India's top 20 engineering colleges

India's top 20 engineering colleges

June 28, 2005

ALL RECs are now called NIT ( National institute of technology )

During spring, just as flowers bloom, rankings of engineering colleges pop out of national magazines. It is time to rejoice for students of some of the highly ranked colleges; while for others, it is time to worry and introspect.

Why do we need these rankings?

College ranking is a controversial yet a useful guide for many.

Consider this:

* For college-entering students to decide the best option available.
* For colleges to know what they need to improve and where they stand in the pecking order.
* For recruiters and human resource managers to decide the college they would visit for campus interviews and negotiate pay packages.
*
For the teaching faculty to decide which colleges to aspire to teach in.
*
For students and alumni, for whom it is a matter of pride.

Type of rankings

There are basically three types of rankings:

Government rankings: The central government carries out a survey of engineering colleges every few years. The survey, conducted by the World Bank, is used to arrive at a funding formula for financing colleges under United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and to monitor the progress of the colleges receiving funding.

The government survey is highly respectable and includes comments/suggestions for the improvement needed by the colleges. These are generally not available in public domain.

Academic rankings: These is carried out by leading institutions around the world and sometimes by academic and scientific magazines. The survey is authentic and unbiased, but is of limited use. It is used mainly to boost the ego of a college among similar colleges, to attract talented faculty and to keep flow of money from its patrons.

The Asian Technology Information Program, Tokyo, is a prestigious, non-profit think-tank, which monitors research programmes from universities/institutes across Asia and classifies some of the leading universities in a specific research area.

For example, according to ATIP, Indian Institute of Science is among the world leaders in the field of nano-crystal technology research. Similarly, it puts Banaras Hindu University among the leading research universities in the world in the field of application of hydrogen energy to two-wheeler vehicles.

Magazine rankings: Also known as popular rankings, these are the ones that are mostly read by common folk. These are carried out by national magazines as a guide for students and faculty, and for the college themselves.

Dataquest survey results

Following results have been published with the kind permission of Dataquest India for the 2005 engineering college rankings. (Note: IIT-Delhi did not participate in the survey):

Table A: 2005 Overall Rankings

The Top 20

Overall Rank


College


Composite Score

1


IIT Kanpur


77.5

2


IIT Bombay


75.6

3


IIT Madras


73.8

4


IIT Kharagpur


73.1

5


Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi


72

6


IIT Guwahati


71.6

7


NIT Warangal


70

8


NIT Trichy


67.6

9


Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala


66.7

10


Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (DIT), New Delhi


64.5

11


NIT Suratkal


64.2

12


Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad


62.1

13


Punjab Engineering College, Chandigadh


60.3

14


International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad


60.2

15


Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani


59.9

16


IIT Roorkee


59.2

17


NIT Rourkela


58.5

18


NIT Kurukshetra


57.5

19


Indian Institute of information Technology, Allahabad


57.1

20


Delhi College of Engineering, New Delhi


57.1

Table B: 2005 Top 5 on Parameters

The Top 5 On Parameters

Placement

Rank


College


Score

1


IIT Chennai


31.2

2


IIT Kanpur


31

3


NIT Suratkal


27.1

4


NIT Warangal


26.4

5


Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (DIT), New Delhi


25.9

Intellectual Capital

Rank


College


Score

1


IT-BHU, Varanasi


11.8

2


IIT Guwahati


9.3

3


Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala


8.3

4


IIT Bombay


8.2

5


IIT Kharagpur


8.2

Infrastructure

Rank


College


Score

1


IIT Kanpur


14.8

2


IIT Bombay


14.8

3


IIT Kharagpur


14.8

4


IIT Guwahati


14.8

5


Krishna Institute of Engineering And Technology, Ghaziabad


14.8

Industry Interface

Rank


College


Score

1


IIT Kharagpur


3.2

2


IIT Bombay


3.1

3


NIT Trichy


2.4

4


Jadavpur University, Calcutta


1.8

5


IT-BHU, Varanasi


1.6



Table C: 2005 The Perception Factor

The Perception Factor

Rank


College


Score

1


IIT Kanpur


25

2


IIT Bombay


25

3


IIT Chennai


24.5

4


IIT Kharagpur


24.5

5


IT-BHU, Varanasi


22.4

According to the HR heads' perception, IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay topped the list



