Highlights

• IIT Kharagpur retains its #1 position, with the next 5 places also taken by IITs
• NSIT Delhi re-entered the Top 10 club, jumping 13 ranks
• NIT Calicut jumps up six rungs to #9 and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT jumps up ten rungs to #12
• Average maximum salary goes up by nearly 25% to reach Rs 7.4 lakh
• Worrying signs on the research and pure academic fronts? While average number of research papers during the year reduced marginally (57 to >55), the number of students pursuing PhD fell from 132 to 101 leading to lesser no of doctorates awarded8, down from 37
• Is the global slowdown impacting IT/BPO recruitments? May be. While average number of IT/BPO companies visiting campuses came down from 39 to 30, average number of students placed in these companies increased from 216 to 260

The Dataquest-IDC T-School Survey is one of the most sought after exercises of its kind, both from the perspective of the industry fraternity, as well as, the academia. Even as the survey entered its fifth year this time, it continued to throw up surprises. The entry of colleges like Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology in Delhi, or the significant jump made by Gujarats Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology would count among these.

On the other hand, some things continued to remain the samethe IITs are still on top. Not much surprise there, considering that many of the IITs are now counted amongst the best engineering colleges globally. Even icons like Narayana Murthy consider IITs not just amongst the best in the world, but just out of the world. The controversies over reservations notwithstanding, the survey reiterates that the academic excellence of these institutes have not been compromised.

This year the survey attempted to rectify the anomaly that had been creating a lot of confusion in the previous years. Since, field-work takes place during the months of April and May, most colleges are yet to finish their academic years and hence are unable to share information regarding placements.

What happened during last years survey (DQ-IDC T-Schools Survey 2007) was that placement information since 2006-07 was hardly available for most colleges, so the analysis was done over the 2005-06 data. Consequently, this years surveyDQ-IDC T-Schools Survey 2008has been analyzed on the basis of the complete placement data from the year 2006-07. Readers should keep this in mind while going through the tables or individual profiles of the Top 10 colleges, especially in assessing the placement parameter.

The number of colleges finally participating in the survey has come down to 70 from 117 last year, as a result of more stringent norms that were applied this year while choosing the colleges. However, as is unavoidable in a survey of this magnitude, a few top-notch institutes too stayed away. Amongst the IITswhile IIT Mumbai was conspicuous by its absenceheavyweights like BITS Pilani, Jadavpur University, and NIT Tiruchirapalli from last years Top 20 also gave the survey a miss this year.

While IIT Kharagpur has maintained the top slot, there has been a shuffle in all the ranks below. The IITs yet again take away the top slots. NSIT Delhi moved up 13 ranks, to make it the biggest gainer among the top 15

IITs Rule
IITs continued to rule the roost. IIT Kharagpur retained its top spot, thanks to its better score on the placement front compared to its peers. The other IITs however have seen some shifting in the overall pecking order. While both IIT Delhi and IIT Roorke climbed up the ranks (both though scored highly on HR perception) mainly due to high scores on academic environment and infrastructure, respectively, IIT Chennai slipped a few rungs mainly because of comparatively lower scores on both academic environment and industry interface parameters.

Four NITs make it to this list, compared to six in 2005-06

With the exception of IIT Kharagpur and IIT Chennai, the IITs have fared better than their previous-year scores

While the presence of the IITs is no real surprise, and even institutes like IIIT Hyderabad and NIT Calicut have been in the Top 10 club for years, the jump of NSIIT Delhi to #10 from #23 last year. International placements, thanks to the colleges academic collaboration with MIT, could be one big catalyst for its sudden rise. While Schlumberger, which offered Rs 45 lakh to one NSIIT student, made it the college with the highest salary this year (even more than the IITs), this had a chain effect in attracting other global oil majors to come recruiting with open purse strings.

While, 75% of the weightage is given to the response from institutes, 25% is reserved for the perception of the recruiters. Incidentally, most of these recruiters are from the IT sector. Therefore, scores on institute response have a stronger bearing on the overall scores in the study. Take for example IIIT Hyderabad which scored heavily on account of primarily the IT companies visiting its campuses. This is one of the important factors that helped IIIT Hyderabad cement its place in the Top 10 for the last few years.

	Western India has no institute from the national Top 10. On the other extreme, North zone has all its five institutes falling in the national Top 10

The IITs have maintained their hold on all the key parameters that matter. With the exception of industry interface and HR perception, they have taken the top slot on all the other parameters

Page(s)   1  2  3  4