Cept University

CEPT is the only privately run name in the top ten of the NIRF 2025 Architecture and Planning ranking, and the only one from Gujarat; the other nine places belong to IITs, NITs, IIEST Shibpur, Jamia Millia Islamia and the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi. Its four undergraduate degrees all cost Rs 5,08,000 a year and all run five years, yet no single scorecard opens all four. NATA carries the architecture degree and is one of the two routes into urban design; UCEED is the only test the design degree will read; civil engineering runs on JEE Main Paper 1 for the seats CEPT fills itself; and JEE Main Paper 2, the architecture paper, is accepted for urban design and nowhere else here.

The name is older than the university. The Ahmedabad Education Society set up the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology in 1962 with the School of Architecture, on a grant-in-aid from the Government of Gujarat. The School of Planning followed in 1972, backed by the Government of India, the state and the Ford Foundation, and the School of Building Science and Technology and the School of Interior Design opened in 1982 and 1991 (Legacy of the University, About CEPT University). Those four schools are today the Faculties of Architecture, Planning, Technology and Design; the Faculty of Management was founded in 2013 and the CEPT Foundation Program in 2017 (About CEPT University).

For most of that history CEPT could not award a degree in its own name. It ran as an autonomous institution issuing its own diplomas, then affiliated to Hemachandracharya North Gujarat University at Patan from 2002 to 2005 so its students could collect bachelor's and master's degrees. A Gujarat State Legislature Act made it a university with effect from 12 April 2005, and the University Grants Commission recognised it under Section 2(f) of the UGC Act, 1956 in February 2007 (Legacy of the University). An applicant reading 1962 on one page and 2005 on another is looking at both dates being correct about different things.

The university counts more than 2100 full-time students across four undergraduate, 18 postgraduate and three doctoral programmes, and states that 25 percent of all students receive financial aid each year (Admission at CEPT). It is recorded in the All India Survey on Higher Education as a state private university in Ahmedabad district.

Every undergraduate degree here runs five years across ten semesters and carries 200 credits, including the civil engineering one, which is unusual for an engineering degree in India and follows from all four sharing the CEPT Foundation Program in the first year (Bachelor's in Civil Engineering).

The flat fee is worth pausing on. Architecture, design, civil engineering and urban design are billed identically, so the choice between them is not a money decision at CEPT the way it is at a campus that prices engineering above design. The degree awarded for BCE is a Bachelor of Technology (Honours) in Civil Engineering rather than a B.E., and the Honours in both BCE and B.Des depends on the credits a student actually earns rather than being automatic (BCE admission information).

A fifth undergraduate degree is still on the site and should not be applied for. The five-year Bachelor's in Interior Design, the Faculty of Design programme that descends most directly from the 1991 School of Interior Design, carries the note "Admissions closed since 2023" at the top of its own page, and it has no admissions page behind it (Bachelor's in Interior Design). CEPT's admissions index nonetheless still lists BID among the programmes admissions are open for (Admission at CEPT), so a prospective interior designer should read the programme page, not the index, and look at the master's in Interior Design instead.

Postgraduate fees split cleanly along faculty lines. The three Faculty of Technology master's programmes are the cheaper set at Rs 5,27,000 a year (Master's in Structural Engineering Design admission information, Master's in Construction Engineering and Management admission information), and every other master's is Rs 6,02,000 (Master's in Urban Planning admission information). All of them run two years over four semesters and carry 80 credits (Master's in Urban Planning). The eighteen master's degrees CEPT counts are admitted through the fifteen processes below, because the Faculty of Planning admits four of them on one combined intake.

One row in that table is filed where an applicant would not look for it. The master's in Interior Design is run by the Faculty of Architecture, not by the Faculty of Design, even though the Faculty of Design is the direct descendant of the 1991 School of Interior Design (Master's in Interior Design admission information, About CEPT University). The Faculty of Design's own two master's programmes are Computational Design and Fabrication and Furniture Design.

