Hello Prabhu,

It depends on the difficulty level of GATE paper for ECE.

On an easy GATE paper, a score of around 42 can fetch you an AIR of around 5k to 6k, with which you can’t do much than applying for state engineering colleges. But it won’t be useful for applying to IIT’s/NIT’s and PSU’s.

On a difficult GATE paper, a score of around 42 can fetch you an AIR of around 300 to 700, With this, you get interview chances from IIT’s and PSU’s(Some of them). So from there, it is our profile and our performance in interviews that matter. You might get direct admissions to new IIT’s and old NITs with this rank.

But according to trends of previous years for a general category with a score of 42, I think your gate rank will be in the range of 2000–3000. You will get a chance of doing MTech in Mid Tier NITs. You can try for M.Tech at NITs like Allahabad, Bhopal, Surat. You will not be possible for you to get any IIT for m.tech with this score though.

Hope this helps.