M.Tech, being a postgraduate program, gives you a specialization in a particular branch of engineering or technical field. You can build upon your undergraduate training and go deeper into a technical stream of your choice. An IIT is normally the first place that comes to the minds of the students who think about applying for an M.Tech. This article describes how to apply for M.Tech in IIT.

PG Courses in IIT

The PG courses in IIT for M.Tech and M.S are conducted by the Older IITs in Bombay, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Dhanbad, Delhi, Varanasi, Roorkee and Guwahati. The M.Tech courses are offered in all the core streams of engineering such as Aerospace Engineering, Bio-sciences & Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering, Earth Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Energy Science & Engineering, Systems & Control Engineering, Environmental Science & Engineering and several more departments from each institute.

Eligibility for MTech in IIT

Students with a bachelors’ degree in Engineering should have a qualifying GATE score to apply for M.Tech in any of the IITs. The overall aggregate for both B.E and B.Tech students should be over 60% (55% for SC/ST) to be eligible to apply for IIT M.Tech admission. In terms of the marks, an 800+ score is reasonable enough to get you into one if the IIT’s and a 99+ percentile in the GATE. The qualification Cut off scores are only announced after the GATE results but can be predicted reasonably be looking at the previous year’s trends. Tables 1 and 2 give the cut-off scores of some of the most common courses in the IIT for 2 subsequent years.

Table 1: GATE 2015 Qualification Cut-Off

Table 2: GATE 2014 Qualification Cut-Off

The Admission Process

There is no common procedure to apply for admission in IIT for M.Tech and each one has a variation in the cut-off scores and admission procedures. But the general rule is to subject the GATE qualifiers through a screening process of a written test and an interview. The written tests are a bit more daunting than the GATE and should be prepared for carefully. Along with the multiple-choice questions, there would be descriptive and analytical questions as well. The interview would be with the department heads and associated professors as a final round of test. If you make it through that, you are in!