Candidates speak| GATE 2017 Civil Engineering exam review 

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee successfully organised the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2017 on February 4, 5, 11, and 12. The Civil Engineering paper was conducted in multiple sessions, and candidates who took the afternoon slot, from 2pm to 5pm, were a happy lot. Candidates say it was the easiest GATE paper; it was short with only a handful of tricky questions .

PaGaLGuY spoke to candidates who took the Civil Engineering session II paper today.

Mit Patel, from Patan, Gujarat, said, “The difficulty level of the paper was between easy and moderate. There were only a couple of tricky questions, I think in General Aptitude, I will get 6 or 7 questions correct out of the 10 questions I attempted. Overall, in GA as well as the technical section, I attempted 55 out of 65 questions.”

Patel also mentioned that a majority of the candidates he spoke to after the exam had attempted 45 to 50 questions in session II Civil Engineering paper.

Another candidate, Ashrumochan Mohanty from Odisha, said, “The questions were easy, but tricky. I attempted 44 out of 65 questions. Overall the paper was focused on concept-based questions, and like session I, most topics were covered.”

Mohanty continued, “It was not a lengthy paper, calculations were easy. Unlike previous years’ GATE papers, today’s exam did not have enough questions from Transportation Engineering.”

Nitin Yadav, from Agra, had a similar review. He said, “A new topic was added under Transportation Engineering this year – Airports. However, not a single question was asked from it, and all mock tests had included this topic. Even Soil Mechanics under Geotechnical Engineering was of 12 marks, usually the weightage is 50% less.”

Yadav continued, “The paper was easy, it was not at all a GATE level paper. The exam went good, I attempted 45 out of 65 questions, I did not prepare Mathematics, so left those questions.”

The Civil Engineering session I paper was also easy but it was a little lengthy. Smit Gandhi from Gandhinagar, Gujarat, said, “This was the easiest CE paper in the past four years, it did not feel like I was writing GATE. I did not prepare well for the paper but I managed to attempt 45 out of 65 questions.