Three doctoral programmes run alongside, in Architecture, Planning and Technology (Admission at CEPT). CEPT does not publish a standing hostel or mess charge next to these tuition figures, so the annual fee above is tuition and not a cost of attendance.

Four degrees, four tests, and only one of the tests is read by more than one degree. NATA counts for architecture and for urban design; every other pairing of scorecard and degree is a dead end, which is what catches out applicants who assume an architecture-side score opens every architecture-side door.

Behind the architecture and urban design rows sits the Council of Architecture. CoA fixes the eligibility floor CEPT applies, conducts NATA, and its guidelines together with the ACPC's govern how CEPT builds the merit list for the 90 B.Arch seats it fills itself (B.Arch admission information). What that means at the application stage is a subject list, not just a score. B.Arch needs Physics and Mathematics as compulsory 10+2 subjects alongside one of Chemistry, Biology, a technical vocational subject, Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Practices, Engineering Graphics or Business Studies, at 45 percent in aggregate, or a 10+3 diploma with Mathematics at the same 45 percent, and every subject has to come from a single board (B.Arch admission information). Urban design asks for the same subject list at 50 percent, design asks 50 percent aggregate in the qualifying examination, and civil engineering asks 45 percent in the 12th Science examination for general-category candidates and 40 percent for reserved ones (BUD admission information, B.Des admission information, BCE admission information).

Two rows in that table contradict what a candidate may have been told. A JEE Main Paper 2 percentile, the B.Arch and B.Planning paper, is accepted for the urban design degree and is not accepted for the architecture degree: the B.Arch merit mark is built from NATA and nothing else (B.Arch admission information). And the design degree states in as many words that GUJCET, JEE and NATA scores are not accepted as eligibility criteria for it, so a designer who sat NATA instead of UCEED has no route into B.Des that year (B.Des admission information).

Postgraduate entry runs on a test CEPT conducts itself. The CEPT PG Test is taken online from home and is a multiple-choice paper on verbal English, logical reasoning and mathematical ability, and it is compulsory for anyone without an accepted national score (Master's in Building Energy Performance admission information). Which national score exempts a candidate depends on the programme, and the lists are not the same. The combined planning admission is the only one that reads UGC NET, alongside GATE; the master's in Urban Design, also a Faculty of Planning programme, reads GATE and stops there, as do the architecture and technology programmes; the two Faculty of Management programmes read CAT, CMAT, GMAT, XAT, ATMA or MAT; and the two Faculty of Design master's programmes name no national test at all, so every national applicant to Computational Design and Fabrication or Furniture Design sits the CEPT PG Test whatever else they hold (Master's in Urban Planning admission information, Master's in Urban Design admission information, Master's in Landscape Architecture admission information, Master's in Real Estate admission information, Master's in Computational Design and Fabrication admission information). International applicants submit GRE, or GMAT or GRE for the management pair, and may sit the CEPT PG Test instead if they hold neither.

A score alone will not carry a postgraduate application. The planning programmes ask for a portfolio of academic, professional and independent work as a single PDF of no more than 25 MB, a statement of purpose, and references from two referees who may upload their letters up to three days after the closing date (Master's in Urban Planning admission information). Most programmes then close with an online interview in front of an expert panel, with the submitted portfolio forming part of the conversation (Master's in Interior Design admission information). Three publish no interview stage at all - Architectural Tectonics, Housing Design and the master's in Urban Design - so on those the documents, the portfolio and the test score are the entire assessment (Master's in Architectural Tectonics admission information, Master's in Urban Design admission information). Architectural History and Research replaces the live panel with a pre-recorded interview video of no more than three minutes, uploaded with the application form and marked as one of the evaluation criteria (Master's in Architectural History and Research admission information).

