DQIndia India’s Top T Schools : Complete Survey

So finally DQ India has released the results of its second survey of Top T-Schools (Technology Schools) of India. It’s quite remarkable that apart from the B-School surveys by various magazines/organization, at least somebody is coming up with T-School Survey too. And it really gives relief to all those giving various competitive exams to choose their destiny. After all this is the thing that matters alot.
Though many of you might have seen the rankings or might have read the whole article in Dataquest , June 2006 edition but following is the complete survey for those who don’t have subscription. The complete scorecard can be downloaded from here.
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Dataquest-IDC Survey: India’s Top T-Schools Yes, the IITs rule the tech schools, but who’s next? Where do top IT recruiters go first? Which have the most IT placements? The best infrastructure? The best academic environment? Who are the top five in each region? IDC’s researchers visit over a hundred institutes to find out.
Bhaswati Chakravorty Tuesday, June 27, 2006

It’s T-school rating time again as we come back with our second Dataquest, IDC T-School Survey. Every survey primarily comprises two factors-the overall research findings and the methodology-and it is our methodology that differentiates us from other surveys.

At this stage it is important to clarify the definition of a T-school. The term could be ambiguous; especially as the general connotation, in all likelihood, would be that of a regular engineering institute. While a regular institute may be very strong on several parameters, Dataquest’s key consideration is the strength of the institute from the IT industry point of view. We have prioritized the parameters that matter to the IT recruiters of the country. Therefore, while an institute may get the maximum number of recruiters visiting during campus placements, the proportion of IT employers could be low, thereby negatively affecting its performance in our survey. The same would hold true for all other parameters and sub-parameters.

Last year saw the first comprehensive T-School study from Dataquest, in association with IDC. As every popular survey is followed by reactions-some positive, some not so, and some moderate, so was ours. We thank all our readers for the bouquets and also the brick-bats, which helped in our efforts to constantly improve the survey and add more value, towards which we have made certain changes in the format over last year. We wanted to do it in a structured manner in discussion with the two major stakeholders in the study ie, the institutes and the IT recruiters.

We conducted separate focus group discussions to hear their suggestions and then identify the contours of the study. The objective was to take into account parameters that are more relevant and could be validated. So, factors that were not relevant or could not be validated were not considered (or given lower weightage) in the survey.

The Performers
The IITs continue to rule, with some shuffle at the top. IIT-Madras replaces IIT-Kanpur as the numero uno this year, and the latter slipped to number six. In fact, both the Delhi and Kharagpur IITs have beaten Bombay and Kanpur in the game this year. Even IIT-Guwahati puts up a great performance and moves up four places to take the fourth rank.

The Top 20 listing this year looks a little different once you go beyond the IITs. None of the regional engineering colleges (read NITs) feature in the top 10. BIT-Ranchi and BITS-Pilani both feature among the Top 20 T-schools in India. Jadavpur University, which has one of the best-known engineering colleges in the East, has entered the Top 20 this year.

While 75% of the weightage is given to the response from institutes, 25% is reserved for the perception of the IT Recruiters. Therefore, scores on institute response have a stronger bearing on the overall scores in the study. Take for example the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. While just 20 companies came to the campus in this institute that was only established in 1998, all 20 companies were IT companies. This is one of the important factors that helped IIIT-Hyderabad score better than even some of the IITs. Hence, despite a relatively low score on industry perception, IIIT-Hyderabad manages to find a place in the Top 10. In fact, both IIITs (Hyderabad and Allahabad) have taken significant strides this year to come into the Top 10.

Another highlight of the survey is the entry of Jadavpur University in the Top 20. At #18, Jadavpur University has climbed seven places this year. The engineering department of this Kolkata-based university has a good track record in terms of industry recognition and quality of talent. While there have always been takers as far as traditional engineering is concerned, the current performance can be largely attributed to the huge IT boom in West Bengal. Placement scores were fairly high with nearly 16% of the recruiters coming from the IT industry and another 5% coming from ITeS. Academic environment emerges as another area of strength for JU. Today the IT industry is the biggest bet as far as the government is concerned. JU has a reputation that has been built over several years and with more and more IT companies showing interest, is all geared up to set up facilities in the State. It should not surprise anyone if it leapfrogs into the Top 10 next year.

