Where GATE Statistics Gets You: IIT, IISc, ISI and NIT Programmes 2026

GATE Statistics has a small field, about 2,100 candidates, and a reputation for leading nowhere in particular. The admission documents say otherwise. A GATE ST score is accepted for a PhD in Statistics at IIT Kanpur, for M.Tech and research programmes at IISc, for industrial-engineering, operations-research and biomedical programmes at IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur, for a direct interview at ISI Kolkata, in place of CAT for the IIM Ahmedabad PhD, and for 61 programme groups at 26 institutes through CCMT. This guide lists each one from the institute’s own 2026 document, with the scores that were needed and what they meant in marks. The tool below tells you which 2026 thresholds a given score cleared.

CCMT 2026, IISc and IIT Bombay 2026 cut-off documents; the marks figure is our inversion of the official score formula.

Use the finder to see the shape, not to decide. The thresholds are of four different kinds, as the note under the tool explains, and every programme has its own degree conditions. Many CCMT groups admit ST only for applicants with an M.Sc in Statistics or “any M.Sc”, and the IIT M.Tech programmes often expect an engineering degree. Check the programme’s own eligibility line first; the score comes second.

IIT Kanpur publishes a matrix of which GATE papers each programme accepts. Its PhD in Statistics accepts GATE DA, MA or ST; its Mathematics PhD accepts MA only. GATE ST also appears in the lists of several other IIT Kanpur programmes, most of them in computing, cognition and management.

For a science PhD, including Statistics, IIT Kanpur asks for a valid GATE score or JRF (NBHM also counts for Mathematics and Statistics). The requirement is waived for an M.Sc from an IIT, IISER or NIT with a CPI of 8.0 or more. So for many M.Sc Statistics students at those institutes GATE is not the only door, but for everyone else it is one of the few.

IISc lists GATE ST among the papers for three M.Tech programmes and in 13 department blocks of its research (PhD and M.Tech-Research) admissions. The numbers are shortlisting cut-offs: clearing one gets you to IISc’s own test or interview, not a seat.

What does 690 mean? On the 2026 ST field it works out to about 54 marks out of 100, by our inversion of the official formula. In 2026 about 31 candidates who appeared scored 50 or more, so the CDS M.Tech shortlist is realistically a top-30 target. The Mathematical Sciences block at 550 was about 44.5 marks.

Three cautions. First, IIT Bombay’s PDF also uses “ST” for Steel Technology in its metallurgy rows; those are not the GATE Statistics paper, and we have left them out. Second, IIT Kharagpur publishes separate cut-offs for applicants whose GATE paper is the programme’s “major” or “minor” paper, and ST is a minor paper for IM and IM1, which is why those cut-offs are high. Third, IIT Madras’s brochure lists a Statistics degree as a qualifying discipline for its CS1 and DA1 programmes; whether a GATE ST score is accepted there depends on the programme’s paper list, so read it before applying. IIT Bombay’s Mathematics PhD runs its own Statistics written test and interview.

ISI’s M.Tech in Quality, Reliability and Operations Research (Statistics stream) offers a direct interview to candidates with a valid GATE Statistics score above a threshold. The 2026 notice does not print the threshold value, and we did not find it elsewhere. The stipend is ₹12,400 a month. ISI’s M.Stat has no GATE route; it admits only through ISI’s own test.

IIM Ahmedabad’s PhD accepts a GATE score in place of CAT, with no restriction on the paper, for its Economics, Human Resource Management, Information Systems, Innovation and Management in Education, and Operations and Decision Sciences areas. The score is valid for three years for this purpose. For a statistician, Operations and Decision Sciences is the obvious fit.

CCMT 2026, the common counselling for NITs, IIITs and other centrally funded institutes, lists GATE ST for 61 programme groups. 50 of the 61 pair ST with an M.Sc in Statistics or “any M.Sc” as the qualifying degree, so a B.Sc holder has fewer options. The closing scores below are for the OPEN category. They are shared across every GATE paper eligible for that group, so an ST candidate competes with CS, MA and DA candidates in the same list.

Put together with the rank tables, the picture is this. A 2026 ST score of about 400–450, roughly 34–37 marks or a rank of about 150–200, reached the NIT industrial-engineering, operations-research and supply-chain groups by the last round. The NITK data-science group, at 640–724, needed about 51–57 marks, which was about the top 30 in ST (31 candidates scored 50 or more). A qualifying score alone, 350, reached very little.