Manipal School Of Architecture And Planning

Manipal School of Architecture and Planning (MSAP) is the architecture school of Manipal Academy of Higher Education, on the university's technology campus at Manipal in Udupi district, Karnataka. Its B.Arch finishers now land jobs far more often than the class of 2020-21 did, 122 placed from a graduating class of 141 against 38 from 143, while the median offer rose from Rs 2,40,000 to Rs 3,52,000 and has not moved for the last two classes. That median sits beside a five-year General-category course bill of Rs 22,10,000, the single number every architecture applicant here has to plan around. The school sat 27th in the NIRF 2025 architecture table.

MSAP is older than the name on its gate. The school records its start in 1978 as a B.Arch course of Mysore University, a move under the new Mangalore University in 1980 as its Department of Architecture, a renaming by MAHE to Faculty of Architecture in October 2003, formal standing as MAHE's 22nd institute in 2010, and the present name only from April 2019, on the school's about page. The old label has not fully gone: MAHE's 2026 hostel rate card still files architecture students under "FOA", in the prospectus hostel section.

The school keeps its office behind the 10th Block of the MIT hostels, off Gate 5 of the MIT campus, per its administration page, so the school works from the engineering side of the township. It also houses a Department of Design, set up in 2012 for interior and fashion design, per the placements overview.

Most of the class came from outside Karnataka, and most of it is female. Of 602 students across the five B.Arch years, 354 are women and 460 come from other Indian states, against 140 from Karnataka and 2 from abroad, in the NIRF 2026 data it published.

Two other architecture schools carry the Manipal name and neither is this one. The Council of Architecture lists a School of Design and Architecture at Manipal's Dubai campus under code KA02A, beside this school's KA02, and a separate School of Architecture and Design at Manipal University Jaipur under RJ12, on COA's approved undergraduate list for 2026.

MAHE prices architecture and design at Manipal on one schedule, split between MSAP's own degrees and those of its Department of Design. These are whole-course General-category figures for students joining in 2026-27.

Nothing else on this list runs five years, and the B.Arch costs more than double the dearest design degree. It is billed in five yearly instalments, one per year of study.

Tuition itself is frozen at last year's level. The 2025-26 schedule billed the same Rs 2,72,000 first-year tuition and Rs 10,88,000 for the remaining years, with other fees at Rs 1,65,000 and Rs 6,60,000, for a total of Rs 21,95,000, on MAHE's 2025-26 General fee sheet. The whole rise sits in the "other fees" column, and the M.Arch moved the same way, from Rs 4,18,000 in 2025-26 to Rs 4,24,000 in 2026-27.

An NRI-category seat is priced in dollars and lands far higher: US$ 34,450 for the B.Arch and US$ 6,700 for the M.Arch, on MAHE's NRI fee schedule for 2026-27.

B.Arch at MSAP is not a Manipal Entrance Test course. MAHE ranks applicants on a merit list that gives 50% weight to qualifying-examination marks in physics, mathematics and one optional paper, and 50% weight to NATA, then runs physical or online counselling, per MAHE's 2026 undergraduate eligibility document. Minimum marks are modest: 45% overall at 10+2, where physics and mathematics were compulsory subjects, or 45% overall from a three-year diploma that made mathematics compulsory.

The aptitude-test rule is where applicants get confused. That document says a candidate must qualify either JEE Main Paper II, run by NTA, or NATA, run by the Council of Architecture, and notes that a NATA score stays valid for two academic years. Yet the merit formula it prints names only NATA, and it does not say how a candidate holding only a Paper II score is placed on the list. MAHE's own B.Arch admissions landing page goes further and tells candidates they must qualify through NATA, still dated 2025, on the MAHE B.Arch admissions page. Anyone relying on JEE Paper II alone should get the placement rule from the admissions office in writing before skipping NATA.

The postgraduate and design routes are portfolio-led rather than rank-led.

The two B.Des degrees in the Department of Design use a home-based test, a portfolio, a statement of purpose and a personal interview for shortlisted candidates, and a UCEED qualifier in the open category skips all four, in the undergraduate eligibility document. Lateral entry to either B.Des is open to holders of a three-year diploma in the matching field with 50%; for interior design, a diploma in architecture or civil engineering also counts.

MAHE does not publish a last-admitted NATA score or closing merit position for this B.Arch. MAHE builds the list and fills the seats itself, and no counselling authority outside the university publishes an allotment file for this school, so there is nothing from which an outside cutoff could honestly be drawn.

The only NATA figure MAHE prints for this course is the score of 120 that triggers its B.Arch fee waiver, set out in MAHE Scholarships 2026 and described under Scholarships below. It is a price signal aimed at strong applicants and says nothing about the lowest score admitted.

Fill rates tell more than any quoted cutoff. Against a sanctioned 160, the school admitted 157 in 2017-18, 160 in 2018-19, 155 in 2019-20 and 149 in 2020-21, across its NIRF 2025 and NIRF 2026 filings. The M.Arch is a different picture: 14, then 13, then 12 admitted against 20 places in the three intakes from 2021-22.