Academic Environment
Today the academic environment is a big contributor to India’s IT excellence. Take for example the quality of faculty, the kind of research and development work done, the number of research papers written or the number of patents being filed. It is the right combination of these factors that creates centers of intellectual capital. Therefore, the average weightage given to the academic environment was increased to 20%. IIT-Madras performs the best on this parameter, leaving the rest behind by at least two points. IIT-Bombay comes second followed by IIT-Delhi as a close third.The average score of the Top 20 institutes stand at 9.8, and nine institutes score above the average. In fact, according to the survey, academic environment emerges as an area of concern for IIIT-Allahabad, Thapar Institute of Technology, and even Delhi College of Engineering. However, the only other institute beyond the overall Top 20 that reaches close to the Top 20 average on this parameter is the Madras Institute of Technology.

The Placement Stars
The top five when it comes to placements are not just IITs. There are IIITs too. And the IIT that tops the placement scorecard is not IIT-Kanpur or IIT-Madras (the number one this year), but IIT-Guwahati. The latter saw 71 companies during campus placements and 58% of these were from the IT industry. The average salary is also up by over 28% for IIT-Guwahati, the highest offer coming from Schlumberger, a global oilfield and information services company with a major focus on energy. The IT boom in the East might have helped IIT-Guwahati gain significantly on placements.

At #4, IIIT-Allahabad has beaten most IITs in placements. This year, all the 24 companies that came for campus placements are IT companies; the highest offer was made by Google, one of the hottest recruiters in the country today. In fact, some of the regular names at IIIT-Allahabad during placements are Sapient, Flextronics, i-Flex, HP, CSC, and Induslogic.

The Indian IT industry is on a roll. According to a recent Nasscom survey, the manpower strength of Indian IT Software and Services is 878,000 and ITeS is 415,000, at the close of FY 2005-06. IT software and services alone added 120,000 people to the workforce last fiscal. While brand remains one of the biggest drivers of good placements, a significant finding this year is that recruiters keep coming back to lesser-known places especially if earlier placements have yielded satisfactory results. At #8 this year, Institute of Technology, BHU enjoys high ratings in terms of HR perception, which is better than the NITs and the Delhi College of Engineering. In fact, it is this perception that is largely instrumental in creating brands. If BHU can work a little more on industry perception and increase its acceptance, it could be a reckoning force with respect to IT education and training.

Infrastructure Elements
Infrastructure is the foundation of a T-school’s strength. No wonder there is high correlation between a school’s total score and its infrastructural score. We rated a school on students’ access to computers; classroom and residential facilities; availability of digital in-campus library and Internet access to computer labs. The surprise entrants into ‘The Infrastructural Top 20′ are the Hamirpur-based National Institute of Technology, the Ghaziabad-based Academy of Business & Engineering Science and IMS Engineering College. However, their overall positions of 33, 93 and 49, respectively, indicate that while infrastructure might be a necessary criterion in rating a school, it isn’t the most important. And the theory of diminishing returns applies here too. Till a certain level of investment, infrastructure has a proportionate influence on the quality of the school (read IITs, IIITs and NITs apart from the BITs and the DCEs). Once the threshold is crossed, additional investments yield, at best, only incremental benefits. Of course, it takes time for infrastructure to translate itself into the quality of finished products (read students) and the perception around that.

