GATE Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is a young paper. It began in 2024, so a serious GATE DA 2027 plan should use all three completed papers without pretending that a long history already exists. The official figures below show rapid growth: 39,210 candidates appeared in 2024, 57,054 in 2025 and 69,242 in 2026.
How many candidates have appeared for GATE DA?
The number appearing for DA grew by about 77% between 2024 and 2026. Candidate count alone does not make a paper harder, but it does mean that a small top percentile now contains more people.
| Year | DA appeared | Growth | CS appeared |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 39,210 | First DA paper | 1,23,967 |
| 2025 | 57,054 | 46% | 1,70,825 |
| 2026 | 69,242 | 21% | 2,11,020 |
What marks may be needed for AIR under 100 in GATE DA 2027?
GATE does not publish an official “marks required for AIR 100” cutoff. Our planning model estimates the mark at which each year’s candidate count, qualifying cutoff and AIR-1 mark point toward a rank near 100. It produces targets of about 75 marks for 2024, 78 for 2025 and 74 for 2026. The median is 75 marks.
For GATE DA 2027 preparation, treat 75 as a centre point rather than a promise. A safer mock-test target is 78–80 marks, because paper difficulty, score distribution, normalization and the number of candidates can all move the actual rank boundary.
Is GATE DA harder than GATE CSE?
There is no single honest yes-or-no answer. DA has fewer candidates than CS, but it is not automatically easier. Its mathematics is deeper in probability, statistics and linear algebra, while CS covers a broader systems and theory syllabus. Your background changes which paper feels harder.
GATE DA
- Strong emphasis on probability, statistics, linear algebra and machine learning
- 69,242 candidates appeared in 2026
- General cutoff moved from 37.1 in 2024 to 26.4 in 2026
- Only three previous papers exist
GATE CS
- Broader coverage of algorithms, theory, architecture, operating systems, networks and databases
- 2,11,020 candidates appeared in 2026
- General cutoff stayed near 28–30 during 2024–2026
- A much larger archive of previous papers exists
The median General-category qualifying cutoff across 2024–2026 was 29.0 for DA and 29.2 for CS. Those similar medians do not mean equal difficulty: qualifying cutoffs describe the lower boundary for qualification, while an AIR under 100 concerns the extreme top of each paper’s distribution.
A practical GATE DA 2027 preparation target
Build first toward consistent scores above the qualifying range, then raise the target in stages: 50, 60, 70 and finally the high 70s. Take full three-hour papers, record whether each lost mark came from a concept gap, calculation error or poor question selection, and reattempt the question before calling it mastered.
Because DA has only three official papers, do not exhaust them casually. Use one as a diagnostic, preserve one for a mid-course checkpoint and take the newest paper under strict exam conditions closer to the exam. Topic practice and selected mathematics, programming and algorithm questions from CS can fill the gaps between full papers.
Sources and methodology
Candidate counts and General cutoffs come from the official GATE 2024, GATE 2025 and GATE 2026 cutoff tables. The marks-for-rank figures are GATE Topper planning estimates, not official cutoffs or admission guarantees. We will append the next completed exam year when verified official data becomes available.