GATE 2026 CS & IT — Complete Preparation Course

The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering is conducted jointly by the IISc and the seven older IITs, with the organising institute rotating each year — GATE 2026 is organised by IIT Guwahati. A GATE score is the route into M.Tech and MS programmes at the IITs, IISc and NITs, into direct PhD admission, and into recruitment at a long list of public-sector undertakings, several of which hire exclusively through it. The CS & IT paper is 65 questions for 100 marks in 180 minutes. General Aptitude is common to every GATE paper and carries 10 questions for 15 marks; the remaining 55 questions blend Engineering Mathematics, worth about 13% of the total, with the nine core CS and IT subjects that together carry roughly 72%. What separates GATE from most competitive papers is that it mixes three question formats with different marking rules, and getting this wrong is expensive. MCQs are single-correct and negatively marked — a wrong 1-mark MCQ costs 1/3 and a wrong 2-mark MCQ costs 2/3. MSQs are multi-select with no partial credit, and NAT questions ask you to type a value with no options at all. Crucially, neither MSQ nor NAT carries any negative marking. Roughly a quarter of the paper is therefore free to guess at, and candidates who apply blanket 'don't guess' discipline leave marks on the table every year. An on-screen calculator is provided throughout. Eligibility & who can join: • Candidates who have completed or are in the third or higher year of any undergraduate degree programme in engineering, technology, architecture, science, commerce, arts or humanities are eligible. • There is no age limit and no restriction on the number of attempts. • A candidate may appear in one or two papers per session, from the notified combinations only. • GATE scores are valid for three years from the date of announcement of the result. • Always confirm eligibility, paper combinations and dates against the official notification on the organising institute's GATE website. How the course is structured: The nine core CS subjects are taught in dependency order rather than syllabus order — Digital Logic and Computer Organization before Operating Systems, Programming and Data Structures before Algorithms, Theory of Computation before Compiler Design — because GATE questions routinely assume the earlier subject while testing the later one. Engineering Mathematics, and Discrete Mathematics in particular, runs alongside from the start since it underpins Algorithms, Databases and Theory of Computation. General Aptitude is taught as a short, self-contained track: it is 15 marks for very little effort and is the most reliably scorable part of the paper. Format strategy is drilled throughout — NAT and MSQ questions carry no penalty and should never be left blank, while MCQ guessing needs a rule. Every mock runs 180 minutes with the on-screen calculator available. GATE is normally held once a year in February; always confirm dates against the official notification.