Difficult

Concept/approach unclear. Goal: understand + revisit.

Mock test ramp

1 / week
Initially
2 / week
Last 2–3 months
2–3 / week
Final month
Spend at least as much time analyzing a mock as you spent taking it.
Conceptual mistakesCalculation mistakesSilly mistakes Time managementQuestions left unnecessarilyGuessing errors

The revision system

📕 Mistake book

Every important mistake pulled from PYQs and tests.

📗 Formula / concept book

Formulas, tricks, key concepts and exceptions only.

📘 Difficult PYQ list

The questions that repeatedly cause trouble.

Revision cycle: Daily → Weekly → Monthly → Final revision

Final 60 days

No more endless new material — the ratio flips hard toward what actually moves the score.

70%
PYQs + tests + revision
20%
Weak concepts
10%
New / remaining topics

The Under-100 mindset

Measure preparation by PYQs mastered, accuracy %, questions solved under time, repeated mistakes eliminated and mock-test performance — not hours studied.

Golden rule

For an AIR under 100 in GATE CSE, PYQs are not practice after preparation — PYQs are the preparation.

Reference

Official PDF & Changes

The exact document GATE DA bases its paper on, plus what's different from last year's syllabus so a returning aspirant knows exactly what to re-check.

GATE 2027

GATE 2027 DA syllabus (PDF)

Published by IIT Madras, this year's organizing institute

⬇ Download PDF
📝 There's no prior-year GATE DA syllabus brochure on file yet to diff against, so there's nothing to compare the current PDF to. Once a prior year's official brochure is on hand, its changes will show up here the same way GATE CSE's do.

Why you should appear

Your route into an M.Tech, MS (Research) or direct PhD programme at an IIT, NIT or IISc — with a monthly stipend attached.

M.Tech & research opportunities

23
IITs
31
NITs
₹12,400/mo
GATE stipend*
2 yr
Typical M.Tech duration

*Post-2019 Ministry of Education rate for GATE-qualified M.Tech scholars at centrally funded institutes — worth confirming against the current year's notification.

COAP

IITs & IISc

Common Offer Acceptance Portal -- IITs and IISc Bangalore run joint M.Tech/MS(R) admissions through it, seat-matching across your GATE score and preferences.

CCMT

NITs, IIITs & GFTIs

Centralized Counselling for M.Tech/M.Plan -- the equivalent single-window process for NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded institutes.

Institute-specific

Direct PhD

Most IITs also accept a strong GATE score in place of a separate written entrance test for direct PhD admission -- apply straight to the department.

13 - 17 Marks
Very High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Counting & Probability Basics
7.5
Medium-High Permutations & combinations, probability axioms, sample space, independent & mutually exclusive events Not in bank yet
Conditional Probability & Bayes Theorem
8.5
High Marginal, conditional & joint probability, Bayes' theorem, conditional expectation and variance Not in bank yet
Descriptive Statistics
7.0
Medium-High Mean, median, mode, standard deviation, correlation and covariance Not in bank yet
Discrete Random Variables & Distributions
8.0
High Random variables, PMF, uniform, Bernoulli and binomial distributions Not in bank yet
Continuous Random Variables & Distributions
8.5
High PDF, uniform, exponential, Poisson, normal, standard normal, t- and chi-squared distributions, CDF, conditional PDF Not in bank yet
Statistical Inference
8.0
High Central limit theorem, confidence intervals, z-test, t-test, chi-squared test Not in bank yet

Section 2

Linear Algebra

8 - 10 Marks
High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Vector Spaces & Matrix Properties
7.5
Medium-High Vector space, subspaces, linear dependence/independence, projection, orthogonal, idempotent and partition matrices, quadratic forms Not in bank yet
Systems of Linear Equations & Gaussian Elimination
7.5
Medium-High Systems of linear equations and their solutions, Gaussian elimination Not in bank yet
Eigenvalues, Rank & Determinants
8.5
High Eigenvalues & eigenvectors, determinant, rank, nullity, projections Not in bank yet
Matrix Decompositions
7.5
Medium-High LU decomposition, singular value decomposition Not in bank yet
3 - 5 Marks
Medium
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Single-Variable Calculus
6.0
Medium Functions of a single variable, limit, continuity and differentiability, Taylor series Not in bank yet
Optimization
6.5
Medium Maxima and minima, optimization involving a single variable Not in bank yet
10 - 13 Marks
Very High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Python Programming Basics
7.0
Medium-High Core Python programming Not in bank yet
Core Data Structures
8.0
High Stacks, queues, linked lists, trees, hash tables Not in bank yet
Searching & Sorting
7.5
Medium-High Linear search, binary search, selection sort, bubble sort, insertion sort Not in bank yet
Divide and Conquer
7.5
Medium-High Mergesort, quicksort Not in bank yet
Graph Theory & Algorithms
8.0
High Introduction to graph theory, traversals, shortest path Not in bank yet
6 - 8 Marks
High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
ER & Relational Model
7.5
Medium-High ER-model, relational algebra, tuple calculus, SQL, integrity constraints, normal form Not in bank yet
File Organization & Indexing
6.5
Medium File organization, indexing, data types Not in bank yet
Data Transformation
7.0
Medium-High Normalization, discretization, sampling, compression Not in bank yet
Data Warehouse Modelling
7.0
Medium-High Schema for multidimensional data models, concept hierarchies, measures: categorization and computation Not in bank yet

Section 6

Machine Learning

20 - 25 Marks
Critical / High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Regression
8.5
High Simple linear regression, multiple linear regression, ridge regression Not in bank yet
Classification
8.5
High Logistic regression, k-nearest neighbour, naive Bayes classifier, linear discriminant analysis Not in bank yet
SVM & Decision Trees
8.0
High Support vector machine, decision trees Not in bank yet
Model Evaluation
8.0
High Bias-variance trade-off, leave-one-out cross-validation, k-folds cross-validation Not in bank yet
Neural Networks
8.0
High Multi-layer perceptron, feed-forward neural network Not in bank yet
Clustering
8.0
High k-means/k-medoid, hierarchical clustering (single-linkage, multiple-linkage) Not in bank yet
Dimensionality Reduction
7.5
Medium-High Principal component analysis Not in bank yet

Section 7

AI

8 - 10 Marks
High
Topic Importance Priority Focus areas
Search Techniques
7.5
Medium-High Informed, uninformed and adversarial search Not in bank yet
Logic
7.0
Medium-High Propositional logic, predicate logic Not in bank yet
Reasoning Under Uncertainty
8.0
High Conditional independence, exact inference via variable elimination, approximate inference via sampling Not in bank yet

Every GATE paper

General Aptitude

15 Marks (fixed)
Critical / High

Compulsory on every GATE paper regardless of branch -- same weight for every candidate.

Verbal Aptitude

English grammar, sentence completion, verbal analogies, word groups, instructions, critical reasoning, verbal deduction

Quantitative Aptitude

Data interpretation, numerical computation, numerical estimation, numerical reasoning

Analytical Aptitude

Logic, deduction, analytical reasoning

Spatial Aptitude

Transformation of shapes, assembling/grouping, paper folding, rotation and pattern recognition