How to Prepare for GATE GG 2027: Syllabus, Strategy and a 14-Week Plan

GG stands for Geology and Geophysics. Students and graduates of geology, applied geology, geophysics and the wider earth sciences sit it. A valid score counts for M.Tech, MS and PhD admissions, and some public sector organisations look at GATE scores during recruitment.

In practice GG is two papers sharing a front door: General Aptitude and Part A are common to everyone, and after that the geologist turns to B1 and the geophysicist to B2, and the two barely overlap. B1 is petrology, structure, stratigraphy and resources. B2 is physics and mathematics applied to the Earth: wave equations, potential fields, transforms, inversion.

GG has no separate Engineering Mathematics section; B2 carries its own mathematics.

Compiled from gate2027.iitm.ac.in. Dates may shift, so verify there.

Organising institute	IIT Madras
Paper	Geology and Geophysics (GG)
Exam dates	6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 February 2027 (the date of the GG paper is set in the official schedule)
Result	19 March 2027
Mode	Computer-based test, English only
Duration	3 hours
Questions	65 (10 General Aptitude + 55 subject)
Marks	100: General Aptitude 15, Part A (common) 25, Part B1 or B2 60
Optional part	B1 Geology or B2 Geophysics, chosen at the time of application
Question types	MCQ, MSQ (multiple select) and NAT (numerical answer)
Negative marking	MCQ only: 1/3 for a 1-mark question, 2/3 for a 2-mark question
Calculator	On-screen virtual calculator in recent GATE exams; 2027 rules in the information brochure
Score validity	Three years from the date the result is announced
Second paper allowed with GG	GE (Geomatics Engineering)

Who can apply: anyone in the third or higher year of an undergraduate degree, anyone who has completed a government-approved degree in engineering, technology, architecture, science, commerce, arts or humanities, and M.Sc. students in their first year or above. The eligibility page on the official site has the full table.

A common Part A and two optional parts, B1 and B2, make up the 2027 GG syllabus, with General Aptitude on top. IIT Madras notes on its papers page that the 2027 syllabi were revised. Work from the official GG syllabus PDF, never a senior's old printout.

Part A: Common Section

• Introduction to Earth and planetary systems: planets and moons, isostasy, Earth's interior and seismic waves, heat flow, gravity, crust
• Plate Tectonics: boundaries, motions and driving forces, boundary processes, sea-floor spreading and paleomagnetism, rifting, plumes, numericals on plate motion
• Earth surface processes: landforms of hillslopes, rivers, wind, glaciers, oceans and volcanoes
• Basic structural geology: Mohr's circle, stress, strain, brittle and ductile deformation, classification of folds and faults
• Mineralogy: silicate structures and properties of common rock-forming minerals
• Common igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks: composition, structure and formation
• Stratigraphy and Geological time scale: relative and absolute time, radioactive decay, stratigraphic principles, India's stratigraphic divisions, ores, coal and petroleum
• Introduction to remote sensing: radiation principles and interaction with the surface; this heading also covers engineering properties of rocks and soils, natural hazards and mitigation, and principles of climate change
• Elements of hydrogeology: the PDF lists here the principles and applications of gravity, magnetic, electrical, electromagnetic, seismic and radiometric prospecting for oil, minerals and groundwater

Part B1: Advanced topics in Geology

• Geomorphology: processes, landform evolution, tectonic and climatic controls, Quaternary geomorphology
• Structural Geology: stress and strain, planar and linear structures, folds, faults, shear zones, maps, stereographic projection
• Crystallography and Mineralogy: symmetry, forms and twinning, projections, optical properties, mineral chemistry and cation recalculation
• Geochemistry: cosmochemistry, element distribution, radiogenic and stable isotopes, water chemistry, environmental geochemistry
• Igneous Petrology: classification, mantle melting, differentiation, trace elements, magma evolution, volcanism
• Thermodynamics: free energy, phase rule, phase diagrams, Schreinemakers rules, mineral solubility, Eh-pH diagrams
• Sedimentology: texture, structures, fluid flow, sedimentary rocks, facies and environments, provenance and basin analysis
• Metamorphic Petrology: textures, facies and grades, reactions, chemographic projections, thermobarometry
• Paleontology: extinctions, taphonomy, invertebrates, microfossils, vertebrates, paleoecology
• Stratigraphy: correlation, litho-, bio- and chronostratigraphy, isotope and sequence stratigraphy, Indian stratigraphy and boundary problems
• Resource Geology: ore genesis, coal and petroleum, exploration and reserve estimation, India's critical minerals and fuels
• Engineering Geology: rock properties, failure criteria, RMR and Q systems, dams, tunnels, slope stability
• Hydrogeology: porosity, permeability, aquifer properties, Darcy's law, groundwater flow, well hydraulics
• Remote Sensing: multispectral to microwave sensing, image processing, GIS, geological applications

