IIT Roorkee Admission Through GATE: Data Science, AI, CSE M.Tech and PhD

IIT Roorkee's address is Roorkee 247 667, Uttarakhand. Its PhD brochure places the town at the foothills of the Himalayas in Hardwar district, connected to Delhi by rail and road. The institute has three campuses: the main campus at Roorkee, a campus at Saharanpur, and an extension centre at Greater Noida. Students generally live on the Roorkee campus, except those in three Saharanpur departments, which include Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing.

For a GATE DA or CS candidate, three units matter most.

• The Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, which runs the M.Tech in Data Science and the M.Tech in Artificial Intelligence, and admits PhD students.
• The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, with the M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering and a PhD.
• The Department of Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing at Saharanpur, whose M.Tech accepts DA and CS among other papers.

If you are coming from the south, note that the M.Tech route for GATE candidates has no test or interview in the 2026 brochure. You travel only for document verification after taking a seat.

Annexure 2 of the 2026-27 brochure lists, for each programme, "main" GATE disciplines and "other" GATE disciplines, each with its own seats by category. That split matters for DA.

M.Tech (2026-27)	Main GATE papers	Other GATE papers
Data Science	DA, CS, EC, EE, MA, CE, ME, ST	AE, BM, BT, CH, MT, GE, IN, PH, PI
Artificial Intelligence	CS, EC, EE	DA, MA, CE, IN, ME, PH, ST, GE
Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing (Saharanpur)	DA, MA, ST, CS, EE, EC, XE	None
Computer Science and Engineering	CS	None

For Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, the brochure prints the main block as 6 UR, 1 GEN-EWS, 4 OBC, 2 SC and 1 ST seats. The other-papers block is 2, 1, 2, 1 and 0 for Data Science and 2, 1, 1, 1 and 1 for Artificial Intelligence. So a GATE DA candidate competes for main seats in Data Science but only for the small other-papers block in Artificial Intelligence. The CSE M.Tech lists 15 UR, 4 GEN-EWS, 10 OBC, 5 SC and 3 ST seats, all for GATE CS.

Degree rules differ too. Data Science and Artificial Intelligence accept a B.E./B.Tech in any engineering discipline or a five-year integrated M.Sc. The CSE M.Tech asks for a B.E./B.Tech in CSE, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or Mathematics and Computing, or equivalent. A DS and AI graduate therefore meets the degree rule for CSE, but still needs a GATE CS score. A few other M.Tech programmes also list DA, including Hydrology, Computational Materials Engineering, Transportation Systems Management, Structural and Computational Biology, and Sustainable Energy Engineering.

This is the detail that sets IIT Roorkee's process apart. The brochure says merit lists are prepared from "valid Normalized GATE marks", which IIT Roorkee calculates as your marks out of 100 divided by the maximum marks awarded in that paper that year, multiplied by 100. Its example: 64 marks where the top mark was 92 gives 69.57.

Because the normalised marks of different papers go into one merit list for a department's programmes, a DA candidate and a CS candidate applying to Data Science are compared on this scale. Your position depends on your marks relative to the top mark in your own paper that year.

Two other rules follow from the brochure. You submit one application with one GATE scorecard. If you want to use a second scorecard, say DA from 2026 and CS from 2025, you need a separate application with a fresh registration. GATE 2024, 2025 and 2026 qualifiers were all eligible to register on COAP 2026.

Step	2026 cycle
Application portal	Opened 27 March 2026; last date extended to 21 April 2026 (11:59 p.m.)
Application fee	Rs. 500 (GEN/GEN-EWS/OBC-NCL), Rs. 250 (SC/ST/PwD), nil for female candidates
Preferences	Up to 14 programmes, which cannot be changed after submission
Online registration	11 and 12 July 2026
Document verification in person	13 July (Saharanpur campus departments), 14 July (all others, Roorkee)
Classes	From 16 July 2026

IIT Roorkee was also the coordinating institute for COAP 2026, the portal all IITs used for M.Tech offers. Offers to GATE candidates appear on COAP. Upgrades to a higher preference happen automatically while seats free up, until you choose "Accept and Freeze", after which no upgrade is made. The admission page posted offer lists for ten rounds in 2026, followed by a Special Round (Round 11).

