How to Chose An Engineering College Other than IITs

Since my page on JEE Counselling was published, I have received a lot of requests on my views on engineering colleges other than IITs.
However, I cannot claim to have known a lot of colleges. I travel a lot, and must have visited more than 100 colleges all across country during my career so far, talked to thousands of students, and I can claim to have some understanding of the higher technical education in the country. However, all these visits and browsing the website cannot really tell you everything about any particular college. So I am going to do two things here.

One, I have prepared a small list of colleges, who have made a significant positive impression on me. This may be due to my visits to that college, or my interactions with faculty or students there, or sometimes just visiting the website of that college. So, if a particular college is not listed, it is most likely because I don't know enough about them, and not because I don't consider them as a good college. Also, please note that I do not claim to know anything about programs other than Computer Science. When I visit a college, it is usually only the CS (or related) department. And, if I visit their website, it is usually the CS department website. So, when I recommend a college, I am really recommending it for CS and related areas only.

Two, I am writing below how one should go about ranking them oneself. If I had infinite time, I would have followed this approach myself to rank these colleges. In my opinion, the ranking should depend on the factors that I list below. You should check whether the department has a website or not. If the department does not have a website, or does not provide all the information on the website, then don't rank it very high. The assumption here is that in today's age, if a department in CS/IT area does not provide information for potential students, then it can only be because they don't have any meaningful information to provide.

If you go through the following details, you are bound to find it a very time consuming process. (You will be right, and that is exactly the reason I am giving the process, and not doing the exercise myself.) But choosing a college will have a huge impact on your future, and you should be willing to spend a lot of time in doing this exercise. Of course, you always have an option of looking at the last year's closing ranks in all the exams like AIEEE and use that as the basis of making your choices. But then you didn't need to read even this much.

Before I talk about what are the important criteria for selecting college, let me add that the eventual goal is to do well in career, and be happy in life. Success in career depends on a lot of factor: your passion and interest in the area you are working in, your preparedness (this is where education comes in), your ability to keep learning lifelong (this is why good faculty is absolutely important - to not just teach you some technical stuff, but tell you how to learn yourself), your network of friends (this is where brand name of college will help), and a huge amount of luck.

In today's society, almost all students and parents take the value of the first paycheck as the only measure of success. So, if you visit the forums where students discuss which college to join, the most important questions are: how is the placement, how many companie came, what was the highest salary offered, and so on. People don't want to know whether students of that college are going for higher studies, to just give an example.

Even if money is important to you, shouldn't the career earnings be more important that the first paycheck. And that, as I said above, will depend a whole lot more on quality of education than the first paycheck. And the quality of education is primarily driven by quality of faculty. So, if there is only one thing that you want to check in a website, it is the quality of faculty.

When I look at the lists prepared by students of the order in which they will seek admission, I am sometimes shocked. I visit the website of the two colleges, and at the outset it is absolutely clear as to where the faculty is far superior in every respect, and one still goes for the other place because the closing rank last year was better, or because someone said that a company offered a huge amount of salary to one student.

Another bias that I notice on these forums is that government colleges are better than private colleges. I can understand (and myself advocate to an extent) joining an IIT even if the faculty size is very small, compared to a non-IIT with good faculty, because the brand value is just too high, and that does help in one's career, but I notice that the closing ranks in some of the NITs, IIITs, etc., are very good, even though few private places (like BITS, IIITH, DA-IICT, and LNMIIT - the last one isn't exactly private but a partnership between Rajasthan Government and Mr. Laxmi Mittal) may have superior faculty. Some NITs are excellent, no doubt. But many of them really suffer badly from lack of faculty.

Enough ramblings. Now the parameters:


