GATE 2027 in Vadodara: Exam City, Anand Next Door and the IIT Bombay Zone

On the official GATE 2027 exam-city page, the Gujarat row of the IIT Bombay zone reads: Ahmedabad, Anand, Bhavnagar, Gandhinagar, Rajkot, Surat - Bardoli, Vadodara. Vadodara stands alone. Anand is listed as its own city, and picking one does not pick the other.

That matters if you study in Vallabh Vidyanagar or Karamsad. The Anand district site describes Vallabh Vidyanagar as an educational suburb of Anand, so a student there may be torn between the two. You can put both on the form. Just put first the one you can reach most easily on a February morning.

The official rules: you choose six cities, all from one zone. The list is tentative, and GATE can add or drop a city or allot one outside your choices. GATE 2027 is held only in India.

Every Gujarat city on the list is IIT Bombay zone, so a Vadodara candidate can fill all six slots inside the state:

1. Vadodara
2. Anand
3. Ahmedabad
4. Gandhinagar
5. Surat - Bardoli
6. Bhavnagar or Rajkot, or Vasai - Palghar if Maharashtra suits you better

The distances back this order up. The Anand district's how-to-reach page says Anand lies between Ahmedabad and Vadodara on the Western Railway, with state buses to both every 30 minutes. The Vadodara district page puts Ahmedabad 112 km away, with intercity buses taking about 2 hours and leaving every 15 minutes.

Maharashtra and Goa are in the same zone too, so Mumbai - Thane can be a back-up. The same Vadodara page puts Mumbai 420 km off, so choose it only if you have somewhere to stay there. The Ahmedabad page and the Surat page cover the neighbouring entries.

The district site mentions bus links from Vadodara to Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. On the GATE form, those states do not mix with Gujarat:

City	Zone on the GATE 2027 list
Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad, Surat - Bardoli	IIT Bombay
Indore, Ujjain	IIT Delhi
Udaipur	IIT Delhi
Bhopal	IIT Kanpur

So Vadodara and Indore cannot appear together. If you would rather write in Indore, the whole form turns into an IIT Delhi list, and the Indore page works through that case. Bhopal is in a third zone and fits with neither.

Towns like Bharuch, Godhra and Nadiad are not on the list at all, so look for them and you will not find them.

Exam-city questions go to the IIT Bombay zone office, exactly as the official page lists it:

• IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076: gateoffice@iitb.ac.in, 022-25767068, 022-25767022

Mail from your registered email ID, with your enrolment ID in the subject. For the portal or the papers, write to IIT Madras, the organising institute (helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200).

The important dates page gives 4 January 2027 for the city allotment notification and 19 March 2027 for results. The admit card date and the paid correction window are still TBA, and the page says all dates may change. Registered for DA and CS together? The two-paper page says the second paper's centre can differ from the first, but stays in the same city.

Look up your centre the evening the admit card comes out. A centre on the far edge of the city, or one allotted in Anand, needs a planned route and an early start.

Coming home from elsewhere? The Vadodara district page describes the city as a major junction on the Western Railway line linking Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad, with flights from Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Daman and Pune. For an Anand centre, the Anand district page gives Vadodara as the nearest airport, 42 km away.

Carry the printed admit card, the original photo ID you used when you applied, and anything else the admit card lists.

The district site notes that Vadodara is home to the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Among the institutes GATEiit covers, the two in Gujarat are IIT Gandhinagar, at Palaj, Gandhinagar according to its contact page, and SVNIT Surat. Each page explains the GATE routes for DA and CSE candidates.

Further out, people from here often check IIT Bombay, which also runs the zone, IIT Indore and VNIT Nagpur. The full list is at /institutes.

Your exam city plays no part in admission. Writing in Vadodara gives nothing extra at IIT Gandhinagar, and writing in Indore costs nothing at IIT Bombay.

GATEiit is an online site only. It has no centre, office or classroom in Vadodara or any other city, and everything on it is free.

Go to your paper page first: GATE DA for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, or GATE CSE for Computer Science and Information Technology. Both have the syllabus and a WhatsApp group link. DA and CS can be taken together as a two-paper combination.

Use /pyq for previous papers and /practice for topic sets. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide set out a plan, and /guides has more. Every exam date is a Saturday or Sunday, so keep your weekend mocks to exam timings.

The GATE 2027 page holds the timeline, and the city overview links the other city pages.