Part B2: Advanced topics in Geophysics

• Heat flow: conduction and convection, half-space cooling, geotherms, adiabat and mantle melting
• Geodesy: gravity field, Clairaut's theorem, geoid, ellipsoid, datums, GPS
• Seismology and Interior of the Earth: Earth's properties, elasticity, elastic waves, ray theory, tomography
• Earthquake Seismology: magnitude, focal mechanisms, source and hazard, representation theorems
• Potential and Time Varying Fields: Laplace, Maxwell and Helmholtz equations in three coordinate systems, Green's theorem, image theory
• Gravity: corrections and anomalies, separation, continuation, interpretation
• Magnetic Methods: geomagnetic field, geodynamo, corrections, anomaly interpretation
• Electrical Methods: rock conductivity, DC resistivity, sounding and profiling, electrode arrays, equivalence and suppression
• Electromagnetic Methods: EM induction, skin depth, magnetotellurics, frequency and time domain EM, GPR
• Seismic Methods: reflection, refraction, processing, migration, AVO and VSP
• Reservoir Geophysics: rock physics, fracture mechanics, porosity, saturation and permeability
• Geophysical Signal Processing: sampling and aliasing, Fourier, Hilbert, Z and wavelet transforms, correlation, convolution, digital filters
• Geophysical Well Logging: log types and quantitative formation evaluation
• Geophysical Inversion: ill-posedness, norms, regularisation, SVD, global and Bayesian methods

All 65 questions carry 1 or 2 marks. Ten General Aptitude questions give 15 marks. Part A, which every GG candidate answers, gives 25. The part you selected on your application, B1 or B2, gives 60. Unlike many engineering papers, GG has no fixed 13-mark Engineering Mathematics share.

You will see three formats. MCQs have a single correct option, and a wrong answer costs 1/3 of a mark on a 1-mark question or 2/3 on a 2-mark question. MSQs can have more than one correct option and score only when your selection matches exactly, with no partial credit and no penalty. NATs need a typed number and carry no penalty either.

Recent GATE exams provided an on-screen virtual scientific calculator and did not permit physical ones; the GATE 2027 information brochure will settle this year's rules. Either way, practise radiometric ages, plate velocities and Bouguer corrections on a virtual calculator well before February.

Part B holds 60 of the 85 subject marks; Part A is wide but introductory.

No other decision in GG preparation matters as much, and it is final. The official pattern says Part B1 or B2 must be chosen at the time of application. You cannot open both in the hall and pick the friendlier one, so decide before you fill in the form and prepare only that part in depth.

• B1 Geology: suits geology and applied geology degrees. Fourteen wide headings, largely reading and recall, with numericals in geochemistry, thermodynamics, structure and hydrogeology.
• B2 Geophysics: suits geophysics degrees and students strong in physics and mathematics. Waves, potential theory, transforms and inversion throughout.

Look at what your target programmes and any recruitment notification ask for. Still torn? Time yourself on a dozen questions from each part of a recent GG paper and compare the scores.

Before you submit the application, check the selected part once more.

Weight decides the opening move. Part B is 60 marks, so it starts in week one: mineralogy and petrology for B1, the mathematics of fields and transforms for B2.

Learn the shared foundation (plate tectonics, Earth structure, isostasy, Mohr's circle) once and properly, since Part A and your Part B both use it.

A sensible B1 sequence:

1. Crystallography and mineralogy
2. Igneous and metamorphic petrology, studied with thermodynamics and phase diagrams
3. Structural geology
4. Sedimentology, stratigraphy and paleontology
5. Geochemistry, resources, engineering geology, hydrogeology, geomorphology and remote sensing

And for B2:

1. Potential theory and signal processing
2. Gravity and magnetics
3. Seismology and seismic methods
4. Electrical and EM methods
5. Well logging, reservoir geophysics, heat flow, geodesy and inversion

Part A gaps come last but deserve real time. Geophysicists usually need rocks and stratigraphy; geologists need the prospecting methods. Aptitude starts in week one, a few brief sessions a week.