The most important component that goes into making a good institution is a good faculty. So when you visit the website of a department, look for the following information:
Number of full-time faculty members. Please make sure that you read the details, and find out who is a full-time faculty member, and who is a part-time or adjunct faculty member.
Their qualificiations. How many are PhDs. Where did they do their PhDs. Similarly, how many faculty members are having MTech qualification. Where did they do their MTech.
If a significant portion of faculty received their highest degree (whether PhD, MTech, or BTech) from the same college, then that should raise some alarms. On the other hand, faculty members having a lower degree from the same college, implies that they value the place enough that they returned back to the same place after getting a higher degree from elsewhere.
If the highest qualification for any faculty member is MCA, then be alarmed. Top places will only higher PhDs. Good places may have some MTechs. But if colleges are hiring BTechs and MCAs for teaching courses, it means that they are not able to attract enough good faculty, and that should be a cause for concern.
What are faculty doing. Are they teaching three courses a semester or two. Are they doing at least some bit of research publications.
Look at the Curriculum of the college. If the college is a deemed university, only then it has the flexibility of deciding its own curriculum. Otherwise, it has to follow what the university prescribes. Some of the things to look for in the curriculum are:
How many courses do they teach. Unlike the conventional wisdom in India, I believe that the college that teaches you less is a better college. It means that they do less spoon feeding, and give you more space to grow and learn. If you look at international examples, MIT and other top universities have as low as 32 courses as the requirement for undergraduate degree. The next level universities in US require upto 36 courses for the undergraduate program. In India, IITs and the other top departments usually have 40-42 courses in the undergraduate curriculum. Some of the deemed universities require around 45 courses, and many of the universities require even 60 courses in the undergraduate curriculum. There are surely exceptions to this general trend, but by and large colleges will try to teach you more, if they know that they are doing a poor job of teaching, and hope that if they try teaching you lots, then perhaps in some courses they will be able to teach you something.
How many electives are there in the curriculum, giving flexibility to the students to learn what they are interested in. Many colleges may have slots for electives, but they treat that slot as their choice to offer a course. So they won't offer three courses, and ask students to chose one. But instead they will offer one course of their own choice (basically for whatever course they can find a faculty). Also, in most colleges, the curriculum will only contain professional electives, but no open electives.
Do they have enough number of humanities and social science courses (at least 10 percent courses).
How is the Infrastructure at the college. Now, this is something that most colleges will score equally well. In CS/IT areas, what you really need is a bunch of PCs with some standard softwares, something that increasingly students are anyway affording on their own. But still there are pieces of infrastructure that the college has to provide. Also, how good is their support staff to manage that infrastructure. Here is what you can check.
What is their Internet bandwidth. (Consider the per capita bandwidth.)
Do they have their own domain name for the website.
Do they list some email addresses for faculty, and others on the website. If yes, are these addresses from free service provides (yahoo, gmail, rediffmail, etc.), or are these of the domain name of the college. If everyone seems to be using yahoo and gamil accounts, then it means that they do not provide a good email service internally.
Do they have BOTH a Windows lab and a Linux lab. Ideally CS departments should be preparing you for both Windows and Linux platforms.
Another parameter in determining a good college is to look at what happens to their students after they graduate. After all, you want to study there because you feel that the education will result in a good career for you. But Do not over-emphasize this parameter. So look for the information on the following:
What all companies did they attract for campus placement. Do they attract any multinationals. Do they attract only those IT companies who have local offices, or companies with no presence in the local town also come to the college.
What percentage of their students got hired by these companies.
What is the average and median salaries. (Maximum salaries are attractive but very deceptive. Beware of colleges which only talk about the highest salaries.)
How many people are going for higher studies, whether in India or abroad, whether for doing MS/MTech or for doing MBA.
Do these students care about the college after they graduate. In particular, does college have an associated Alumni Association. Is there any interaction (not necessarily donations, may be just visits) between alumni and the college.
Research output of a department is another factor to look at. One might argue that research is not that important for undergraduate education. Firstly, I do not agree with that statement. Doing research keeps a teacher uptodate on the area, and makes his/her understanding of the subject better. This can only help the quality of teaching. But more importantly, research flourishes when there is an institutional support for it. If faculty members are doing research, then it shows that the college management is serious about the quality of education. Research can be measured by the following parameters.
Publication by faculty members. Higher preference should be given to peer-reviewed journals and conferences of high quality and reputation. Then one should also look at local conferences. At least someone is putting some effort in the right direction.
Sponsored research projects by various funding agencies like Department of Science and Technology (DST), AICTE, Dept of Information Technology, etc.
Any industry interaction in terms of research projects or consultancy.
Do they invite several researchers to give seminars.
Do they organize workshops and conferences.
Does college management have any scheme to reward good research.
What do others say about this college.
Have they been ranked by any major survey like India Today, Data Quest, etc. Note that most of these surveys are only about perceptions and not realities. And it is not that easy to get all the comparable information any way. So take the ranking information with a HUGE pinch of salt.
Has the college gone through any formal accreditation by AICTE (NBA) or NAAC, etc. If yes, what is the result.
Is it a deemed university.
I wouldn't be swayed by the number of MoUs or exchange programs that a college may have with so-called foreign universities.
A few miscellaneous things. They are gross generalizations, hence be careful in applying them to specific instances.
A fully residential or at least mostly residential college has a much better environment than a college which has mostly day scholars.
I don't recommend anyone to do an MCA degree. If you are interested in knowing why I say so, please read my views on MCA programs.
On a couple of occasions above, I have referred to the status of Deemed University. In my opinion, it is very important to be declared as deemed to be university. When you get this status, you can decide your own academic processes, including curriculum, exams, grading, and even admissions, etc. Invariably, colleges with this kind of autonomy have much better quality of education than others.
If you feel that the information provided on the college website is incomplete, or you think that there might be exaggerations, you should send emails to some faculty members and students. Hopefully, the website would have email addresses of faculty, and at least some students (like those who organize events, etc.).

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If you have any comments, you can send me email at: dheeraj[AT]iitk.ac.in.