Need some help on subnetting qn

thanks d_jabsd and arani for your replies. So there is no other way around it other than borrowing more bits from the host portion to cater to just that 1 IP add for the GW?

No, not unless one of the hosts is the router, or maybe a dual-homed proxy server.

I would seriously consider separating the instructor's network from the student's network.

hi there,
learnt something valuable here. i ran several simulations to prove that i was wrong. yes out of the n number of addresses that you create for hosts in a subnet, one is to be used for the gateway, and the rest (n-1) is to be used to setup the subnet hosts.
thanks d_jabsd. you cleared one misconception of mine