Checked 28 September 2026. From the official GATE MT question papers and final answer keys 2023–2026 and the GATE 2027 brochure. Section classification, type counts and the repeat-topic list are ours; GATE publishes no official weightage.
We went through every question of the four most recent official GATE Metallurgical Engineering papers — 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, 65 questions each — against their final answer keys, and classified each one by syllabus section and question type. Three findings should shape how you prepare for 2027. First, MT has turned into a numerical-answer paper: NAT questions carried 30 of the 85 subject marks in 2023 and 48 in 2026, while multiple-select questions fell from 18 marks to 4. Second, the paper is flat: every core section averaged between 9.5 and 14 marks, so none can be skipped. Third, the same ideas keep coming back — the Ellingham diagram, Bragg’s law, rolling, creep, fatigue, regular solutions, the blast furnace and welding appear year after year. Links to all eight official PDFs are at the end.
Official MT papers and final keys; our count.
The paper format
| Item | GATE MT |
|---|---|
| Questions / marks / time | 65 questions, 100 marks, 3 hours |
| General Aptitude | 10 questions, 15 marks |
| Engineering Mathematics | 13 marks (fixed by the brochure) |
| Core subject | 72 marks (with Engineering Mathematics, the 85 “subject marks” used in the charts below) |
| MCQ penalty | −1/3 for a 1-mark, −2/3 for a 2-mark question |
| MSQ and NAT | No negative marking and no partial credit |
| Sessions | One session every year 2023–2026, so no normalisation |
| Second paper | XE only |
GATE 2027 brochure; session numbers printed on the official MT keys (6, 5, 2 and 6 for 2023–2026).
Question types, year by year
Subject questions only (General Aptitude is all MCQ every year). From the table below.
| Year | MCQ (1-mark / 2-mark) | MSQ (1 / 2) | NAT (1 / 2) | Marks MCQ · MSQ · NAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 15 / 11 | 4 / 7 | 6 / 12 | 37 · 18 · 30 |
| 2024 | 17 / 11 | 3 / 4 | 5 / 15 | 39 · 11 · 35 |
| 2025 | 14 / 8 | 7 / 4 | 4 / 18 | 30 · 15 · 40 |
| 2026 | 19 / 7 | 2 / 1 | 4 / 22 | 33 · 4 · 48 |
Counted by us from the official final keys, subject questions only. 2024 Q23 (a 1-mark MCQ) was “Marks to All”.
The single largest shift is in 2-mark NATs: 12 in 2023, 15, 18 and then 22 in 2026. A 2-mark NAT is a full calculation with no options to check against and no partial credit — a thermodynamic free-energy change, a heat-transfer rate, a slag or charge balance, a Schmid-factor or Hall–Petch number. Negative marking now applies to less than 40% of the subject marks (33 of 85 in 2026), plus General Aptitude. MSQs have nearly disappeared, but note one trap they still set: an MSQ can have a single correct option. Every year from 2023 to 2026 has at least one such key (2023 Q53, 2024 Q48, 2025 Q30 and Q45, 2026 Q31).
MT is now a numerical paper: what are your MCQ guesses costing?
Enter your mock-test numbers. MCQs carry negative marks; NAT and MSQ answers do not — and there is no partial credit.
GATE 2027 brochure: MCQ penalty −1/3 (1-mark) and −2/3 (2-mark); no negative and no partial marks for MSQ and NAT. MCQ counts include General Aptitude. Qualifying marks are the official GEN figures (47.5 in 2023, 41 in 2024, 40 in 2025 and 2026, when the new 40-mark cap applied). Our arithmetic.
Marks by section: a flat paper
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering Mathematics | 13 | 13 | 13 | 13 |
| Metallurgical Thermodynamics | 14 | 10 | 13 | 12 |
| Transport Phenomena | 9 | 10 | 9 | 10 |
| Mineral Processing & Extractive | 15 | 9 | 12 | 11 |
| Physical Metallurgy | 9 | 17 | 13 | 17 |
| Mechanical Metallurgy | 12 | 13 | 13 | 11 |
| Manufacturing Processes | 13 | 13 | 12 | 11 |
Darker = more marks (15+, 12–14, 9–11, under 9).
