How the universities were ranked

The india today Best Universities survey, conducted by the Nielsen Company, examined the country’s universities in four streams—general (arts, science and commerce), technical, medical and legal. Universities that offer postgraduate courses in these streams were considered. Institutions of national importance specialising in only one area of knowledge, such as engineering, medicine and law, have also been included in the survey. That’s why premier institutes such as IITs and AIIMS also find place in the list.

A list of 500 universities was generated, based on secondary data sources, such as the Internet, published reports and the Association of Indian Universities Handbook, and suggestions from experts. Between February and March this year, around 600 experts across the country were asked to rank these universities. The experts—deans, registrars, department heads, professors and readers—were not allowed to rate their own university.

The experts were asked to distribute 100 points across 11 parameters:

Reputation of the university

Quality of academic input

Faculty

Research publications/reports/ projects

Student care

Infrastructure

Innovation and governance

Admission procedure

Placement opportunities /enrolment for higher education

Global exposure

Security for students

The ratings of experts determined the perceptual rank of a university. In the next stage, the universities were contacted for factual data. Seventy universities responded to the survey with detailed information.

The factual data was sought on these parameters: admissions and students’ performance, infrastructure, placements, academic input, research and publication, awards, industry interface and faculty. All factual information provided by a university was rescaled and then aggregated to get an overall factual rank.

The universities that did not provide factual data were not considered. The perceptual rank and the factual rank were combined to derive the final rankings. Both ranks were given 50 per cent weight. The overall score was indexed to 100.