iMahal is a full feature portal that specializes in Success and Learning. As a part of our mission, we offer extensive information services on Education and Careers on our website. Based on this, we encourage iMahal users to conduct further research to address their specific needs. To help our users along, we write this weekly column, Dear Mentor:, to offer our advice and opinions. We would like our audience to understand the difference between offering advice and conducting research. As much as we would like to, we can not conduct research for personal, specific, and narrow inquiries from individual users. We select questions for the Dear Mentor: column that address wider issues, our response to which would help many iMahal users, well beyond the questioner alone.

Now let's address the question at hand. The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is an entrance exam for admission to the Master of Engineering (M.E.) degree in India, much like the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) for the US, Canada, and UK. Most respectable colleges in India require GATE for the M.E. degree.

Our advice to you and other iMahal users would be to take the GATE exam as part of the admissions process for the M.E. degree. Just because you can get into an M.E. program at a college does not mean you should do it. The purpose of education after all -- since it is a means to an end -- is to leverage the education for a more successful career. Since the value of an M.E. from a respectable college and any other college that would admit you is substantial, we recommend that you do an M.E. from a respectable engineering college. Therefore you should seriously consider taking the GATE, even if it means a delay in entering the program.

In terms of specific colleges that do not require the GATE, we suggest that you conduct your own research. If you need further advice about broad issues that are also likely to be of interest to the iMahal community, feel free to contact us again.

We wish you success and in your future endeavors.