Chennai: To encourage toppers to join ME, MTech, MArch and MPlan courses, Anna University is planning to launch a new scholarship programme for postgraduate students from the 2026-27 academic year. The university will give the selected 400 students 60,000 each per semester for two years.
Candidates will be selected for the scholarship based on ranks in the common engineering entrance test and admissions (CEETA-PG).
“The scholarship programme is being introduced to get quality students for teaching and research. It will also encourage toppers to study in the university departments,” said professor V Kumaresan, registrar (in charge), Anna University.
This scholarship will be on a par with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) GATE scholarship, through which a PG student will receive 12,400 a month.
Anna University has a total intake of 1,100 postgraduate seats on its four campuses, including the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Alagappa College of Technology (AC Tech) and the School of Planning and Architecture (SAP).
Due to a lack of opportunities, some of the PG courses in the university departments were not able to fill all the seats in previous years. To fill the seats in all govt institutions, including the university campuses, the university introduced CEETA-PG exam three years ago.
Next year, the university will award 800 scholarships for both first-year and second-year students.
“We expect students who studied in central institutions such as NIT to apply for CEETA-PG this year. The directorate of technical education is also planning to introduce a similar scholarship to govt engineering colleges,” a professor said.
Anna University is planning to hold the Tamil Nadu Common Entrance Test (TANCET) and CEETA-PG in the second week of May.
“We will give the exam notification for the TANCET and CEETA-PG tests in the coming week. The results will be released within two weeks of the test. After counselling, the classes can start from the second week of June,” said D Sridharan, secretary of TANCET.
Students aspiring to study MBA and MCA need to appear for TANCET, while those who want to study ME, MTech, MArch and MPlan in the university departments and govt engineering colleges have to clear CEETA-PG.
Last year, 35,323 candidates appeared for both the TANCET and CEETA-PG exams. For CEETA-PG, 5,400 students appeared.
Further, Anna University is also offering research fellowships worth 40,000 a month to 275 research scholars to improve the quality of research.