How We Ranked The T-Schools (The methodology of the Dataquest-IDC ‘Best Tech School Survey 2006′)

Background The second Dataquest-IDC survey scorecard on the best T-Schools in the country is compiled on the basis of a methodology jointly decided by IDC India and Dataquest. The IDC team was led by Parijat Chakraborty, and assisted by Shailendra Gupta and Shakyadev Mitra.Research Objective The aim of this survey was to determine the top Technology schools (BE, BTech or similar level graduate technical course) in the country and rank them on a list of parameters important for both students and recruiters of IT companies.Research Methodology The Dataquest-IDC survey was carried out in three phases.Phase 1 - Exploratory Phase: At the beginning, the biggest challenge was to make the survey more pertinent and closer to industry requirement. At the same time, we have also received a lot of suggestions on our last year survey from institutes and HR professionals (thanks everybody for that). So to check the feasibility of all the above feedbacks, we thought of going back to the industry.Hence, in this phase, we conducted two focus group discussions (FGDs), one among the HR Managers of some leading IT companies and the other among the training and placement officers (TPOs) of different engineering institutions. The topic of discussion for the HR professionals was the different parameters they look for before selecting an institution for campus placements. And the topic of the TPOs was the different parameters on which an institution should be ranked.At the end of this exercise, we have removed some of the old parameters on which we had evaluated the institutes in 2005 (eg number of visiting faculty/number of seminars attended by the faculty etc to a name few) and added some new parameters such as number of faculty with PhD/number of patents obtained by institutes/number of MoUs signed by the institute etc. On the basis of the feedback, we have also changed the weightage assigned to each parameter.Phase 2 - Desk Research: In this phase, an exhaustive desk research was done, jointly by Dataquest and IDC India team, so as to identify the list of 250 Tech Schools, and 60 leading IT companies who were to be invited to be a part of the survey.In this phase, we also selected the companies who are the leading recruiters in IT industry, to take their perception on different Tech Schools. Size did matter in that selection. Phase 3: The IDC team approached the Tech Schools and the IT companies, short-listed in Phase 1. For the Tech Schools, face-to-face interviews/e-mail interviews were done with the college representatives (preferably the placement coordinators). HR heads of leading companies were contacted over e-mail to include the recruiter perception in the survey. The data was compiled on the basis of two-year objective data (academic years 2004-05 and 2005-06) provided by institutes and perception scores of the recruiters. Institutes who have not provided the data within the stipulated time, or provided partial data were not included in the survey. The Ranking The final sample size of the survey was 100 institutes. The research team from IDC carried out the extensive validation exercise to check the validity of the data. The parameters set for evaluating the Tech Schools were-Placements, Infrastructure, Academic Environment/Intellectual Capital, Industry Interface.

The weights were distributed as: Placements (40%), Infrastructure (10%), Intellectual Capital (20%) and Industry Interface (5%). The total weightage assigned to objective data was 75%. The perceptions of the recruiters were given 25% weightage.These parameters were further categorized into sub parameters. This was done in the following manner.Placements (In the last two years) Percentage of students placed in all type of companies. Percentage of students placed in IT companies. Number of all companies visiting campus per student. Number of IT companies visiting campus per student. Maximum Salary (Per Annum). Average salary of all type of companies (Per Annum). Average salary of IT companies (Per Annum). Infrastructure Computer/student ratio. Percentage of computers connected to Internet. Percentage of students that can be accommodated in hostel. Internet access in hostel. Percentage of P IV/latest configuration computers. Internet access in computer labs. Batch strength for PG course in Engineering disciplines. Availability of Digital/Network in-campus library. Academic Environment Faculty/Student ratio. Percentage of permanent faculty. Percentage of permanent faculty with PhD. Number of patents obtained by the institute. Batch strength of PhD course in engineering discipline. Percentage of students with first division in BE/B Tech degree. Average number of research papers in 2004-05 and 2005-06. Industry Interface Number of MoU signed by the industry. Average number of assignments in 2004-05 and 2005-06 for organizations. Affiliation or linkages with international institute/education body. Perception Score: The perception survey of recruiters was conducted through another questionnaire. Recruiters were asked to rate importance of various aspects while deciding which Tech school to visit for campus recruitments on a 5-point scale. Recruiters were also welcome to add any parameter of their choice. They were given a list of institutes, which they had to rate on a 10-point scale. TCS, Cadence, Patni, HP, Wipro and IBM were some of the companies that participated in the recruiter’s part of the survey. The composite score, which is the total of the objective data score and the recruiter’s perception score, was used to arrive at the final ranking. IIT-Delhi did not respond to our study till the end of data collection process. Analysis Methodology We honor the confidentiality of the information provided by the Tech schools, hence no absolute data is used for reporting. All the absolute data provided by the institutions were normalized and converted to relative data to arrive at the relative scores of different Tech schools on these parameters. After normalization, the data has been multiplied with respective weights of each parameter and then the total objective score, out of 75, was calculated. Similarly, from the HR perception, the total score out of 25 was calculated only for those institutes that received some marks from the HR professionals. The institutes who did not get any perception score from the recruiters were assigned zero on this section. These two scores were then added up and a composite score was calculated out of 100.