Table D: 2005 Performance region-wise

How They Stack Up

N o r t h

S No


College


Overall Rank

1


IIT Kanpur


1

2


IT-BHU, Varanasi


5

3


Thapar Institute of Engg & Technology, Patiala


9

4


Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology, New Delhi


10

5


MN-NIT, Allahabad


12

S o u t h

1


IIT Madras


3

2


NIT Warangal


7

3


NIT Trichy


8

4


NIT Suratkal


11

5


IIIT Hyderabad


14

E a s t

1


IIT Kharagpur


4

2


IIT Guwahati


6

3


NIT Rourkela


17

4


Jadavpur University, Calcutta


25

5


SIT Kolkata (Formerly IIIT)


27

W e s t

1


IIT Bombay


2

2


Government College of Engineering, Pune


24

3


Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Bombay


26

4


International Institute of Information Technology, Pune


34

5


Bharatiya Vidyapeeth's College of Engineering, Bombay


42

In India, there are two popular ranking surveys for engineering colleges: one is by India Today magazine and other by Dataquest magazine.

India Today survey

The magazine has been conducting such surveys for the last several years. This year, the survey was carried out in association with A C Nielsen ORG-MARG.

The ranking shows top 10 engineering colleges in the India, along with the rankings in the field of business management, medicine, commerce, science, law and arts.

The survey takes into account institute's infrastructure, research, admitted student quality, placement statistics, perception among academic and industrialists, etc.

Dataquest survey

The survey, done for technical schools only, was conducted for the first time this year in India by this magazine. It was done in collaboration with International Data Corporation and the National Association of Software and Service Companies.

IDC is a world leader in the market research for information technology and software industries. Nasscom is India's most powerful IT industry association -- which even the country's Planning Commission consults for IT and software-related forecast and planning.

The survey has a no-nonsense approach, as the study claims: "The Dataquest-IDC-Nasscom survey findings are most likely to send some of the Tier-I schools into a tizzy. However, instead of breathing fire down our necks, these institutes would do well to ponder a little on where exactly they have erred."

The survey takes into account the infrastructure of the college, placement scenario, intellectual capital (faculty quality and strength, research, et cetera), interface with industries and perception of recruiters.

How reliable are these surveys?

With different surveys showing different rankings for the same college, the common man asks the question: which of the surveys to believe?

Well, the answer is that there is no clear answer.

Different surveys take different criteria, ask different questions for the same criterion and give different weightage while arriving at a composite score for determining overall rankings.

Hence all these surveys are correct up to some extent in their own way.

A good survey will not be afraid of the public criticism and the most popular colleges need not be the best in the ranking. The list should not be the same year after year and, at the same time, there should not be any drastic changes in rankings at each year. Good examples are college rankings in the United States by magazines such as Business Week and US News & World Report.

Each survey has its own drawbacks of some kind. For example, the India Today survey, although based on acceptable criteria, mostly reserves the top six to seven slots for a group of institutes, while the next three to four ranks fluctuate every year.

It may be advisable for it to publish the expanded list, such as top 20 overall ranks and provide rankings under different criteria/sub-categories.

On the other hand, the Dataquest survey is geared towards requirements of the IT and software industry.

Moreover, students need not depend solely on college rankings for the selection of a college. Other factors beyond rankings are also to be considered. Such as quality of study, selecting proper branch, proximity to home, hostel facilities, etc. They should visit the campus to get first-hand information and also find out from their friends who have studied there.

In conclusion

The surveys have a welcome move of also including colleges which do not have a favourable public perception. Bold surveys give the masses a second chance to know about the good colleges unknown to them so far.

This is an important step since the mass media in India is saturated with success stories of only 1 per cent of the total of 1,200 engineering colleges, giving a distorted vision for many and false pride for some. It is expected that the coming years, the surveys will be more refined.

In such a scenario, beacons of college rankings from the lighthouse of magazines will guide the boatload of applicants to the islands of academic excellence.

Yogesh Upadhyaya is a chemical engineering graduate from IT-BHU and an MS (chemical engineering) from Rutgers University, New Jersey. Arvind Gupta, also an alumnus of IT-BHU, is CEO of e-Enable Technologies, New Delhi.
The Dataquest survey rankings are published by the kind permission of Dataquest , a CyberMedia publication.