Counted by us on the 2026 section boundaries (the syllabus the papers were set to). Out of 85 subject marks.
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Section (2026 boundaries) | Mean marks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 / 13 | 9 / 13 | 8 / 13 | 9 / 13 | 1 Engineering Mathematics | 13.0 |
| 9 / 14 | 6 / 10 | 9 / 13 | 8 / 12 | 2 Metallurgical Thermodynamics | 12.25 |
| 6 / 9 | 6 / 10 | 6 / 9 | 7 / 10 | 3 Transport Phenomena | 9.5 |
| 9 / 15 | 7 / 9 | 8 / 12 | 6 / 11 | 4 Mineral Processing & Extractive | 11.75 |
| 6 / 9 | 11 / 17 | 9 / 13 | 12 / 17 | 5 Physical Metallurgy | 14.0 |
| 8 / 12 | 8 / 13 | 8 / 13 | 7 / 11 | 6 Mechanical Metallurgy | 12.25 |
| 8 / 13 | 8 / 13 | 7 / 12 | 6 / 11 | 7 Manufacturing Processes | 12.25 |
| 3 / 4 | 1 / 1 | 3 / 4 | 2 / 4 | …of which now in 2027 Section 8 | 3.25 |
| 10 / 15 | 10 / 15 | 10 / 15 | 10 / 15 | General Aptitude | 15 |
Questions / marks, counted by us from the official papers and final keys. GATE publishes no official section weightage. The Section 8 row is contained in the section rows above it.
No section averages more than 14 marks or fewer than 9.5, so a plan that leaves out a whole section gives away at least a tenth of the paper. Two trends are worth noting: Physical Metallurgy has grown (9 marks in 2023, 17 in both 2024 and 2026), and Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy has shrunk (15 in 2023, 9–12 since). Treat those as tendencies, not a forecast — the 2027 rewrite moves several topics between sections, so 2027 counts will not line up exactly with these columns.
Where other pages get this wrong
No official weightage exists for GATE MT. On our count of the four papers, Physical Metallurgy carried 9–17 marks a year (mean 14), Mineral Processing and Extractive 9–15, and Engineering Mathematics a fixed 13.
Commonly published instead: Careers360’s “Topic Wise Weightage for GATE 2027 MT Paper” lists casting 10, material testing 10, mechanical behaviour 8, heat transfer 5, physical metallurgy 4–5, and iron and steel making 3–5 — adding up to only about 40–43 of the 85 subject marks.
Official MT papers and final keys, 2023–2026 (our count); the GATE 2027 brochure fixes Engineering Mathematics at 13 marks for MT.
The topics that keep coming back
| Topic | Where it appeared |
|---|---|
| Ellingham diagram | 2023 Q14 · 2025 Q30 · 2026 Q56 |
| XRD and Bragg’s law | 2023 Q60 · 2024 Q30, Q40 · 2025 Q49 · 2026 Q49 |
| Rolling | 2023 Q25, Q65 · 2024 Q46 · 2025 Q44 · 2026 Q58 |
| Creep | 2023 Q22 · 2024 Q48 · 2025 Q60 · 2026 Q17 |
| Fatigue and the Paris law | 2023 Q27, Q64 · 2024 Q25, Q54, Q63 · 2026 Q37 |
| Blast furnace | 2023 Q18, Q48 · 2025 Q27 · 2026 Q63 |
| Precipitation and GP zones | 2025 Q28 · 2026 Q19, Q23 |
| Gating design | 2023 Q52 · 2024 Q64 · 2025 Q22 |
| Hall–Héroult cell | 2024 Q21 · 2026 Q64 |
| Nernst equation, electrochemistry | 2023 Q62 · 2024 Q57 |
| Schmid’s law, CRSS | 2024 Q34 · 2026 Q50 |
| Dislocation reactions | 2023 Q21 · 2026 Q18 |
| Gibbs phase rule | 2023 Q32 · 2026 Q34 |
| Powder-metallurgy sintering | 2026 Q47, Q48 |
| Regular and ideal solutions; non-destructive testing; welding | Every year, 2023–2026 |
Question numbers from the official MT papers; grouping by topic is ours.