Last Word
Finally, perception creates brands. This is what makes the IITs the biggest brands by far when it comes to HR perception. IIT-Delhi scores highest on perception. IIT-Guwahati, though third in overall rankings, slips a little on recruiters perception score. IIT-Kanpur is a bit of a surprise when it comes to offering appropriate satisfaction levels to the IT recruiter and fares below its siblings Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur and Bombay. Another important aspect of perception is how an institute handles recruiters’ expectations. Inability to appropriately handle recruiter expectation could lead to a dip in perception levels. BITS-Pilani is the only other institute in the study that comes anywhere close to the IITs as far as recruiter’s perception is concerned.

The survey results are quite predictable with most big names in the T-school domain making it to the Top 20. NIT-Suratkal and NIT-Kurukshetra, which were in the Top 20 last year did not respond to our research. New entrants into the Top 20 were NIT-Calicut, Jadavpur University and BIT-Ranchi.

harging Ahead Private institutes are yet to make their mark in the top rung. BITS-Pilani, BIT-Mesra and Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology remain exceptions
The Birla brand (BITS-Pilani at #9 and BIT-Ranchi at #17) rules the roost when it comes to the private players with Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology at #20 being the only other private institute to make it to the top 20. The BITS clan has always been a reckoning force in the space of technology education and for TIET, it is the second time in the top ranks. However, an interesting outcome of the study is that despite high quality of infrastructure, academic environment and satisfactory levels of industry interface, the BIT brand falters on placements.BITS-Pilani
BITS-Pilani stands out quite effortlessly from the brand equity point of view. While the number of recruiters turning up for campus recruitments have gone up to 80 from 66 last year, the average size of pay-packets have also climbed by 9% to Rs 3 lakh. The highest offer received was that of Rs 18 lakh per annum from Schlumberger. Nearly 53% of the recruiters were from the IT industry. From the individual standpoint, BITS has improved dramatically on placements this year, but the performance in relation to other participants which have also ramped up significantly on placements, leaves more to be desired. However, BITS Pilani performs well on critical parameters like infrastructure, academic environment and industry interface. To promote an environment of research, BITS has established several research centers. There is iSERC (Software Engineering Research Center (India)), the Centre for Excellence in IBM Visual Age for Java and IBM DB2 UDB; Centre for Robotics and Intelligent System; Centre for Software Development; Embedded Controller Application Centre and Technology Innovation Centre, among others. The objective is to collaborate more with the industry and convert knowledge into practice.

How They Compare

Considering that present day information technologies can allow a rich interactive learning experience that may surpass the interactivity of a traditional classroom, the BITS model of off-campus education emphasizes on acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and deploys synchronous instruction through Internet based desktop video conferencing as well as asynchronous instruction through on-demand lectures. BITS-Pilani has also spread its wings beyond the shores of India with its Dubai campus.

BIT-Mesra
This institute can be referred to as the lesser sibling of BITS-Pilani especially from the brand standpoint. Though if one does an apple-to-apple comparison there is no significant difference between the two. In fact, BIT-Ranchi performs better on placements and beats BITS-Pilani on the overall institute scorecard. BIT-Ranchi’s biggest challenge today is brand equity. On recruiter’s perception, BIT-Ranchi is still miles away from BITS-Pilani.