The planning faculty then does something no other part of the university does. Urban Planning, Urban Infrastructure, its water and sanitation variant, and Urban Transport Systems share one application form and one combined intake, and every admitted student begins in a common Foundation semester. Applicants list all four preferences when they apply, restate them at the end of Semester 1, and the seat in a specific programme is allotted then, with no interview or further evaluation at that stage (Master's in Urban Planning admission information). Someone applying for one of those four is really applying to the Faculty of Planning and choosing the specialisation a semester later.

CEPT publishes no programme-wise closing rank or closing score. Merit ranks are shown to individual applicants on their own dashboard on the admission portal, and an offer goes out by email in merit order with the fee payable within two to three working days of receiving it (BCE admission information, B.Arch admission information). There is no public list to check a score against before applying, and any figure circulating as a CEPT cutoff has not come from the university.

What the university does put on record, in the Architecture and Planning return it files to NIRF, is how full each side of the house runs, and the two halves behave differently.

For a candidate that difference is practical rather than academic. The undergraduate rows are full or one seat short of full in all three years, so the line is set entirely by whoever else applied and there is no slack in it. The postgraduate rows fall short in every year on the return, and the gap widens as the intake grows, from three unfilled places against 232 to twenty-nine against 292, which is why a master's applicant with a genuine portfolio and a clean qualifying percentage has more room than the raw intake figures suggest.

The ACPC seats are not CEPT's to publish either. Those admissions are conducted by the Admission Committee for Professional Courses on its own portal at gujacpc.admissions.nic.in, and CEPT's own pages send state-quota candidates there rather than quoting a closing merit (B.Arch admission information, BCE admission information).

CEPT reports placement to NIRF by programme length, and the five-year and two-year figures diverge enough that a single campus-wide percentage would be misleading.

The master's degrees are the placement engine. Of 244 postgraduates finishing on time, 217 were placed, and not one is recorded as going on to further study, which is consistent with a cohort that already holds a professional first degree and treats the master's as the terminal qualification (CEPT NIRF 2025 report).

The undergraduate line reads as a fork rather than a shortfall. Of 97 graduates, 65 were placed and 24 went to higher studies, and in the batch before that 37 out of 93 chose further study over a job (CEPT NIRF 2025 report). A five-year architecture or design degree commonly leads to a master's abroad or to independent practice, and neither shows up as a placement.

Both medians have moved up across the three years on the return. The undergraduate median went from Rs 5,00,000 for the 2021-22 batch to Rs 5,80,000 and then Rs 6,00,000, and the postgraduate median from Rs 5,50,000 to Rs 7,00,000 and then Rs 7,50,000 (CEPT NIRF 2025 report).

A Career Development Cell runs internships and final placements and supports students with portfolio preparation and interview readiness (Career Development Cell). That page names no recruiter and quotes no highest package, so the two NIRF medians are the only placement numbers CEPT has put on the record.

The Gujarat state quota reaches further into CEPT than the undergraduate brochure suggests. On B.Arch, 30 of the 120 seats are filled by the Admission Committee for Professional Courses of the Government of Gujarat, and on BCE, 10 of the 40; on B.Des and BUD there is no state quota at all, and CEPT fills every seat itself on an All India merit list (B.Arch admission information, BCE admission information, B.Des admission information, BUD admission information).

The same one-in-four split runs through twelve of the fifteen postgraduate admissions, from 33 of the 132 combined planning seats down to 3 of the 12 in Architectural History and Research; only Urban Design, Computational Design and Fabrication and Furniture Design publish no government-seat line (Master's in Urban Planning admission information, Master's in Architectural History and Research admission information, Master's in Urban Design admission information).

Two things follow for a Gujarat applicant. The state seats need a separate application to ACPC rather than to CEPT, on the committee's own portal, and a state-domiciled candidate may run both tracks at once, since the university seats are open to Gujarat boards as well (B.Arch admission information, BCE admission information). Applying only through ACPC means competing for a quarter of the seats when three quarters were also available.

CEPT stands 6th in Architecture and Planning in NIRF 2025 with an overall score of 65.73, and its own admission page notes it has been the only private university inside that top ten since 2020 (NIRF 2025 Architecture and Planning ranking, Admission at CEPT).

