Hey

Gate Score of 8.44 means you haven't qualified the gate paper. You will be able to participate in COAP , which is the counselling for IIT admission and CCMT which is the counselling of NIT admission only if you qualify the gate paper.

Even the government colleges of various state will require qualified gate marks.

But dont worry.

If you want to join Mtech this year itself you can try private engineering colleges which seperately conducts exam for mtech like BITSAT etc.

There are various other colleges also. Otherwise you can give it a try next year.

Hope this helped you

All the best!