As the IITs continue to reign, Delhi retains its Numero Uno position from last year, while IITKharagpur moves two notches up to second place, nudging IIT-Kanpur to the third slot. The only exception in the IIT run has been IIT-Guwahati, which has slipped from seventh to ninth position. See top 25 colleges in Engineering
IIT-Delhi scores a first on placement, reputation, academic input and infrastructure
Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS), Pilani, which has rejoined the survey after a hiatus, rockets to seventh place to emerge as the best privately run engineering institute.
While IIT-Delhi ranked first on all counts like reputation, academic input, infrastructure and job placement, it stood second in terms of student care.
That, however, did not make a difference to its top position in both perceptual and factual scores. IIT-Kharagpur, with a ranking of five for each theme, came second on the factual rank, thus beating IITKanpur, which scored four on the themes but fell to the sixth place on the factual score.
The key mantra at IIT-Delhi has been empowerment of the academic community, be it students, research scholars or the faculty. While the open category, or electives, has been enlarged for undergraduates, an M.Tech programme in Atmospheric, Earth and Ocean Sciences and a diploma course in Metro Rail Transportation have been added at the post-graduation level this year.
“We have made great progress in our research outlook. This year we crossed the Rs 100-crore mark in our research funding,” says Surendra Prasad, director, IIT-Delhi.
In order to stay abreast with the scientific community worldwide, the institute updates its research infrastructure every year and has acquired state-of-the-art equipment. According to M. Balakrishnan, dean of postgraduate studies and research, one of the main factors that makes IIT-Delhi stand apart is its outstanding faculty.
To empower and incentivise the faculty further, the institute has introduced awards such as the Outstanding Young Faculty Fellowship, and offers higher travel and research grants.
It also launched a series of initiatives such as Summer Student Internship and Summer Faculty Fellowships for students and teachers from other engineering colleges.
“This gives them exposure to the IIT experience and promotes a greater interest in research and innovation,” explains Prasad.
The USP of the college is its emphasis on holistic development of the students by offering top quality education both within and outside the classroom. Perhaps this is the reason why an overwhelming majority of students takes up leadership roles in life.
“More than 50 per cent of our students become entrepreneurs after gaining some experience in industry,” says Prasad. The institute has an Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC, IIT-D), which aims at promoting entrepreneurship amongst students and building an exhaustive resource pool.
BITS-PILANI reserves seats only for toppers of board examinations
A special Training and Placement Cell at the institute will begin placements for this term during December.
The campus has its share of colour too with national-level fests like Rendezvous, Tryst and Sportech drawing students from all over the nation to participate. But IIT-Delhi can’t afford to rest on its laurels with IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Kanpur snapping at its heels with excellent ratings.
It’s BITS-Pilani, though, that has emerged in this year’s survey as a role model for other private engineering colleges to follow. Started in 1946 in the semi-arid desert region of Rajasthan, the institute has enjoyed great credibility for decades now.
Despite being a privately run and funded college, which gets Central grants only for select governmentfunded projects, it has retained transparency in its selection criteria and flexibility in the way courses are run.
Until 2004, the institute selected candidates on the basis of their scores in plus-two examinations, but when it found that a few states were taking away a large chunk of seats, it devised its own online entrance test in 2005, now popular as BITSAT.
The entrance test permits a candidate to take it on any of the 40 days designated, at any of the 20 centres across the country in one of the three shifts. This helps applicants to avoid conflict of dates with any other entrance test or reschedule in genuine cases of one’s inability to appear at a given date. In all, more than 1.20 lakh candidates appear for 2,000 seats in all programmes. Their scores are given to them instantly on completion of the test at the centre itself, which has a camera recording the candidate’s image all the while to check any unfair means. This has helped the institute to get the best candidates from all states.
BITS has no management or reservation quota and the only seats reserved are for toppers of the respective board examinations. The institute has a unique system of allowing students to decide their teachers and even timings of classes.
“Transparency in selection, flexibility in teaching and industrial training in every degree course is what makes BITS rank so high,” says L.K. Maheshwari, vice-chancellor of BITS. The industrial partnership component, which has students even going abroad for training, has BITS teachers stationed at the place of training. BITS has 150 companies joining hands for this training. Besides a strong faculty, companies like Motorola and IBM have set up their laboratories here. BITS’ strong ties with industry at various levels is what has earned it Best Corporate-University Alliance award, too.
It now has campuses in Dubai, Goa and Hyderabad also. “These are campuses of the same institute and not different institutes,” Maheshwari clarifies. G. Raghurama, deputy director, academic, points out how stress on entrepreneurship and leadership-building skills is imbibed at every stage to allow a strong decision-making personality to come up. In this remote part of India, BITS shines as an oasis, which incidentally is the name of its cultural festival too.
Top Engineering Colleges in India