Only one of the five parameters clears 75, and it is graduation outcomes at 78.06. Research and professional practice sits below half marks at 47.68, perception at 51.81 is not much better, and teaching, learning and resources at 72.22 is what holds the position up (NIRF 2025 Architecture and Planning ranking). Read that way, the sixth place is earned on the teaching-and-finishing side of the framework, so an applicant coming for a doctoral supervisor rather than for studio teaching should weigh the 47.68 ahead of the rank itself.

CEPT appears in no other NIRF 2025 table. It is not ranked in the University list, the Overall list or the Engineering list, so Architecture and Planning is the single national ranking that covers it, and a comparison against an Ahmedabad institution ranked elsewhere is not a like-for-like one.

CEPT is organised as faculties rather than departments, and four of the five carry an original school forward: Architecture from the 1962 School of Architecture, Planning from the 1972 School of Planning, Technology from the 1982 School of Building Science and Technology and Design from the 1991 School of Interior Design. The Faculty of Management, founded in 2013, is the one with no such ancestor. The Faculty of Architecture works on design in the private realm, the Faculty of Planning on planning and policy in the public realm, the Faculty of Technology on engineering, construction and building systems, the Faculty of Design on products, crafts, systems and communication, and the Faculty of Management on habitat and project management (About CEPT University).

CEPT counts the CEPT Foundation Program as a sixth academic unit of the same standing, with a dean of its own, and it shapes the undergraduate experience more than its one-year span suggests: every undergraduate spends a common first year in cross-disciplinary studios before separating into a degree, which is why a civil engineering student here shares a studio year with architects and designers. CEPT Professional Programs, established in 2022 and also headed by a dean, sits alongside all of them and runs continuing education and up-skilling for working professionals across the same disciplines (About CEPT University, Public Self-Disclosure 2026).

Advisory work is not a rounding error next to research here. The 2025 return puts sponsored research for 2023-24 at Rs 14,51,48,119 across 19 projects and 17 funding agencies, and paid consultancy at Rs 10,99,46,336 across 37 projects for 31 client organisations, which is roughly three rupees of client work for every four rupees of sponsored research (CEPT NIRF 2025 report). That volume is why the university also carries a Scientific and Industrial Research Organization tag from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (Legacy of the University).

The Lilavati Lalbhai Library is the centre of gravity of this campus and the facility most worth checking before choosing between architecture schools. Its collection is weighted towards architecture and the built environment across books, journals, theses and digital material, and it does not stop at CEPT's own students: the library extends its services to professionals and to readers from other universities, colleges and institutes (Library). For a student researching Indian building practice, a reading room that outside researchers join in order to use is a different proposition from a departmental shelf.

Sport runs on campus grounds for cricket, football, volleyball and basketball, with indoor space for table tennis and chess, and students also have access to the sports infrastructure at the AES Sports Complex. The tournament calendar is student-named and long-running: the Amity Cup in cricket, the CEPT Football League and Sympatico in football, Volleyliga and Mentonica in volleyball, and Dunk it in basketball (Sports Facilities).

Accessibility is declared only in the NIRF return, and two of the three answers are qualified.

Those two qualified answers are a ceiling CEPT set itself, so a student with a mobility need should ask which blocks fall outside them rather than assume the campus is uniform. Before travelling to see any of it, the campus can be walked through online (Admission at CEPT), and CEPT Portfolio publishes students' academic projects semester by semester (Bachelor's in Design).

What CEPT files as its hostel disclosure is not a hostel on the campus. The Hostel Details row of its public self-disclosure points at one page, and that page describes CEPT Residency, in Block B of the AES-endowed accommodation premises, 1.5 km from the university (Public Self-Disclosure 2026, Accommodation). An outstation applicant should plan for a daily commute rather than a walk across a quadrangle, and the university runs scheduled transport between the Residency and campus for exactly that reason.

