Before COAP i.e Common Offer Acceptance Portal

Suppose a GATE AIR 02 in mechanical with GATE score 995. He/She might fill M.Tech forms at 5 old IITs and IISc and suppose gets selected in all of them. This person might reserve his M.Tech seat at all the IITs and IISc plus simultaneously will also be appearing for PSU interviews. Let’s assume this person gets selected in IOCL and the offer letter comes in July. So until that time, he will not leave his seat at the IITs and IISc and therefore the people below him will have 1 seat less for admission in these IITs. Now if already 3–4 rounds of IIT M.Tech process are over, the seat which he will vacate in July will go to spot round and might also go vacant. Moreover, a lot of PSUs declare their result in August and later and so students leave their M.Tech courses midway to join these PSUs. This further creates vacant seats at IITs. To solve this problem IITs initiated COAP in 2017.

After COAP

After you register with COAP, you still have to apply to each IIT individually and complete their selection process. But now when they declare their result after each round (there are around 5 rounds with COAP ) you will see all the M.Tech courses where you have been selected at one single place i.e. in the COAP portal.

Now unlike before a person won’t be able to reserve his seat at all the courses he is being offered but only reserve 1 single M.Tech course of his/her choice. This way one single person is able to reserve only 1 single seat of his choice and at last, gets only 1 single seat after upgradation at end of all the rounds.

Therefore effectively a number of seats will be offered to other students and hence students with lower ranks will be able to secure seats at old IITs or at least M.Tech seat in some IIT.