Placement counts on the B.Arch have more than tripled across five graduating classes, while the median salary has flattened.

Read the two columns together. In 2020-21 roughly one finisher in four took a job; by 2024-25 it was closer to six in seven, and the median reported for the last two classes is identical at Rs 3,52,000. A wider net of placed graduates at an unchanged middle salary is what the table shows, and it leaves the Rs 22,10,000 course bill equal to a little over six years of that median before living costs are counted.

Since 2021-22 the master's line has been small and fully employed; in 2020-21, 17 of 19 were placed at Rs 3,50,000. All 20 of the 2021-22 M.Arch class were placed at a median of Rs 4,15,000, then all 14 in 2022-23 at Rs 4,60,000, all 12 in 2023-24 at Rs 4,80,000 and all 12 again in 2024-25 at the same median, per the NIRF 2025 and 2026 filings. A whole M.Arch billed at Rs 4,24,000 costs less than one year of that Rs 4,80,000 median, which inverts the undergraduate arithmetic.

The school's own claims are broader and unsourced to a year. Its placements page says 200 firms from India and abroad recruit its undergraduates and postgraduates every year, on campus and off it, on the placements overview, and MAHE's admissions page names Space Matrix, Atkins and Alex Jacob Architects among the firms that hire, on the B.Arch admissions page. Neither gives an offer count beside a name. Placement queries go to the cell coordinated by Ar. Purushottam Kesar, per the recruitment process page.

Office training comes before any of that. The 2024 B.Arch regulations build one semester of practical training under a COA-registered architect into the ten semesters, in the 2024 programme regulations, while the school's training page still describes two stages across the ninth and tenth semesters under a mentor with at least 5 years in practice, on the practical training page. The training page's course codes belong to an earlier scheme, so a 2026 entrant should follow the 2024 regulations.

Under KA02 on the Council of Architecture's register, MSAP's B.Arch shows a start year of 1978 and an intake of 160, cleared for 2026-2027 and 2027-2028, on COA's undergraduate list. The M.Arch in Urban Design and Development carries 20 places, dated from 2014, approved for the same two years, on COA's postgraduate list.

Neither MAHE nor MSAP publishes a category-wise split of the B.Arch seats. The undergraduate eligibility document describes only the university's own application, merit list and counselling for B.Arch, and the only state-counselling channels it names belong to the medical colleges at Mangaluru and Jamshedpur, in the 2026 undergraduate eligibility document. NRI seats exist, since MAHE prints a dollar fee for them, but their number is not stated.

The NIRF grid adds one wrinkle on the master's side. It enters a sanctioned two-year intake of 20 only from 2022-23 and leaves earlier years blank, although the same filing's placement table records an intake of 20 in each year from 2020-21, in the NIRF 2025 data. COA's approval of 20 is the figure to plan against.

MSAP has sat in the lower half of NIRF's architecture table for three straight cycles, while two of its five parameter scores swung hard in opposite directions.

Research is the story of the last cycle. For five tables running the school scored below 1 on research and professional practice, then 20.98 in 2025, which is still below three of the other four Karnataka schools in the table, in the 2025 table. Perception moved in reverse, falling from 70.33 in 2024 to 37.36 in 2025, and the total score edged from 53.21 to 54.68 across those two tables.

Part of the slide from 12th is the table growing around the school. NIRF ranked 20 architecture institutions in 2020 and 40 in 2025, while MSAP's total score stayed between 53 and 56 throughout. It was 10th on 43.14 in the 2018 table and does not appear in the 15-institution table of 2019.

Alongside NIRF, its own pages list non-government surveys, among them third place for architecture colleges in IIRF 2025 and first in an Outlook education ranking for 2024, on the school's about page. The NIRF places quoted across its rankings page and about page, for 2018 and each year from 2020 to 2025, do match the government tables above.

Teaching splits between the architecture school proper and its Department of Design, which MSAP's leadership page places under Dr. Veena Rao as head, on the leadership page. Research runs through five named centres.

• SADBHAVA, for allied design, built heritage and vernacular architecture, coordinated by Ar. T N Trivikram (SADBHAVA).
• Centre for Urban Studies, set up under MAHE in December 2016, which has run a summer school on the temple town of Kollur and a composting workshop with Alevoor Grama Panchayat (Centre for Urban Studies).
• Centre for Socio-Architectural Studies, working on co-design and evidence-based design for vulnerable groups (CSAS).
• Center of Sustainable Built Environment, pitched as an interface with the construction industry (CSBE).
• Centre for Inclusive Cities, run jointly with a faculty member from the Manipal Centre for Humanities (Centre for Inclusive Cities).

Several projects stay close to home. The grants page lists a gram panchayat spatial development plan for Uppunda and Shankarnarayana in Udupi district, a study of changing climate on the built heritage of Madikeri, and banana-fibre fashion work in coastal Karnataka, with funders including the Department of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and INTACH, on the grants page.

