GATE EXAMINATION STRUCTURE

EE Electrical Engineering

GATE Examination Type

The GATE examination consists of a single paper of 3 hours duration which contains 65 questions carrying a maximum of 100 marks. The question paper will consist of only objective questions.
The candidates will have to mark the correct choice on an Optical Response Sheet (ORS) by darkening the appropriate bubble against each question. There will be negative marking for each wrong answer, except for the numerical answer type questions.
Each GATE paper shall have a General Aptitude (GA) component carrying 15 marks.

GATE 2012 would contain questions of four different types in various papers:
• Multiple choice questions carrying 1 or 2 marks each.
• Common data questions, where two successive questions use the same set of input data.
• Linked answer questions, where the answer to the first question of the pair is required in order to answer its successor.
• Numerical answer questions, where the answer is a number, to be entered by the candidate.


In all the papers, there will be a total of 65 questions carrying 100 marks, out of which 10 questions carrying 15 marks in General Aptitude (GA) are compulsory.

Engineering Mathematics will carry 15 % of the total marks, the General Aptitude section will carry 15 % of the total marks and the remaining 70 % of the total marks is devoted to the subject of the paper.

For 1 mark multiple choice questions, 1/3 mark will be deducted for a wrong answer. Likewise, for 2 marks multiple choice questions, 2/3 mark will be deducted for a wrong answer. However, for the linked answer question pair, where each question carries 2 marks, 2/3 mark will be deducted for a wrong answer to the first question only. There is no negative marking for wrong answer to the second question of the linked answer question pair. If the first question in the linked pair is wrongly answered or is unattempted, then the answer to the second question in the pair will not be evaluated. There is no negative marking for numerical answer type questions.

Pattern of Question Papers


General Aptitude (GA) Section:
In all papers, GA questions are of multiple choice type, and carry a total of 15 marks. The GA section includes 5 questions carrying 1 mark each (sub-total 5 marks) and 5 questions carrying 2-marks each (sub-total 10 marks)

Question papers other than GG, XE and XL:
These papers would contain 25 multiple choice questions carrying one mark each (sub-total 25 marks) and 30 multiple choice questions carrying two marks each (sub-total 60 marks). Out of these, two pairs of questions would be common data questions, and two pairs of questions would be linked-answer questions.