The list is short enough to turn into a revision plan. If you can do a clean Ellingham reading, a Bragg-angle and lattice-parameter calculation, a rolling reduction or roll-force estimate, a creep rate from a power law, a Paris-law crack-growth life, a blast-furnace carbon or oxygen balance, and an ideal or regular solution activity, you have covered questions that appeared in almost every recent paper. Weld heat input, a riser or gating calculation and one NDT identification question round it out.
How to use the 2023 key — and one caution
The official 2023 MT paper is posted in its master order, and the 2023 final key marks every subject MCQ (Q11–25 and Q36–46) as option A; only the ten General Aptitude keys are mixed. We checked sample questions by hand and the key is correct for the posted order. Solving the 2023 paper is still fine; just do not read the key as evidence about answer positions — it tells you nothing about how the options were shuffled in the exam hall. The 2024–2026 keys spread their answers normally.
Four official MT papers: your practice tracker
Tick a file once you have used it: solve the paper in three hours with a timer, then mark it against the final key. Links are in the sources below.
0 of 8 done
Ticks are saved only in this browser on this device.
Practise it, don't just read it
Previous papers show you what gets asked; topic quizzes let you repeat it until it is fast. Start with the topics in the repeat table above.
The ProSyllabus GATE MT library has topic quizzes on the iron–carbon diagram, crystal structures and defects, diffusion, heat treatment of steels, Ellingham and Pourbaix diagrams, creep, stress–strain behaviour, solidification and casting defects, and rolling — the first one is free.
Where can I download GATE MT previous year papers with answer keys?
From the downloads page of the GATE 2027 website (IIT Madras). Direct links to the 2023–2026 MT papers and final keys are in the sources below.
How many NAT questions are there in GATE MT?
In 2026, 26 subject questions (4 one-mark and 22 two-mark) worth 48 of the 85 subject marks were NAT.
What is the subject-wise weightage of GATE MT?
GATE publishes none. On our count of 2023–2026, Engineering Mathematics is 13 marks by rule and each core section averaged 9.5–14 marks, with Physical Metallurgy highest at 14.
What are the most repeated topics in GATE MT?
The Ellingham diagram, XRD and Bragg’s law, rolling, creep, fatigue, the blast furnace, regular solutions, NDT and welding appeared in most or all of the 2023–2026 papers.
Is there negative marking for NAT in GATE MT?
No. Only MCQs carry negative marks (−1/3 or −2/3); NAT and MSQ have none and no partial credit.
Can an MSQ in GATE MT have only one correct answer?
Yes. Every paper from 2023 to 2026 has at least one MSQ keyed with a single option.
More in this series
- GATE MT 2027 syllabus: new Section 8 and every cut
- GATE MT marks vs score vs rank, 2023–2026
- PSUs through GATE Metallurgy: who still recruits
- GATE MT M.Tech cut-offs: IITs, NITs, IISc
- GATE MT 2027: an 18-week plan from the data
- GATE MT notice board — official updates
- GATE Metallurgical Engineering: the complete guide
- GATE Metallurgy: strategy and OMR tips
- GATE Metallurgical Engineering: cut-offs, colleges and placements
Sources
- official — GATE 2026 MT question paper (PDF)
- official — GATE 2026 MT final answer key (PDF)
- official — GATE 2025 MT question paper (PDF)
- official — GATE 2025 MT final answer key (PDF)
- official — GATE 2024 MT question paper (PDF)
- official — GATE 2024 MT final answer key (PDF)
- official — GATE 2023 MT question paper (PDF)
- official — GATE 2023 MT final answer key (PDF)
- official — GATE 2027 — Downloads (previous papers and keys)
- official — GATE 2027 Information Brochure, IIT Madras (revised 27 Sep 2026)
- official — GATE 2026 MT syllabus (PDF, IIT Guwahati)
- official — GATE 2027 MT syllabus (PDF)
- reported — Careers360 — “GATE Metallurgical Engineering Syllabus 2027” (checked 28 Sep 2026; see correction)
official = a document published by the conducting body. reported = a news or coaching site we could not check against an original. Where sources disagree this page says so rather than picking one.