The money is recent and uneven. Outside money arrived in 2024-25 at a scale the school had not filed before: Rs 62,07,403 of consultancy across three projects for two clients, where 2023-24 brought Rs 5,08,150, and Rs 25,03,765 in sponsored research across four projects, in the NIRF 2026 data. A jump of that size from two clients is not yet a trend.

The capital spending record shows one outsized year. In 2022-23 the school put Rs 17,58,31,369 into new laboratory equipment, against Rs 23,010 the year before, then Rs 1,03,26,265 in 2023-24 and Rs 72,62,274 in 2024-25; library spending reached Rs 1,57,28,341 in 2024-25, and studio spending was zero that year after Rs 60,05,256 in 2023-24, across the NIRF 2025 and 2026 filings.

What those rooms are used for is described in the programme pages. The M.Arch page lists a reference collection of 850 student thesis books and 325 thesis CDs, a climatology lab, and GIS and remote-sensing facilities shared with the civil engineering department, on the M.Arch page. The M.Des Sustainable Design page names simulation, sensing, lighting, automation, fabrication and VR labs, on the M.Des page, and MAHE's admissions page adds model-making labs with laser cutters and 3D printers, on the B.Arch admissions page.

An undated IQAC maintenance note explains how studios are allotted. Each B.Arch class of 40 and each master's class of 20 has a studio of its own, not shared with any other class, and theory is taught in the same room; the undergraduate CAD lab holds 40 computers and the postgraduate lab 20, and sports facilities are shared with MIT, per the IQAC maintenance and infrastructure note. With 160 B.Arch places approved by COA, classes of 40 mean four parallel studios in each year of the course.

First-year architecture undergraduates choose rooms from a rate card they share with commerce, communication, applied physics and social-sciences students, and it offers men more room types than women.

The women's side of that card lists no common-bath room, so the cheapest first-year place for a woman is the Rs 1,48,500 non-AC double while a man can take a Rs 1,30,500 common-bath double, on the same schedule. That men's total is the card's own, although the deposit it prints for the room, Rs 15,000, would add up to more; ask the chief warden's office which figure is billed.

M.Arch students fall under a separate postgraduate card with only two options, a common-bath double in VI Block for men at Rs 1,30,500 and a common-bath triple in IV Block for women at Rs 1,27,500, on the same schedule. These are limited: requests go by email to the MIT chief warden in the first week of July, allotment follows a week after the full year's fee is paid, and postgraduates left out once rooms run out must find their own housing.

The director is Dr. Kalyan Kumar Mukherjee, a Jadavpur University graduate in B.Arch and M.Arch who took his PhD there in 2020 and was principal of Om Dayal College of Architecture in Howrah until July 2024, on the leadership page. The NIRF 2026 data dates his joining to 1 August 2024, and the same leadership page names Dr. Pradeep G Kini as joint director.

That filing names 69 teachers: 2 marked as having left, 9 visiting practitioners and 1 on an ad hoc contract, in the NIRF 2026 data. Of the 67 still working there, 18 hold a PhD; most of the rest hold an M.Arch, with several master's degrees in city, urban and regional planning. The longest-serving regular teacher listed is Professor Deepika Shetty, who joined in September 1998.

The two filings do not agree on size. A year earlier the count was 98, the number MSAP typed into its NIRF 2025 submission, against the 69 named in 2026. The older count may take in Department of Design staff, but neither document says so, so treat 69 as the named architecture roster. The 2024-25 wage bill for teaching and non-teaching staff together was Rs 13,31,24,162, in the 2026 filing.

The school names its own alumni, with batch years, in its current placement brochure: Alex Jacob of Alex Jacob Architect in Bengaluru (1979-1984), Namith Varma of Gayathri and Namith Architects (1980-1985), V. Naresh Narasimhan of Venkataramanan Associates (1980-1985), Tony Joseph of Stapati Architects and founder of Avani Institute of Design (1981-1986), Yatin Patel, Mehul Shah and Bimal Desai of DSP Design Associates (1983-1988), Srinath Advani of Advani and Associates (1991-1996) and Sanjay Balan of RSP Design Consultants (1992-1997), in the MSAP placement brochure. Every name on that list graduated before 1998; the brochure names no one from the last quarter century.

Five Karnataka schools made the 40-place NIRF 2025 architecture table, and MSAP was the second of them.

The gap to the Bengaluru leader is graduation outcomes and perception, not research. Manipal University Jaipur, 21st, outscored MSAP on research at 44.74 but trailed it on perception at 10.62, in the same table.

MSAP sits on the MIT campus of the Manipal township in Udupi district; the nearest railway station is Udupi, 3 km away, and the nearest airport Mangaluru, 65 km, per the recruitment process page.

The PIN codes disagree between official sources: the school's recruitment page gives 576 101, while COA's list uses 576104 with the Badagabettu survey address. Both point to the same campus.

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