Better known as BITS-Mesra, where it is actually located, the institute was established in 1955. Currently, the institute along with its extension centers has more than 2,572 students enrolled for different undergraduate and postgraduate programs. It also has more than 150 registered students for the PhD programs. Industry interface is an ongoing process at BIT-Mesra. It has MoUs with leading organizations like L&T, TCS and Infosys. There is an arrangement with the Small Industries Development Bank of India for establishment of a mechanism for wholesome technology development through setting up a Technology Incubation Centre. However, average number of assignments submitted this year remains low.

TIET
Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology falls sharply this year but manages to stay put within the top 20. TIET had 91 recruiters till May and there were 193 single offers made and 223 multiple offers. Total offers received till May were 662, and 416 students have received placements according to latest reports. Adobe made the highest offer of Rs 6.35 lakh per annum.

However, TIET is yet to attain the 100% mark when it comes to placements. Although TIET stays in the top 20, it slides badly from its ninth position last year. TIET’s vision statement reads, ‘To produce world class professionals who have learnt their skills in an environment of highly competent, research oriented and skilled faculty with state-of-the-art infrastructure’.

It is useful to recall the circumstances in which the IITs were born, and subsequently nurtured. The Nalini Ranjan Sarkar Committee report submitted in 1946 paved the way for India’s biggest brand-the IITs, post independence. The NR Sarkar Committee used global benchmarking to define standards, without knowing the term, by stating that “the proposed institutes should attain a standard not less than Manchester and Massachusetts”. There was value seen in the use of international faculty as evidenced by the presence of Professor RA Kraus and Professor H Tischner in the original academic team of IIT-Kharagpur, the first in the league of IITs established in 1952.

Now more than five decades later, the IITs remain the undisputed torchbearers with excellence in technology education in India. The IITs have given the world more global Indians than any other institute in India. Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and now a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Arun Netravali, former president of Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs; Kanwal Rekhi, former CTO of Novell, one of the founders of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) and CEO of the first Indian-led company publicly traded on Nasdaq; Padmasree Warrior, executive vice president & CTO for Motorola; Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone; Narayanamurthy, chief mentor, Infosys and the man instrumental in putting the Indian software industry on the global map….the list goes on. And these names are just a minuscule proportion of the IITians in the Silicon Valley and the world over.

In the presence of the mighty IITs there is little chance for other institutes to take a lead in the race. All the IITs in the survey stay right on top with some shuffle in the ranks. IIT-Madras displaces IIT-Kanpur to take the top slot while IIT-Delhi comes at #2. A significant highlight of our study this year is that the difference in scores between the topper and IIT-Kanpur at Rank 6 is 10.1 points. This implies that IIT-Chennai has ramped up on all counts to beat all the other IITs. On placements it comes a close second to IIT-Guwahati, which is the surprise package of the survey-up three places from last year, ahead of IIT-Kanpur. Academic environment emerges to be the biggest strength of IIT-Madras, with the highest number of faculty on permanent rolls and with PhDs. Several studies have lent credibility to the fact that it is superior faculty that creates knowledge and a culture of research and development. IIT-Madras also scores above all IITs on average salaries offered (Rs 6 lakh) this year with 45% of recruiters being IT companies so far.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT-Guwahati, formed in 1995, has always been recognized all over the world for excellence in research and teaching. Nearly 58% of the recruitment happened for the IT industry and the highest offer received this year was Rs 24.4 lakh per annum, compared to Rs 7.7 lakh last year. Average salaries offered are up too, by 28%. The growing importance of East in the IT map of India could also be doing the magic for IIT-Guwahati, which enjoys strong industry interface. Besides theoretical research, the faculty also maintains strong ties with many reputed national and international companies involved in a large number of projects in the forefront of cutting edge technology. The institute filed one patent last year for its research and development work.