The rooms are twin-sharing and air-conditioned with attached bathrooms, high-speed Wi-Fi and secure storage. Each floor has a shared pantry with a refrigerator, microwave, washing machine and water dispenser, floors are separately organised for girls and boys, and the building carries round-the-clock security, regular housekeeping and a cafeteria (Accommodation).

We could not find a published room rent, mess charge or deposit for CEPT Residency on the university's site, and the accommodation page gives an email contact rather than a rate card. Ask for the current charges through that contact before budgeting, because the tuition figures above do not include them.

Teaching here is studio-led, and the ratio that matters is the studio one rather than the campus-wide one. CEPT publishes that ratio for a single programme: on the Bachelor's in Design, studios run in small groups at a faculty to student ratio between 1:8 and 1:12, take up close to 70 percent of semester credits, and run 16 weeks a semester alongside 12-week courses (Bachelor's in Design). No equivalent figure is published for the architecture, urban design or civil engineering degrees, so treat 1:8 to 1:12 as the design studio's number rather than the university's.

The staffing model behind that ratio is a mixed one, and the NIRF return names every person in it. Of the 116 teachers listed, 74 hold regular appointments and 42 are adhoc or contractual, and 30 in total hold a doctorate (CEPT NIRF 2025 report). The adhoc cadre is not a stopgap: the same filing shows contractual teachers who joined in July 1987, July 1996 and July 2000 and are still on the roster, which is what a school looks like when practising architects and designers hold studios for decades without ever moving onto the payroll as professors.

Each faculty is led by its own dean, and CEPT names them publicly along with their email addresses: Quaid Doongerwala at Architecture, Saleem Bhatri at Design, Sejal Patel at Management, Shalini Sinha at Planning, Aanal Shah at Technology, Samir Shah at the CEPT Foundation Program and Subhrangsu Goswami at CEPT Professional Programs. Barjor Mehta is President and Tridip Suhrud is Provost (Public Self-Disclosure 2026).

CEPT publishes no consolidated roll of distinguished alumni, so rather than assemble a list it has not claimed, the honest version is the record it does keep, which is a running news feed of what its graduates are doing now.

Jayesh Hariyani, an architecture alumnus of the Faculty of Architecture, was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2026. He is founder and senior principal of INI Design Studio in Ahmedabad, and had been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 2021, making him the third architect of Indian origin to hold both (CEPT Alumni Honoured with Prestigious RIBA Fellowship).

Dr Anjana Vyas, a postgraduate of the Faculty of Planning who later served as professor and acting dean of the Faculty of Technology, became the first Indian to receive the Willem Schermerhorn Award, presented once every four years by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (CEPT Alum Receives Prestigious Willem Schermerhorn Award).

The recent entries are closer to what a current student might realistically aim at. Siddhi Soni, Dharan Koruduvar and Vanshika Shah, undergraduate alumni of the Faculty of Planning, built JanJatra, a crowd-management system for large religious gatherings in Varanasi that pairs colour-coded street wayfinding with AI-enabled CCTV analytics, and it was picked from more than 80 entries as one of two winning solutions in the Toyota Mobility Foundation Sustainable Cities Challenge there (CEPT Alumni Win Toyota Mobility Foundation Sustainable Cities Challenge). Ariba Khan, a postgraduate in building energy performance now a senior consultant in building physics at WSP, took a special sustainability award for a life-cycle assessment of embodied carbon in large research infrastructure (CEPT Alum Receives Special Sustainability Award at FCC Week 2026).

The campus is named for Kasturbhai Lalbhai and sits on University Road in Navrangpura. Two of the addresses above are worth separating before writing to the wrong one: admissions enquiries go to the toll free line and admissions@cept.ac.in, while a degree or transcript verification goes to the registrar's office instead, and the administration keeps a five-day week, so a Saturday visit finds the offices shut (Contact Us, CEPT University). CEPT Residency sits 1.5 km away (Accommodation).

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