Top Engineering colleges survey - Methodology

IITs & NITs undoubtedly offer you the best engineering degree but entry is tough. The challenge is to find amongst the other 3200+ colleges, the ones that offer a decent quality of education. Here is some help...

by Team Careers360 - 23 Jun, 2011

Booming from 5 lakh seats and 1,500 engineering colleges in 2005-06 to more than 13 lakh seats across 3,200 colleges in 2010-11, technical education in India is witnessing an unprecedented growth. The number of seats has been increasing by more than 25% in the last three years consistently. Even the number of IITs, the premium national varsities, has swelled to 15 across the country.

Note: Last year we ranked the top 117 colleges although the scantily available information in the public domain prevented us from spreading our wings further. To compensate, we had provided not only the state-based rating, but also a research-output based rating for the top-notch colleges and an all-India rating for institutions admitting students through the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE). This year, we go two steps further not only by including top 550+ colleges in the rating process but also providing a single unified rating by amalgamating all different rankings into a balanced scorecard (please read the methodology for details). We hope this will help you, the reader, substantially in making an informed choice in the engineering education space.

Methodology
On our quest to identify and rate the top engineering colleges in the country, we began by collating and analysing the publicly available rankings of the last 5 years in leading and reliable publications. A second list was prepared by talking to leading IT recruiters and their opinion on the leading engineering colleges. Thus emerged the initial list of top 700 colleges and we set upon the arduous task of collecting authentic data on them. The college websites were scanned, their mandatory disclosures were downloaded, data was collected via questionnaires from colleges willing to participate in our national survey, and RTIs were filed with AICTE, the apex regulating agency.

India's Top 50 Engineering Colleges

All the collected data was cross-checked and verified from multiple sources to ensure their reliability and validity, namely the reports from National Board of Accreditation for accreditation details, Annual Reports of institutions etc. The data was then processed through our unique Input-Process-Output methodology, adapted for Engineering Colleges and fine-tuned on the basis of our last year’s experience.

The component parameters were given weights in proportion of 35:25:40. (See table for detailed break-up). The resulting scores had to be normalised to account for the unevenness in the availability of data. A national ranking of all the colleges admitting students through AIEEE was drawn up using the opening and closing ranks of AIEEE 2010 counselling and amalgamated into the existing ranking. The result was a unified, composite state-wise ranking giving us a single list comprising the IITs, NITs, IIITs, deemed universities, AIEEE colleges and institutes based on State entrance tests. In addition to the rating, we also produced a list of top 50 colleges.

State-wise engineering colleges rating
As we moved from a weight based cluster analysis, to a cut-off based discrimination, reputations began to take a tumble. IIT Khargpur which has been an undisputed leader last year, suddenly moved down five places to 5th rank, amongst top 50, showing clearly that, student preferences are an outcome of complex considerations and hence institutes need to keep in mind how to keep their students happy by offering value. Being a good research institute is just not enough.

How to use the ranking
Among the national exams, IIT-JEE, AIEEE and ENAT, only ENAT does not publish cut-offs. IIT-JEE cut-offs this year could be assessed too. Thus, ratings for colleges associated with the first two sets are comparable.

At the state level, it is impossible to compare colleges belonging to different states. In other words, a AAA college in one state may not give the same opportunities or education vis-à-vis AAA college in another. Factors such as larger concentration of colleges, age of the college, alumni network and competition, all form a part of the experience.

So use our rating to assess colleges within your state. To enable ease of use, we have also listed AIEEE colleges and IITs under the state list. And, based on their performance in JEE or AIEEE, they have been awarded a national ranking. Alternativley a poll of select academics was also used to assess their national standing. So each college gets a state level rank and a national level rank. For a student a state level rank is more appropriate.

Deemed and private universities are a major area of concern. Barring a few of them, most colleges have very little usable information on their websites and they do not even publish the minimum disclosure norms mandated by the University Grants Commission (UGC). We have rated them using past rankings as well as publicly available information. So consider our rating only as a broad guideline in these cases.

And finally, here’s wishing you a fruitful four years at the college of your choice!

(With inputs from Shahid Nawaz,Tanmay Perti, Pooja Mishra, Nirmesh Shrivastav and Nimesh Chandra)