IIT-Delhi has entered the DQ-IDC listing for the first time and has made it to the #2 position. IIT-Kharagpur has pushed IIT-Bombay to the fifth place, taking the third place this year. The largest and the oldest of the seven IITs, IIT-Kharagpur, performed well on placements, infrastructure and academic environment. In fact, IIT-Kharagpur’s high culture of research and learning gets reflected in the fact that it has to its credit the highest number of research papers in the last two academic years. The institute is currently in the process of setting up a separate unit for imparting studies in Intellectual Property law-the first of its kind in the IIT system in the country. The institute has already set up the Technology Incubator and Entrepreneurship Training Society (TIES) comprising professors, researchers and corporate personalities to encourage and assist talented engineers to examine projects.

Both IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kanpur have slipped in our study. IIT-Kanpur’s dip in performance could be attributed to its placements and HR perception score. While handling employer expectation could be a dampener. IIT-Kanpur is also known for traditional engineering that goes beyond just IT and attracts recruiters from core sectors as well, something that might be partially responsible for the institute slipping slightly this year. Interestingly, while it was 129 companies that visited IIT-Kanpur for campus placements, it was 150 for IIT-Chennai. However, IIT-Kanpur stays ahead of the pack in terms of average salaries offered by IT companies. IIT-Bombay too slipped largely on placements. Prima facie, there was nothing really wrong in terms of IIT-Bombay overall performance. However, on a relative scale, IIT-Madras, Kharagpur and Guwahati performed far better to move up the table. Recruiter perception remains extremely high for IIT-Bombay. IIT-Roorkee at #7 slips significantly on industry interface but does fairly well on placements.

Impressive! While 3 institutes with university affiliations have managed to hold on to their places in the Top 20, Jadavpur University is the new kid.
It was a tough battle that the Institute of Technology, BHU fought with the IITs, but had to be content with the seventh place. Placement wise, IT-BHU put up a fairly satisfactory show. Seventy-six companies visited the campus during the recruitment season and over 42 offers were over Rs 5.5 lakh. Nearly 32% of the recruiters were from the IT industry and the highest offer made was above Rs 7.64 lakh per annum. Faculty and academic environment is also IT-BHU’s area of strength. HR perception remains relatively low for the institute.

An important finding is that despite the fact the IT-BHU is just behind the IITs, the difference between the overall score between IIT-Chennai and IT-BHU is of nearly 20 points. In fact, IIT-Roorkee is ahead if IT-BHU by over 8 points. Therefore, while the result catapult IT-BHU in the big league yet again, the institute is still far from the height at which the IITs are placed.

It’s been an impressive performance by the Delhi College of Engineering, which moved up six places

It’s been an impressive performance by the Delhi College of Engineering, up six places. There were 60 companies at the campus this year. UK-based Laing O’Rourke, a non-IT company in the construction space, made the highest offer of Rs 9 lakh per annum.

Offers recorded an increase with the average rising to Rs 5.4 lakh per annum. In fact, DCE maintains its performance on placements this year as well with some of the biggest names in the IT industry making a beeline to its campus. Academic environment is a concern, given that the student-teacher ratio is rather poor. DCE also needs to get into higher number of collaborations with different government and non-government bodies to improve its association with the industry.

Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology keeps its placement records intact. With a score of 27.6 on placements, NSIT ranks at #7 on the placement scorecard, ahead of IIT-Kanpur and the NITs. The highest offer received so far this year is Rs 13 lakh from HLS Asia. Average salaries have also gone up by more than 16% to Rs 3.8 lakh per annum. There seems to be an even balance between the proportion of companies from the manufacturing and IT sector visiting the institute. NSIT is also offering a new part-time MTech program this year in Information Systems under the Division of Computer Engineering. Industry interface needs serious ramping and so does brand equity.