The minimum academic record is 60% or CGPA 6.00 out of 10 for General, GEN-EWS and OBC-NCL candidates and 55% or 5.50 for SC/ST/PwD candidates. Final-year students may apply if they finish every requirement, including back papers, before registration. GATE-qualified candidates admitted within the sanctioned intake receive MoE assistantship, subject to the rules.

PhD admission runs every semester. For the current cycle, the Spring Semester 2026-27 brochure gave these dates: applications from 21 September to 20 October 2026, tentative interviews and/or written tests from 16 to 21 November 2026, in-person registration on 7 and 8 January 2027, and classes from 11 January 2027. The fee is Rs. 500 per department, centre or school (Rs. 250 for SC/ST/PwD). The brochure says selection is "purely based on merit" and that each department tells shortlisted candidates the dates of its test or interview.

The common eligibility rules include these routes.

• A four-year bachelor's degree with CGPA 7.50 or 75%, plus a national test such as GATE.
• A master's degree with CGPA 6.0 or 60% (5.50 or 55% for SC/ST/PwD), plus a national test such as GATE.
• A B.Tech or M.Sc with CGPA 8.0 from an MoE-funded technical institution, or any IIT degree with CGPA 8.0, without GATE.

The CSE department accepts an M.E./M.Tech in IT, CSE, Software Engineering or AI and Data Science, an M.Tech in electrical or electronics, a B.E./B.Tech in CSE, IT or Mathematics and Computing, or a five-year BS-MS in Mathematics and Computing. The Mehta Family School is broader: a bachelor's degree in any engineering branch (including Data Science and AI and ML), a four-year BS in Mathematics and Computing, Mathematics or Economics, or one of several listed master's routes.

For the Autumn 2026-27 cycle, CSE's interview notice set the interview syllabus as the GATE CS 2026 syllabus, with interviews in person at the department on 1 and 2 June 2026.

IIT Roorkee's 2026 M.Tech offer lists name the candidates and programmes offered in each round, but they print no cut-off marks, and the brochure gives none either. This page therefore shows no M.Tech cut-off.

The one official figure found is for the CSE PhD. In its Autumn 2026-27 interview notice, the department said that for full-time candidates with Institute Assistantship, other than B.Tech graduates of CFTIs and B.Tech/M.Tech graduates of IITs, shortlisting was based on the recent GATE score with these cut-offs.

Category	GATE score cut-off (CSE PhD shortlisting, Autumn 2026-27)
GEN	452
GEN-EWS/OBC-NCL	407
SC/ST	303

These are shortlisting thresholds for a PhD interview, not M.Tech admission scores, and they may change each semester.

IIT graduates with CGPA 8.00 or more can get direct M.Tech admission without GATE, on supernumerary seats, by a direct offer from IIT Roorkee. Under the Golden Girl Scheme, a female first-rank holder from an IIT or a top-50 NIRF institution in the most recent year can be admitted after an interview, without an all-India exam. M.Tech students may switch to the PhD after the first year if they meet the eligibility rules.

Contacts: pgadmission@iitr.ac.in (M.Tech; WhatsApp messages to 6395059674 during working hours) and phdadmission@iitr.ac.in (PhD).

For 2027:

1. Pick the paper that keeps your preferred programmes open. DA gives you Data Science and Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing on main seats; CS adds the CSE M.Tech.
2. Prepare with how to prepare for GATE DA 2027 or how to prepare for GATE CSE 2027, plus previous papers and practice tests. Exam dates are on GATE 2027.
3. Order your 14 preferences with care, since they are locked once you submit.

IIT Guwahati, which also accepts GATE DA for M.Tech, is covered at IIT Guwahati.