Classes Preparatoires in Tunisia: IPEIs and the Concours National d'Entree aux Ecoles d'Ingenieurs

What an IPEI Is

An Institut Preparatoire aux Etudes d'Ingenieur (IPEI) is a two-year preparatory institute that sits between the baccalaureat and engineering school in Tunisia. Instead of enrolling directly into an engineering degree, top-performing bac holders in science and technology streams spend two years inside an IPEI building the mathematics, physics and computing foundation the national engineering concours demands.

IPEIs operate in several Tunisian cities, including the Institut Preparatoire aux Etudes d'Ingenieur de Nabeul (IPEIN), Institut Preparatoire aux Etudes d'Ingenieur El Manar (IPEIEM) and similar institutes elsewhere, with each admitting students by bac stream and results.

Who Qualifies

Admission opens to holders of the Tunisian baccalaureat from the Mathematiques, Sciences Experimentales, Technique/Sciences Techniques and Informatique streams. Selection happens through the national orientation process that places bac holders into higher education, ranking applicants by their bac score against the seats available at each IPEI.

You spend the two years working through a curriculum common across all IPEIs, so the specific institute you attend matters less than your own results, since every IPEI feeds into the same national concours at the end.

The Concours Nationaux d'Entree aux Cycles de Formation d'Ingenieurs

At the end of your second IPEI year, you sit the Concours Nationaux d'Entree aux Cycles de Formation d'Ingenieurs , the national exam that decides entry into Tunisia's public engineering schools. The Direction Generale des Etudes Technologiques (DGET), under the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MESRS), runs the concours and publishes results and school-by-school cutoffs once grading finishes.

Your registration file needs a completed application form, your baccalaureat certificate, a certificate confirming your IPEI results, a copy of your national ID card, and other supporting documents your IPEI or the DGET specify for that session. Application forms come through your IPEI, through certain universities offering scientific or technical masters, or, for Tunisian students abroad, through the Tunisian educational mission in Paris.

The concours tests the subjects you covered across your two IPEI years: mathematics, physics and, depending on your stream, computer science or engineering sciences. Your score sets your rank, and a national allocation process matches ranked students to engineering schools based on the preference list you submit and the number of seats each school has that year.

Life During the Two IPEI Years

The workload runs heavy, with a full week of classes, regular graded tests, and continuous ranking against your class. Many IPEI students describe the two years as the most demanding stretch of their entire education, ahead of even the concours itself, since daily results build the profile that decides your final placement.

What Happens After Placement

Once placed, you join a Tunisian public engineering school (ecole nationale d'ingenieurs) for a program that typically runs three more years, leading to the diplome national d'ingenieur. Combined with your two IPEI years, that puts total engineering training at five years, in line with the wider LMD-based Master-level timeline used across the region.

If your rank does not reach your first-choice school, the allocation still places you according to where your rank falls against remaining seats, so build a realistic preference list rather than listing only the most selective schools.

Why the System Exists

Tunisia built the IPEI and national concours system to guarantee a common, rigorous foundation before any student starts specialized engineering training, and to allocate seats at the country's engineering schools on a transparent, ranked basis rather than through separate school-by-school applications. The structure mirrors the classes preparatoires and concours systems used in Morocco and France, though Tunisia runs its own dedicated preparatory institutes rather than hosting prepa classes inside general lycees.