GATE 2026 Low Cutoff Branches: Which Papers Had Easiest Qualifying Marks?

Papers like Agricultural Engineering or Electrical and Electronics often have a low qualifying cutoff in GATE. Usually, the cutoff for general category candidates in these subjects, along with core sciences like Math and Chemistry tends to fluctuate between 25 and 30 marks.

• Papers with tough numerical and analytical questions, such as EE, tend to have lower cutoffs than high-scoring branches like ME.
• Historically, branches like EC and EE often hit the lowest cutoff of 25 marks for general category.
• BM and CH papers are also expected to have low cutoff this year, around 25-28 marks.

Also Read:

• Check branch-wise cutoff for IITs and NITs
• Check GATE 2026 expected qualifying cutoff marks for general category

Key Summary

• Agricultural, Mathematics, EC, EE, Chemistry, and Mining typically show the lowest GATE cutoffs around 25-30.
• EE and EC consistently record lower cutoffs than CS, often touching ~25 marks.
• Reserved categories have significantly lower qualifying marks than General across all low-cutoff branches.
• High paper difficulty, number of exam takers, and performance of the candidates affect the GATE cutoff scores.

Papers with Lowest Cutoffs in GATE 2026

Based on the post-exam analysis, branches like Agricultural Engineering, Mining Engineering, and Mathematics (MA) are expected to have the lowest cutoffs.

• Chemistry and Chemical Engineering papers also fall in this category, with an expected cutoff mark of 25-28.
• While EC and EE cutoffs normally fluctuate, they stay under 30. For the last two years, the EC-EE paper cutoff has been stable at approximately 25.26.

Source: Expected data presented here is from the analysis papers difficulty level and analysis of the year-wise cutoff data for each paper.

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Top colleges in India accepting GATE 2026 Score

GATE Last 5 Years Branch Wise Cutoff Analysis

Based on the past 5-year analysis of GATE qualifying cutoffs by Made Easy, EC, EE, and CH papers have consistently had ‌low cutoffs around 25-30 marks.

Category-Wise Expected GATE Low Cutoff Branches

Reserved category candidates have significantly lower cutoff marks than general category candidates.

Source: Expected data presented here is from the analysis papers difficulty level and analysis of the year-wise cutoff data for each paper.

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Year-Wise Lowest Cutoff Branches in GATE

In the past 3 years, low cutoff papers in GATE have been more or less consistent. The cutoff marks for both Mathematics and AG papers are 25 for the general category.

• We can see a downward cutoff trend for both EC and Chemistry papers from 2023 to 2025, whereas the cutoff marks for EE stayed consistent around 25 marks.
• The Chemical Engineering saw more fluctuation in the last 3 years, from cutoff marks of 32.1 in 2023 to 27.7 in 2025.

Also Read:

Check GATE category-wise opening and closing ranks for IITs

Why Some GATE Papers Have Lower Cutoffs?

Many factors affect the cutoff for each GATE paper. Difficulty level plays a bigger role in deciding the cutoff for each paper.

• The number of candidates is another factor that affects the cutoff. Higher competition will push the cutoff marks up.
• So many students lose marks in MSQs and NATs. Mainly due to no partial marking in MSQs and a narrower answer range in NATs.
• This will bring down the average score in the GATE paper, which will result in low cutoff marks.

Also Read:

Check the previous years' GATE opening and closing ranks for NITs

Candidates must understand that low qualifying marks don’t guarantee admission to top institutes. It signifies that the candidate qualified for the counselling (COAP) and appears for interviews. The low cutoff GATE papers offer candidates an easier path to GATE qualification.