The GATE 2017 official website has launched a new ‘Live Chat’ facility to help students get in touch with the authorities conducting the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering in case they face any problems in the the admission process.
The Chairman of IIT Roorkee, which is the conducting institute for GATE 2017, Prof. G. Chakrapani says, “This move aims to help students get in touch with experts in case of any queries regarding GATE. It will give students ease of access while getting their queries solved. The reply will be instant and hence will save a lot of a student’s time that would have been spent on phone calls to which they may or may not get a response.”
In case the expert is unavailable or the internet facility is down students can leave a query in the off-line mode. “The experts will get in touch as soon as possible. However, I cannot comment on a definite time for a reply,” he adds.
An aspirant, Prakash Kumar from Bengaluru says, “The response is too slow. I have tried it twice. The chat window says one agent is online, and though initially I got a quick reply, the second time, somewhere around 7 pm I got no response.” Prof. Chakrapani says, “This is the first time, and hence some issues are anticipated. However, all the bugs will be fixed soon.”
So far, there have been over 300 queries. Aspirants welcome this move however they did mention that if the issues still persist, the whole point of quick response will be lost.
This reporter sent an offline query about the format of caste certificate at 12.05 pm. An email was received with the relevant information at 1.14 pm.