GATE CS & DA Preparation Guide Module 10 – Full mocks, exam day and after
Full-length mocks and the final month before GATE
How to sit and analyse a full-length GATE mock, and plan the last four weeks around mocks, repair days and revision, with time budgets for CS and DA.
What you will learn
- Compute the minutes each part of a paper has at the paper's pace of 1.8 minutes a mark
- Practise a full-length mock under exam conditions with a three-pass timing plan
- Analyse a mock by section and question type, with negative marks, blanks and time sinks
- Estimate how far a mock score moves from paper to paper at an unchanged skill
- Plan the last four weeks around mocks, repair days and revision
Before you start
What you’ll learn · Before you start
What you will learn
- Compute the minutes each part of a paper has at the paper's pace of 1.8 minutes a mark
- Practise a full-length mock under exam conditions with a three-pass timing plan
- Analyse a mock by section and question type, with negative marks, blanks and time sinks
- Estimate how far a mock score moves from paper to paper at an unchanged skill
- Plan the last four weeks around mocks, repair days and revision
Before you start
On this page
A full-length mock: An unseen GATE paper of 65 questions taken in one sitting of 180 minutes under the exam's own rules, scored with GATE marking and analysed on the same day. is an unseen GATE paper of 65 questions, taken in one sitting of 180 minutes under the exam’s own rules, scored with GATE marking and analysed on the same day. In the final month before GATE, full-length mocks set the rhythm of each week: about two a week, at the hours of your own session, each followed by an analysis of where the marks and the minutes went and by repair days that work on what it found. Full-length mocks test three things that a sectional set cannot: your pace over three hours, your choices about skipping and guessing, and your thinking in the third hour. A mock’s total is a noisy sample of your skill, though, and never a forecast of your GATE marks.
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MySmartCoPilot is not affiliated with IIT Madras, IISc or the IITs that run GATE. The official website and the Information Brochure decide every rule quoted here.
A paper gives every mark 1.8 minutes, and each part its share
Every GATE 2027 paper has 65 questions worth 100 marks and lasts 180 minutes, so the paper’s pace is 1.8 minutes a mark. The program below turns that pace into the time each part of the CS and DA papers has. It also checks a fact the brochure leaves unstated: since the 55 subject questions carry 85 marks at 1 or 2 marks each, exactly 25 must be 1-mark questions and 30 must be 2-mark ones, and the nine official answer keys of 2024 to 2026 all agree.
Python · budget/budget.py
"""A GATE paper in minutes: the time each part and each question gets, checked against nine official answer keys."""
import csv
from fractions import Fraction
MINUTES, MARKS = 180, 100 # every GATE 2027 paper: three hours, 65 questions, 100 marks (brochure 7.1 and 7.3)
PER_MARK = Fraction(MINUTES, MARKS)
# The parts of each paper (brochure 7.3): General Aptitude is 15 marks in every paper, and in CS 13 of the
# 85 subject marks are engineering mathematics. DA has no separate mathematics block.
PARTS = [
("General Aptitude (both)", 15),
("Engineering maths (CS)", 13),
("Nine other sections (CS)", 72),
("DA subject sections (DA)", 85),
]
# The subject part has 55 questions worth 85 marks, each worth 1 or 2 marks:
# x + y = 55 and x + 2y = 85 leave only one answer.
two_mark = 85 - 55
one_mark = 55 - two_mark
# paper_mix.csv counts the questions of each type and value in the nine official keys of 2024 to 2026
# (CS-1, CS-2 and DA): mcq1 is the number of 1-mark MCQs in the subject part, and so on.
with open("paper_mix.csv", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
papers = [{k: (v if k == "paper" else int(v)) for k, v in row.items()} for row in csv.DictReader(f)]
agree = [p for p in papers if p["mcq1"] + p["msq1"] + p["nat1"] == one_mark and p["mcq2"] + p["msq2"] + p["nat2"] == two_mark]
at_risk = [15 + p["mcq1"] + 2 * p["mcq2"] for p in papers] # all GA questions are MCQs
never_blank = [p["msq1"] + p["msq2"] + p["nat1"] + p["nat2"] for p in papers]
print(f"Every paper: 65 questions, {MARKS} marks")
print(f"and {MINUTES} minutes: {float(PER_MARK)} minutes a mark")
print()
print("Subject part: 55 questions, 85 marks:")
print(f"{one_mark} of 1 mark and {two_mark} of 2 marks")
print("Official keys of 2024 to 2026 with")
print(f"exactly that split: {len(agree)} of {len(papers)}")
print()
print("Part (paper) Marks Min")
for part, marks in PARTS:
print(f"{part:24} {marks:6} {float(marks * PER_MARK):5.1f}")
print()
print(f"1 mark: {float(PER_MARK)} minutes; 2 marks: {float(2 * PER_MARK)}")
print(f"Time sink: past {float(2 * PER_MARK)} or {float(4 * PER_MARK)} minutes")
print()
print("Marks open to negative marking")
print(f"(every MCQ): {min(at_risk)} to {max(at_risk)} of 100")
print("MSQs and NATs, never negative:")
print(f"{min(never_blank)} to {max(never_blank)} a paper")Output
Every paper: 65 questions, 100 marks and 180 minutes: 1.8 minutes a mark Subject part: 55 questions, 85 marks: 25 of 1 mark and 30 of 2 marks Official keys of 2024 to 2026 with exactly that split: 9 of 9 Part (paper) Marks Min General Aptitude (both) 15 27.0 Engineering maths (CS) 13 23.4 Nine other sections (CS) 72 129.6 DA subject sections (DA) 85 153.0 1 mark: 1.8 minutes; 2 marks: 3.6 Time sink: past 3.6 or 7.2 minutes Marks open to negative marking (every MCQ): 42 to 52 of 100 MSQs and NATs, never negative: 28 to 37 a paper
Recorded with Python 3.14.8 on macOS 26 arm64. To run it yourself: mise exec python@3.14.8 -- python3 budget.py
Data · budget/paper_mix.csv
paper,ga_mcq1,ga_mcq2,mcq1,mcq2,msq1,msq2,nat1,nat2
CS-1 2024,5,5,11,8,10,10,4,12
CS-2 2024,5,5,12,10,11,7,2,13
DA 2024,5,5,17,10,2,10,6,10
CS-1 2025,5,5,10,10,8,5,7,15
CS-2 2025,5,5,16,6,5,13,4,11
DA 2025,5,5,13,12,7,11,5,7
CS-1 2026,5,5,8,10,13,11,4,9
CS-2 2026,5,5,14,11,5,6,6,13
DA 2026,5,5,12,11,6,8,7,11Runs on this device, in your browser. The first run downloads Python (about 13.5 MB), which is kept for the next runs.
