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GATE · 15% of test plan

General Aptitude for the GATE Exam

General Aptitude (GA) is the one section every GATE candidate shares. The 15 fixed marks can be scored reliably with targeted practice, making GA a score stabiliser — a strong GA score compensates for one or two technical errors. GA questions are time-efficient: verbal and numerical problems typically take 30–90 seconds each.

GATE 2024 Official Syllabus — General Aptitude: 15 marks, 10 questions (5 × 1-mark + 5 × 2-mark) common to all GATE papers.

Locale-specific study guides

Pass-rate data, regulatory context, and study tips for General Aptitude all change by candidate locale. Pick your context:

Common failure modes

These are the patterns that cause most candidates to lose marks on this topic. Recognising them in advance is half the work.

  • !Spending too long on a single sentence-correction question at the expense of numerical aptitude marks
  • !Misinterpreting "data sufficiency" questions — answering the embedded question rather than determining sufficiency
  • !Percentage-change and compound-interest errors when problems chain two or three rate changes
  • !Syllogism errors in categorical reasoning: affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent
  • !Missing critical-path questions in network diagrams by drawing routes incorrectly

Study tips

  • 1Allocate 25–30 minutes of your GATE exam time to GA — it should be the highest-ROI block. Complete it first or last; never let it bleed into technical time.
  • 2For verbal ability, practise para-jumbles and reading comprehension from GATE PYQs. The grammar and vocabulary patterns are narrow.
  • 3Drill percentage, ratio-proportion, time-work, and time-distance problems daily in the two weeks before the exam.
  • 4Memorise the cube-root and square-root tables up to 20 for fast numerical aptitude.
  • 5For data interpretation (tables/bar charts), always check the units and axis labels before calculating — misreading units is the most common DI error.

Sample GATE General Aptitude questions

These sample items mirror the format and difficulty of real GATE questions. Practice with thousands more on the free Koydo question bank.

  1. 1

    A train travels 600 km in 5 hours. If the speed is increased by 20%, the time taken for the same journey would be:

    • A4 hours
    • B4 hours 10 minutesCorrect
    • C4 hours 30 minutes
    • D3 hours 45 minutes
    Why this answer?

    (GATE CS style) Original speed = 600/5 = 120 km/h. New speed = 120 × 1.20 = 144 km/h. New time = 600/144 = 4.166... hours = 4 hours 10 minutes.

  2. 2

    Choose the word that is most similar in meaning to "LACONIC":

    • AVerbose
    • BBriefCorrect
    • CAmbiguous
    • DPedantic
    Why this answer?

    (GATE CS style) 'Laconic' means using very few words; terse or concise. 'Brief' is the closest synonym. 'Verbose' is the antonym.

  3. 3

    If the sum of three consecutive odd integers is 51, the largest integer is:

    • A15
    • B17
    • C19Correct
    • D21
    Why this answer?

    (GATE CS style) Let the integers be n, n+2, n+4. Sum = 3n + 6 = 51 → n = 15. The largest is n + 4 = 19.

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