Jadavpur University is another new entrant into the top 20, up five places this year. JU’s Engineering & Technology department is one of the seven engineering colleges short-listed by the HRD Ministry for the status of the IITs. A place in the top 20 is definitely a step in the right direction for JU. There were 130 companies during campus recruitments this year, largest among all institutes. Regular names included Satyam, Wipro, Cognizant and TCS, although the highest offer of Rs 7.5 lakh per annum came from a non-technology major, Indian Oil. However, the proportion of IT companies coming for recruitments still remains low, at around 16%, with ITeS contributing another 5%.

JU scores high on faculty and academic environment. The institute also has collaborations with several universities in the UK and Italy. Infrastructure and industry interface emerge as pain points. Brand equity is also an area of concern.

TopTSchools: The Flag Bearers IIITs have been actively driving the country’s IT education sector. Their positions in the Top 10 have cost NITs dearly

IIIT is the generic name for several Indian Institutes of Information Technology, although some of them have been subsequently renamed now. The IIITs were considered the frontrunners in the Information Technology education sector at a time when India was going through a phase of unprecedented boom in the software industry. The two IIITs that have made it to our Top 20 are International Institutes of Technology, Hyderabad (#10) and Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad (#11).With two IIITs coming into the top 10 for the first time, apart from the IITs, it’s a complete wipeout for the NITs, or the regional engineering colleges, from the top 10.

IIIT-Hyderabad
IIIT-Hyderabad was created with the vision to carry out advanced research and technology development in information technology and their societal, scientific, industrial and financial applications in 1998. The Government of Andhra Pradesh, NASSCOM, and corporate partners including IBM, Oracle, Satyam, Motorola, and Keane jointly set up IIIT-Hyderabad, a deemed university.

Some of the key recruiters in the campus this year were Infosys, IBM, Verizon, Wipro, Computer Associates. The highest salary offered this year was Rs 8.5 lakh (it was Rs 7.8 lakh last year) while average salary stood at Rs 4.5 lakh. It’s a jump of five places for IIIT-Hyderabad in the overall rankings. All students in the BTech batch have been placed so far while 94.7% if all batches of BTechs, MTechs and MS Computer Science are considered.

The placement season will continue till the end of June, by which time IIIT-Hyderabad expects to place all its students. Over 61% of the students placed so far have received multiple job offers in the current placement season.

IIIT-Hyderabad slips a bit on infrastructure, which is unexpected from an institute that is so focused on IT education. However, IIIT-Hyderabad emerges strong on research orientation. At #20 on recruiter’s perception score, IIIT-Hyderabad needs to ramp up on this front.

The Institute has an ambitious plan to create next generation researchers, faculty members and innovators through the Research Exchange Program. The candidate registers for PhD and spends time at IIIT and with a partner research group abroad. He may also obtain his PhD from the partner research group abroad. The partnerships have been worked out with leading research groups at the Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champagne.

IIIT-Allahabad
The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad was set up in 1999, as per the recommendations of the Rame Gowda Committee that was constituted by the National Task Force in 1998, with a budget of over Rs 4 crore.

IIIT-Allahabad jumped up 8 places this year. The single-largest driver of this huge jump is placements. IIIT-Allahabad comes at #4 on the placement scorecard, especially on sub-parameters like percentage of students placed. The biggest recruiter was Google, in terms of compensation, with an offer of Rs 8.25 lakh per annum. The current placement season saw 24 recruiters visit the campus for placements. Prominent among those were TCS, Induslogic, Patni Computer Systems, HCL and IBM, among others.

IIIT-Allahabad’s placement rank of #4 is a steep climb of 17 places from last year.

However, it is not placement alone that creates centers of excellence. IIIT-Allahabad’s placement record has been exemplary this year. But, serious improvement is required on parameters such as industry interface and academic environment. Faculty and student-faculty ratio emerged as a concern for IIIT-Allahabad. The institute’s overall rank on academic environment stands at #74, and at #67 on industry interface.

Interestingly, IIIT-Allahabad is one of the few institutes in the country to offer a Masters program in cyber law and information security. However, the institute needs to strengthen its focus on seminars and signing more MoUs that would increase affiliations and linkages.

Feel free to comment and discuss what you feel about these rankings about your T School.