Your run, in this browser
Three numbers shape every mock. General Aptitude has 27 minutes and the 13 marks of engineering mathematics in CS have 23.4. A 2-mark question has 3.6 minutes, so one that runs past 7.2 has taken another question’s time. And 28 to 37 questions a paper are MSQs or NATs, where a wrong answer costs nothing, so none of them should be blank at the end. The month itself is a cycle of mocks, same-day analyses and repair days, with three light days before the exam:
The final month before the exam, one mock at a time
Text description of the diagram
The diagram is a column of five boxes joined by arrows, from top to bottom:
- Full mock: 180 minutes, at the hours of your own session.
- Analysis the same day: where the marks and the minutes went.
- Repair days: re-attempts of the problem families you missed, and timed sets.
- The last three days: no full mock, only notes, the route to the centre and sleep.
- Exam day.
An arrow labelled "next mock, 3 or 4 days later" runs from the repair days back up to the full mock, so the first three boxes form a loop that repeats about seven times in four weeks. A second arrow, labelled "after the last mock", leaves the repair days for the last three days, which lead to exam day.
The method for the final month before GATE builds on this budget:
- Three passes: answer the sure questions first, then the doable ones, then the hard ones, each pass with a minute to finish by.
- The analysis: six tables from one attempt log show the marks by type, the penalties and blanks, the sections, the time sink: A question that takes more than twice its share of time at the paper's pace of 1.8 minutes a mark: more than 3.6 minutes for 1 mark, or 7.2 minutes for 2., the passes and the causes.
- Noise: a mock total moves by several marks from paper to paper at the same skill, so one mock against the next says little.
- The four weeks: two mocks a week at your session’s hours, repair days between them, and three light days at the end.
Key idea
At 1.8 minutes a mark, General Aptitude has 27 minutes, a 2-mark question 3.6, and a question past twice its share has taken another question’s time.
Checkpoint
Check: The minutes each part of a paper has
Sitting a mock in three passes, with a minute for each Pro: opens with a Pro, Premium or Ultimate pass
In this part:
- Analysing a mock: six tables from one attempt log
- How far a mock score moves on its own, in exact numbers
- The four weeks before your paper, planned day by day
- The last three days and the morning of the paper
- Practise: find the time sinks, then the whole lesson
- Find the time sinks and the slowest sections of a mock
- Interview questions
- What makes a practice attempt a full-length GATE mock rather than a timed test?
- Minute 120 of a CS mock: you have answered 38 questions worth 57 marks, and 27 questions worth 43 marks are left, 9 MCQs, 8 MSQs and 10 NATs, 16 of them worth 2 marks. How do you spend the last hour, and what do you refuse to do?
- Your last three CS mocks scored 46, 52 and 49. Each lost 4 to 6 marks to wrong MCQs, left 2 or 3 MSQs and NATs blank and had at least four time sinks. Twelve days remain before your paper. Are you improving, and what do you change first?
- You are sitting only the DA paper. Five weeks remain, you have kept all three official DA papers unseen, and you want two full mocks a week. Where do the mocks come from, and how do you use the three official papers?
- Key takeaways
4 diagrams · 3 runnable examples (Data, Python) · 1 exercise with sample tests · 3 interview answers · about 45 minutes
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Terms in this lesson
- full-length mock
- An unseen GATE paper of 65 questions taken in one sitting of 180 minutes under the exam's own rules, scored with GATE marking and analysed on the same day.
- time sink
- A question that takes more than twice its share of time at the paper's pace of 1.8 minutes a mark: more than 3.6 minutes for 1 mark, or 7.2 minutes for 2.
References
- GATE 2027 Information Brochure (sections 7 and 7.1, and Appendix C) (Indian Institute of Technology Madras (GATE 2027))
- GATE 2027 question paper pattern (Indian Institute of Technology Madras (GATE 2027))
- GATE 2027 important dates (Indian Institute of Technology Madras (GATE 2027))
- GATE 2027 downloads (question papers and answer keys of 2024 to 2026) (Indian Institute of Technology Madras (GATE 2027))
- GATE 2026 mock test links (Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (GATE 2026))
- Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society (American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society (PubMed Central))
- fractions: rational numbers (Python Software Foundation)
- datetime: date objects (Python Software Foundation)
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