What are the benefits of attempting GATE Environmental Science (ES)?

GATE has launched two new papers for GATE 2021, one of them being Environmental Science and Engineering (GATE ES). If you are an environmental enthusiast and want to pursue it as a career, this could open doors for you. Not just that, now third-year students can give the exam. There is also an additional opportunity you can write two papers. One will be your primary paper, and if the infrastructure permits you can write one more paper in the same year from a prescribed set of combinations.

We will see the following sections

• Syllabus and Sample Paper

• Why give GATE ES?

• What are the opportunities after GATE ES?

GATE ES Syllabus and Sample Paper

The syllabus for GATE ES is purely on environmental science-related topics ranging from environmental chemistry to environmental management and sustainable development.

There are questions which a Civil Engineering student can quickly answer with the knowledge of environmental engineering and subjects like fluid mechanics and hydrology. This is definitely a plus for a Civil Engineering student and they can start concentrating on subjects like Environmental Chemistry, Microbiology and so on.

Download GATE ES syllabus and sample paper

What is the benefit of attempting GATE ES?

Earlier, if you had to pursue environmental-related studies - the option was to write papers like Civil Engineering / Chemical Engineering / Biosciences / Chemistry. In these, you had to study subjects which are irrelevant to environmental sciences. Imagine, you want to be in the environmental field, but you have to study subjects like structures to get into it. This makes it difficult for an environmental enthusiast to get a good score in these other papers.

But now, you have a paper purely based on environmental science-related subjects. If you really like it, you will have a fair chance at GATE now.

Who can give it as primary paper?

The intake into environmental higher studies varies from college to college. With the introduction of the new paper, we will have to see if the eligibility changes. Going by the last year information brochure of IITs, we can find out the eligibility.

This is the brochure of MTech admissions in IIT-Bombay for the year 2020. Here they have given BTech/BE eligibility of branches ranging from Agriculture, Chemical, Civil to Chemistry, Microbiology and Physics.

If you take NIT-Trichy for example, environmental engineering masters course is provided under the Civil Engineering department. We can find the seat mapping for NITs here

This is from 2020 admission - seat mapping for NIT Trichy for an environmental engineering masters course. The qualifying degree varies from Biotech and Civil Engineering to Mechanical Engineering. We will have to wait and see with the introduction of GATE ES paper if the qualifying degree changes or remains the same. The GATE paper columns might be including GATE ES from next year. Once again, it could be that along with all papers, GATE ES can happen to be one more paper to get into the course.

Who can give it as secondary paper?

• Students who are writing Civil Engineering as a primary paper can attempt Environmental Science as a second paper.

• Students who are writing Agricultural Engineering as primary paper can attempt Environmental Science as a second paper.

What could be opportunities?

Environmental is a research-oriented field. There are quite a good number of opportunities in the private sector side as well.

This will open up doors into Masters course in Environmental Science and Engineering and PhD opportunities.

Will there be PSU options?

There cannot be an affirmative answer to this. But yes, it is possible. So far, for environmental-related positions in PSUs although few in number they have been taking from other GATE papers like CE, CH and so on. Now they might use GATE ES score.

If you see this ONGC notification for AEE (Environment post) for 2019, the qualifying degree should be from environmental science-related studies. They had to write a CBT paper to get into this, but the qualifying degree should be from environment science/engineering.

Dedicated course for GATE Environmental Science

APSEd launched a dedicated course for GATE Environmental Science on August 20th.

The course is LIVE now. Subscribe now for Environmental Science Course

If you have any questions, let us know in the comments section or reach out to us at support@apsed.in