METHODOLOGY

The task of choosing the right coaching institute to secure admission into the prestigious IITs, IIMs or AIIMS to pursue engineering, management or medical education is a challenging one. The India Today Group’s Annual Best Coaching Institute survey aims to make this task a little easier. Conducted by MDRA (Marketing and Development Research Associates), a pioneer in institutional ranking and rating, the second edition of the survey ranks the coaching institutes preparing students for the top three entrance examinations:

JEE, for admissions into IITs and other top engineering colleges

NEET (UG), for admissions into top medical colleges

CAT, for admissions into IIMs and other top MBA colleges

The MDRA methodology has tried to cover all key stakeholders:

Experienced faculty members of coaching institutes

Current students attending coaching classes

Alumni of coaching institutes currently studying in IITs, IIMs and medical colleges

The coaching institutes

The study was completed in the following phases:

a) Desk review and expert

opinion: A list of 400 established institutes imparting classroom training was prepared, ensuring institutes from all zones of the country get representation. Institutes known across the nation (in terms of reach and accessibility) were shortlisted for the next stages.

b) Parameters selection: Key parameters to differentiate between the good and average coaching institutes were determined via in-depth interviews with experts in the field and experienced parents. Based on these, the following five broad parameters were considered:

Intake quality and fees—student selection criteria, establishment age, fees, scholarships etc.

Quality of faculty—qualification, experience, selection criteria, knowledge, student-faculty ratio, student interaction, problem solving, retention, etc.

Learning resources—infrastructure, location, study and test materials, etc.

Training process—teaching methodology, skills development, personal attention, regular evaluation and feedback mechanisms, time management training, stress management and strategies for cracking entrance tests, etc.

Outcome—selection ratio, average rank of students, spread of selections across different centres, post-exam counselling, consistency in selection in top institutes, etc.

c) Determining weightages: The weightage for each parameter was fixed in 2019, and was retained for consistency in comparison over the year.

d) Perceptual survey: This involved administering questionnaires to a wide variety of respondents:

1. Experienced faculty members who have taught in several institutes

2. Current students

3. Former students now studying in IITs, IIMs and medical colleges Respondents were asked to rank top institutes as per streams relevant to their field in the country as well as in their zone. In addition, rating (on a scale of 1 to 10) on five parameters was taken to ascertain their knowledge about a particular institute. Perceptual survey was carried out among 1,596 respondents via face-to-face interviews across 25 cities—Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Dehradun, Lucknow, Kota, Jaipur, Ghaziabad, Roorkee, Varanasi, Mumbai, Indore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nagpur, Chennai, Ben

galuru, Hyderabad, Mysuru, Coimbatore, Vijayawada, Kolkata, Patna, Ranchi and Bhubaneswar

e) Experiential survey: Conducted among 770 ex-students, who were asked to rate their institutes on five parameters based on their experience

f) Objective survey: Due to Covid, most coaching institutes were closed and hence could not submit their objective participation. However, data was collected by speaking to the institutes and through their websites; outcome and outreach parameters were established through secondary research (institute’s social media account, advertisements, news articles). Under the outreach parameter, data pertaining to number of branches and franchisees were factored in, while the outcome parameter comprised data related to the final selection of students in JEE Advanced, NEET-UG and IIMs, respectively. Due to this limitation, the weightage of objective data in the ranking is 5 per cent, which we plan to increase in subsequent rankings. g) Assignment of ranking: Rankings were assigned based on combined scores of perceptual survey, objective data and experiential score in the ratio of 75 per cent, 20 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. The total combined score of each institute was arranged in descending order with the one scoring the highest allotted first rank. A team comprising researchers, statisticians, analysts and field investigators worked on this project from March to August 2020. The MDRA core team, led by Abhishek Agrawal (Executive Director), comprised Abnish Jha (Project Director), Rajan Chauhan (Sr Research Executive), Somendra Shahi (Research Executive) and Saksham Singhal (Assistant Research Executive).