This year, approximately 8 lakh students had taken the GATE exam held in February. Of this, only 14000 odd students with the top most ranks are enrolled in the IITs for MTech. IIT odds being such unfavourable to MTech aspirants, many GATE applicants are channelling their focus towards PSU recruitments, 2nd or 3rd tier post-graduate institutes or private placements. However, there is a fourth option to consider in case applicants have the interest and resources to pursue it. Two major countries; Singapore and Germany, accept GATE scores for admission to a couple of their top universities.
The NTU (Nanyang Technological University) and NUS (National University of Singapore) in Singapore are amongst the top 10 universities on the QS rankings list. These universities have been, for a couple of years now, accepting GATE scores for their post-graduate programmes’ admissions. This provision is only available to Indian student applicants, while other international students have to submit their GRE/GMAT scores. Furthermore, two universities in Germany; RWTH Aachen and TU Munich, also accept GATE scores from Indian student applicants.
MS abroad vs MTech from IIT
According to K. Vasishth, a Mechanical Engineering Graduate from IIT Kanpur, “MTech is a 2-year course that is strictly academic. MS, on the other hand, can be completed in less or more than 2 years. The latter is research based, with little focus on theory.” From the job aspect, students agree that either of the degrees will fetch a high paying job in India. However, according to a recent article, many students allotted MTech seats in IITs have forfeited their allocation to take a job in a PSU. The reason for this IIT dropout is suspected to be the pressure for students to start earning soon after graduation.
The one benefit of applying to Singapore is that a minimum 90 percentiles is needed to get an interview call from the universities. This cut-off is much lower than the IIT cut-off which is as high as 98-99 percentile. Raghav Mathur, a 2015 GATE applicant currently studying in NUS (National University of Singapore) says, “It was much easier to get admission in NUS as compared to IITs, since I have also completed my graduation from IIT Delhi.”
One shortcoming of this plan to fly off to Singapore or Germany is that, there is a limited choice of universities to apply to. A total of 4 universities is all that students can chose from. However, considering the world ranking of some of these universities, they are much better placed than any of the IITs.