GATE 2027 in Thiruvananthapuram: IIT Madras Zone and Kerala's Split List

It is easy to assume all of Kerala is in one zone. The official exam-city page gives two:

Zone	Kerala exam cities
IIT Madras	Alappuzha, Aluva - Ernakulam, Attingal, Chengannur, Idukki, Kanjirapally, Kollam, Kothamangalam, Kottayam, Muvattupuzha, Thiruvananthapuram
IISc	Angamaly, Kannur, Kasaragod, Kozhikode, Palakkad, Pathanamthitta, Thrissur, Wayanad

Thiruvananthapuram is in the first row. It is listed as one city, with no north or south split, so you cannot request a particular locality. GATE picks the centre within the city.

Every candidate chooses six cities and all six must come from one zone. The list is tentative, GATE can add or remove cities, and in some cases it allots a city that was not among your choices. The exam is held only in India.

Once Thiruvananthapuram is your first choice, the other five can be any IIT Madras zone city. In practice that means south Kerala and the southern tip of Tamil Nadu. One reasonable order:

1. Thiruvananthapuram
2. Attingal
3. Kollam
4. Kanyakumari - Nagercoil (Tamil Nadu)
5. Alappuzha or Chengannur
6. Kottayam, Tirunelveli, or Aluva - Ernakulam if you have family in Kochi

Nobody else knows where your relatives live, so treat this as a starting point. Rank the cities by where you could reach comfortably and stay the night. The Kochi page has more on the Ernakulam side, and the Chennai page covers the same zone from the other end.

These are the traps for a Thiruvananthapuram student, because they look like home and are in a different zone.

Pathanamthitta is the surprise. The list does not group it with Kollam and Kottayam; it puts it in the IISc zone. If you were planning Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Pathanamthitta together, the form will not accept it.

Angamaly is the other one. Aluva - Ernakulam is IIT Madras zone, but Angamaly is IISc zone, so only the first can join a Thiruvananthapuram list.

Further north, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kannur, Kasaragod and Wayanad are all IISc zone. So are the Bengaluru cities. None of them can be combined with Thiruvananthapuram.

Studying in the north, home in the south

If your college is in Thrissur or Kozhikode and your family is here, settle one question first: where will you be on the exam weekend? If it is home, use the IIT Madras zone list above. If you will be at college, an IISc zone list built around your college town is the sensible one, and Thiruvananthapuram has to come off it. The Bengaluru page describes the IISc zone.

GATE 2027 is on 6, 7, 13, 14, 20 and 21 February 2027, three consecutive weekends. The city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027, and results on 19 March 2027. The admit card date is still TBA. When it comes, it gives your centre and reporting time.

For us, one office covers everything. IIT Madras organises GATE 2027 and is also the zone office for Thiruvananthapuram:

IIT Madras, Chennai – 600 036
helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200

Mail from the address you registered with and mention your enrolment ID. The data correction window is listed as TBA on the dates page, so any change to your city order has to wait for it.

Look up your centre as soon as the admit card is out, not the night before. A centre in an unfamiliar college can take time to find. If you got Nagercoil, Kollam or any city other than your own, travel the previous day.

Take a printout of the admit card and the original photo ID you entered in the form, and anything else the admit card lists. What you may carry inside is decided by the admit card's instructions, so read them fully.

Two Kerala institutes have GATEiit pages that lay out their GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates:

• IIT Palakkad, at Kanjikode, Palakkad
• NIT Calicut, in Kozhikode

Outside the state, IIT Madras, NIT Trichy, IISc Bengaluru and NITK Surathkal also have pages. The rest are on /institutes.

Where you sit the exam has no effect on where you are admitted. Writing in Thiruvananthapuram is neither an advantage nor a handicap for IIT Palakkad or anywhere else.

GATEiit is free and online only; it has no centre in Thiruvananthapuram or any other city. Open the page for your paper, GATE DA or GATE CSE, for the syllabus and the link to that paper's WhatsApp group. DA and CS can be taken together as a two-paper combination in 2027.

Solve previous papers on /pyq under a timer, then target weak topics on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 preparation guide and the GATE CSE 2027 preparation guide lay out a schedule; more is under guides. For the national view, start at GATE 2027 and the list of city pages.