The Vel Tech Dr. RR & Dr. SR Technical University will offer scholarships of more than Rs.5 crore to the meritorious students all over India, under the "Mahatma Gandhi scholarship scheme" this year.

The first three, plus two toppers from each State applying for engineering at Vel Tech will be eligible for fully paid scholarships

One topper from each Union Territory (UT) will also get the scholarship.

The scholarship will include tuition fees, hostel and boarding fees for all the four years of the course.

"The top three students will get complete exclusion despite of any other aspects," says Rangaranjan Mahalakshmi, Vice- Chancellor.

Seventy-Eight scholarships will be awarded to students regardless of their financial ability or the courses they choose.

Apart from these scholarships, additional 100 students will be receiving scholarships with a 50% waiver of their fees provided they score 90% average in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics examinations.

The application forms should be submitted by April 30 to avail the scholarships and all the students should appear for the Vel Tech All India Engineering Entrance Examination on May 10.

"Vel Tech aims at providing leading engineering and management courses for the most deserving and promising candidates, through these scholarship schemes. Although the main criteria to avail these scholarships are that the student should apply to the main university at Avadi and not to any of the other institutes affiliated to Anna University, MGR Medical University or the University of Madras," Ms. Mahalakshmi said.

Prof. of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering R. Rangarajan, currently Chancellor of the university along with his wife Sakunthala, the Pro-chancellor of the institute at Avadi established the Vel Tech Institute.

The institute will bloom as a deemed technical university, after serving as an Engineering College for 15 years.

The university offers undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. courses in engineering, management, computer science & applications and humanities.

The university has tied up with Microsoft, Oracle, CISCO, NASSCOM and the British Council for Business English to provide students with professional certificate programmes.

"Over 85,000 students from the entire nation participated in Vel Tech's placement event last year. Out of which 99% of the eligible students got job offers (1000 offers) from leading companies comprising of Tata, Infosys and Reliance (in total 3000 jobs were offered)," said K.V.D. Kishore Kumar, Director of the University.

The Vel Tech City of Education consists of a technical university, 2 engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University, 4 business schools, a nursing college, a physiotherapy college, a polytechnic college and a matriculation & international school, with a total of 12000 students studying in them