How to Check Your GATE 2027 Response Sheet Against the Answer Key
After the exam, your recorded responses appear in your GOAPS account and the answer key on the GATE 2027 website. Go through your paper question by question: mark each answer right, wrong or unattempted using the rules for its type, then add up 1 or 2 marks for each right answer and take off 1/3 or 2/3 for each wrong MCQ. The result is your raw mark against that key. Everything here is from the GATE 2027 information brochure (IIT Madras), sections 7 and 8.
What happens after the exam, in order
Section 8 of the brochure lists the steps after the exams end. The dates for all of them are announced on the GATE 2027 website after the examination, so none are fixed yet.
- Your responses become available in your account on GOAPS.
- The answer keys for the GATE 2027 papers are displayed on the GATE 2027 website.
- You can contest an answer in the key during the specified dates, on payment of a fee.
- Evaluation is finalised and the results (scores) are announced. The brochure gives 19 March 2027 for the results.
- Qualified candidates download the score card from GOAPS.
Before you start
- Download your responses from GOAPS and the key for your paper from the GATE 2027 website, and keep both copies. Nothing else is an official source.
- Check you have the key for your own paper code (EC, EE, CS and so on).
- Work through the questions in the order they are numbered in the key, and match each one to the same question in your responses.
- Write down for each question: its type (MCQ, MSQ or NAT), its marks (1 or 2), and whether you got it right, got it wrong or left it.
Marking each question type
| Type | Right when | Wrong answer | Not attempted |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCQ | You chose the one option in the key | 1/3 off for a 1-mark question, 2/3 off for a 2-mark question | 0 |
| MSQ | You chose exactly the options in the key: all of them, and no others | 0 (no negative marking, and no partial marks) | 0 |
| NAT | Your number matches the key | 0 (no negative marking, and no partial marks) | 0 |
Reading NAT and MSQ keys
- A NAT key is usually printed as a range, such as 0.95 to 1.05. If your entered number falls in that range, it counts as right. Recent keys print a single exact answer as a range with equal ends, such as 4 to 4.
- The NAT question itself says how many decimal places to enter. The brochure advises rounding off only at the end of a calculation, so compare the number you actually entered, not the one in your rough work.
- An MSQ key lists the correct options together, such as A;C;D. Picking A and C only is not right: there are no partial marks.
- Past keys have sometimes accepted more than one answer for a question (for example, two ranges joined by OR) or given marks to all for a question. Follow exactly what your key prints for each question.
Adding up your raw marks
Count four numbers: right 1-mark answers, right 2-mark answers, wrong 1-mark MCQs and wrong 2-mark MCQs. Wrong MSQ and NAT answers don't count, because they score 0. Then raw marks = (right 1-mark) + 2 × (right 2-mark) − (wrong 1-mark MCQs) ÷ 3 − 2 × (wrong 2-mark MCQs) ÷ 3. For example, 20 right 1-mark answers, 18 right 2-mark answers, 4 wrong 1-mark MCQs and 5 wrong 2-mark MCQs give 20 + 36 − 4/3 − 10/3 = 51.33 marks. The GATE score calculator does this sum for you.
Raw marks are not your GATE score
Your score depends on your marks and on the paper's qualifying mark and top performers' average, which come only with the results. For papers held in more than one session, raw marks are first converted to normalized marks (brochure, section 8.1). So the marks you work out from the key are a check on your answers, not a prediction of your score. If the final key changes an answer, work it out again.
If you think the key is wrong
The brochure allows contests against the answer key during the specified dates, for a fee. The dates and the fee are announced on the GATE 2027 website after the exam. Before you contest, work the question again from scratch, and check that you are looking at the right question in the right paper.
Last verified
Checked against the GATE 2027 information brochure (IIT Madras): section 7.2.1 for question types and marking, section 7.3 for the 65 questions and 100 marks, and section 8 for what happens after the exam. The worked example was recomputed in code.