Built for four or five focused hours a day by a geoscience graduate. Read only your own column.

Weeks	Part B1 (Geology)	Part B2 (Geophysics)
1	Crystallography, mineral optics, mineral chemistry	Vector calculus, potential fields, Laplace and Helmholtz equations
2	Igneous petrology; thermodynamics and phase diagrams	Signal processing: sampling, transforms, convolution, filters
3	Metamorphic petrology and thermobarometry	Gravity: corrections, anomalies, continuation, depth rules
4	Structural geology, maps and stereographic projection	Magnetic methods and geomagnetism
5	Sedimentology	Elasticity, seismic waves, ray theory
6	Stratigraphy and Indian stratigraphy; paleontology	Earthquake seismology; seismic refraction and reflection
7	Geochemistry and isotopes	Seismic processing, migration, AVO
8	Resource geology	Electrical methods
9	Engineering geology; hydrogeology	Electromagnetic methods and magnetotellurics
10	Geomorphology; remote sensing and GIS	Well logging; reservoir geophysics
11	Part A: Earth systems, plate tectonics, prospecting methods	Heat flow, geodesy, inversion; Part A rocks, minerals, stratigraphy
12	Weak-topic repair, past GG papers	Weak-topic repair, past GG papers
13	Full-length mocks (3) and analysis	Full-length mocks (3) and analysis
14	Mocks (2 to 3), formula and fact sheets	Mocks (2 to 3), formula sheets

Starting in week 3, one session a week goes to revising older topics and another to aptitude.

M.Sc. students lose whole weeks to field camps and working graduates have only evenings, so on two or three hours a weekday the plan should be spread over 24 to 28 weeks.

Plan around field season rather than against it. Before a mapping camp, finish structural geology and stereonets so the field work doubles as revision; take light topics such as paleontology notes or log types to camp in a notebook.

On weekdays, cover one topic. Weekends are for past-paper questions from your own part.

Part A: the common section

Revisit undergraduate basics with numbers in mind: plate velocity from magnetic anomaly widths, decay and half-life, isostatic balance, Mohr's circle for stress. Know India's major stratigraphic divisions and where its ore, coal and petroleum come from.

B1: Mineralogy and petrology

Crystal symmetry, twinning and optical mineralogy come first, along with cation recalculation from an oxide analysis. Then treat igneous petrology, metamorphic petrology and thermodynamics as one block: phase rule, binary and ternary diagrams, Schreinemakers rules, facies and index minerals.

B1: Structure, sediments and stratigraphy

Do stereographic projection, three-point problems, and true versus apparent dip by hand until they are routine. Tie sedimentary textures and structures to depositional environments. Learn Indian stratigraphy as a timeline with type areas and key fossils, and the morphology of each fossil group the syllabus names.

B1: Geochemistry and applied geology

Isochron dating, stable isotope fractionation and water chemistry are mostly numerical. For resources, engineering geology and hydrogeology, work through ore-forming processes with Indian examples, rock failure criteria, RMR and Q ratings, Darcy's law and well hydraulics.

B2: Mathematics, gravity and magnetics

Potential theory, boundary value problems, Fourier and Z transforms, convolution and correlation run through every method. Begin there. Derive the standard gravity and magnetic anomaly expressions once, for a sphere, a cylinder and a thin sheet, then drill corrections, depth rules and continuation.

B2: Seismology and seismic methods

Elastic moduli and wave types, Snell's law, refraction and reflection travel-time curves, focal mechanisms and magnitude scales. After that, processing from CDP stacking through migration to AVO.

B2: Electrical, EM, logging and inversion

Apparent resistivity for each electrode array, sounding curves and equivalence; skin depth and magnetotellurics; log responses with porosity and water saturation from Archie's equation; inverse theory with norms, regularisation and SVD. Add geotherms and the geoid for heat flow and geodesy.

Remote sensing, GIS and GPS-based geodesy are where GG meets Geomatics. If you are considering GE as your second paper, the GATE GE preparation guide shows how far that paper takes those topics.

General Aptitude

Fifteen marks in about twenty minutes. A few timed sets a week keep it sharp.

IIT Guwahati, which ran GATE 2026, keeps question papers with answer keys in the official GATE 2026 archive.

