COMPARED to B-Schools, the data availability with respect to engineering colleges is slightly better. Basic information is available; partially thanks to the mandatory disclosure that AICTE has directed all the colleges to publish. But there are lots of gaps even in these huge documents. The worst offenders are the IITs and NITs, followed by many state private universities and deemed universities. So as stated in the methodology, we have basically used the mandatory disclosure data from the institutions to evaluate and rank them. These results are based on the final normalised scores we generated for each college.
Rating Methodogy
We grouped institutions into three major categories, based on their entrance examinations: the IIT-JEE institutions, AIEEE institutions and the state-level institutions. The private and deemed universities have been grouped separately.
| A |
Input |
35 |
|
1
|
Cut-off
|
20
|
|
2
|
Student to Faculty Ratio
|
5
|
|
3
|
Student to Ph.D. Faculty Ratio
|
5
|
|
4
|
Student to PG Faculty Ratio
|
5
|
|
B
|
Process
|
30
|
|
1
|
Accreditation
|
5
|
|
2
|
Books
|
5
|
|
3
|
Journals
|
5
|
|
4
|
Labs
|
15
|
|
C
|
Output
|
35
|
|
1
|
ROI
|
15
|
|
2
|
Placement Percentage
|
15
|
|
3
|
Consultancy
|
5
|
|
The IITs have been rated on the basis of past rankings as well as publicly available information. For some of the known private and deemed universities we have used publicly available information. They have been colour-coded separately for easy identification. The AIEEE institutions have been rated separately, based on their cut-off ranks branch-wise.
For rating of state-level engineering colleges, which form the bulk of the 3000-plus colleges in the country, the database provided bythe departments of technical education, or formal committees such as the Admission Committee for Professional Courses, or higher education councils mandated by the state were looked into. To arrive at a manageable number of institutions (400), we made use of notable industry-accredited college listings and also invited the institutes to participate. We initially began with a shortlist of nearly 500 colleges, of which no data is available for nearly 156 colleges. For want of completeness of comparison, some of the well known and highly regarded colleges have been included in the rating scheme, for which secondary information has been used. Cross-checking the available data with the mandatory disclosure/compliance report (of AICTE), we also substantiated information through other resources, namely the SCOPUS data base for publication records, reports from National Board of Accreditation for accreditation details, official websites and Annual Reports of institutions.
The data was thus classified in the proprietary Careers360 input-process-output format. These component parameters were given weights in the proportion of 35:30:35. The detailed parameter tables are given above. Each data set was normalised in relation to the students/core faculty/resources to arrive at the final rankings. Individual rankings are available with Careers360.
How to use the ranking
Among the national exams IIT-JEE, AIEEE and ENAT, only AIEEE publishes cut-offs. And IIT-JEE could be assessed relatively easily. So ratings for colleges belonging to the first two sets are comparable.
At the state level, it is impossible to compare colleges from different states. In other words, an AAA college in one state may not give the same opportunities or education vis-à-vis an 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 when you compare an A level college from AIEEE or JEE, you can safely assume that they are on par with an AA level college in the state.
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 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.
Click on the name of your state to view best colleges, including NITs/ IITs:
Next year, we hope to rate at least 1,000 colleges. Ans we hope to work with AICTE/ UGC to ensure that at least minimum comparable information is available with respect to all the colleges.