The decision to conduct the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) in foreign countries was taken in the meeting of the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) council. The primary motive driving this decision was to increase the number of foreign students in IITs.

GATE 2017 will be conducted in Ethiopia, Singapore, the UAE, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Prof Kishore Chatterjee, Chairperson, GATE 2017, IIT Bombay, said, “The GATE committee 2017 which is consisting of the GATE officials of the seven older IITs and of IISc Bangalore has finalised the logistics to conduct GATE International in February 2017. IIT Bombay which has been assigned to be the nodal centre to facilitate the process of admissions of students in IITs from the six countries are in the process of sending delegations to these countries.”

Prof Chatterjee continued, “One of the teams has already left for Singapore. The other teams will be leaving shortly. The visit to Ethiopia has been postponed for the time being due to ongoing disturbances in that country. The visits are organized with the help of Indian High Commissions of these countries.”

GATE started in India in 1984, jointly conducted by IITs and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, for post-graduate admissions, and screening for entry-level jobs at Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs).

Conducting an entrance exam overseas is a challenging task, especially managing the logistics. The GATE Committee 2017 is confident enough to organize the logistics which includes finalising examination centres, adequate resources to conduct the exam successfully and more. Later GATE authorities will carry out the examination logistics. They will visit the respective test centres, and will be there on the D day.GATE is an online computer-based test and the GATE Committee will make sure that the exam in other countries is conducted at the same time as in India.

“For example, let us take Singapore and Ethiopia. Former is 3.5 hours ahead of the Indian Standard Time (IST), and the latter is 2.5 hours behind IST. If the exam in India is scheduled at 2 pm, then in Singapore it will start at 10:30 am, and in Ethiopia at 4:30 pm,” said Prof Chatterjee.

Recently, on August 23, 2016, the MHRD gave a mandate to increase the number of students at IITs from 72,000 to 1 lakh.