Attempt Part A and your own Part B from each paper under time; ignore the other B. Since the syllabi were revised for 2027, confirm each topic still appears in the official PDF before investing hours in it.

Score yourself against the official key. Log each error with its cause, whether a misread stereonet, a wrong half-life or a forgotten correction, and solve it again a week later.

GATEiit does not host GG papers. The official archive is the source.

In the last five weeks, sit at least six full mocks or timed past papers at your exam's time of day. Judge any mock you use against the official syllabus and the 15–25–60 split. A mock that mixes B1 and B2 questions or gives Part A too much weight trains the wrong habits.

On the day, aptitude goes first and takes about twenty minutes. Turn to your Part B next, while you are fresh, because 60 marks ride on it. Finish with a single quick pass through Part A, then return to whatever you marked.

MCQs are the only questions that cost marks, so guess on one only after striking out two options. Never leave a worked MSQ or NAT empty. Units deserve a second look in NATs: millions of years, milligals, nanotesla and ohm-metres are easy to confuse.

One book per subject is enough.

Subject	Widely used texts
Mineralogy and optics	Klein and Dutrow, Manual of Mineral Science; William D. Nesse, Introduction to Optical Mineralogy
Igneous and metamorphic petrology	John D. Winter, Principles of Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology
Structural geology	Haakon Fossen, Structural Geology
Sedimentology and stratigraphy	Gary Nichols, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
Paleontology	E. N. K. Clarkson, Invertebrate Palaeontology and Evolution
Indian stratigraphy	D. N. Wadia, Geology of India; M. S. Krishnan, Geology of India and Burma
Geochemistry and isotopes	Krauskopf and Bird, Introduction to Geochemistry; Gunter Faure, Principles of Isotope Geology
Hydrogeology	David K. Todd, Groundwater Hydrology; Freeze and Cherry, Groundwater
Engineering geology	Richard E. Goodman, Introduction to Rock Mechanics
Remote sensing	Lillesand, Kiefer and Chipman, Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation
Solid Earth and geodynamics	William Lowrie, Fundamentals of Geophysics; Turcotte and Schubert, Geodynamics
Exploration geophysics	Telford, Geldart and Sheriff, Applied Geophysics; Kearey, Brooks and Hill, An Introduction to Geophysical Exploration
Seismology and seismic methods	Stein and Wysession, An Introduction to Seismology, Earthquakes, and Earth Structure; Sheriff and Geldart, Exploration Seismology
Well logging	Malcolm Rider, The Geological Interpretation of Well Logs
Inversion	William Menke, Geophysical Data Analysis: Discrete Inverse Theory

Free NPTEL courses by IIT and IISc faculty cover geology, geophysics, remote sensing and hydrogeology, and pair well with these books.

Mistake	What to do instead
Selecting the wrong part on the form	Recheck B1 or B2 before submitting; it is fixed at application
Preparing both B1 and B2	You answer one; spend the time on depth
Over-preparing Part A	It is 25 marks against Part B's 60
Skipping the other side of Part A	Geologists need the prospecting methods, geophysicists need rocks and stratigraphy
Leaving B2 mathematics late	Start transforms and potential theory in week one; they cannot be crammed
Guessing MSQs	One wrong option voids the answer

No new topics in the final four weeks.

• Two full mocks or past papers weekly, with equal time spent reviewing each.
• Every error-log question solved again.
• One-page sheets: phase diagrams and facies for B1, or anomaly formulas and log equations for B2, plus decay equations and plate-motion formulas for Part A.
• A single timeline of Indian stratigraphy and a sketch map of India's ore, coal and petroleum regions.
• A daily timed aptitude set.

A valid score opens M.Tech, MS by research and PhD applications in geology, applied geology, geophysics and allied fields. IITs make M.Tech offers through COAP, while NITs, IIITs and many other institutes admit through CCMT. IISc and several IITs run separate MS and PhD admissions. Each admission notice states the papers, and sometimes the part, it accepts.

Some public sector organisations recruit using GATE scores and publish their own notifications listing eligible papers and the selection process, which you should read directly rather than relying on second-hand summaries.

Your GATE 2027 score is valid for three years from the date the result is announced, long enough to cover a project job or a field season before you apply.

Students comparing GG with neighbouring papers can browse all 30 GATE papers and the wider set of GATE preparation guides.