Methodology

The process of ranking India’s best professional colleges began with a listing of institutions to update Outlook’s master list of colleges. Only colleges with government accreditation or affiliation and with at least three passed-out batches were considered for the ranking. Detailed objective questionnaires were then sent to more than 1,500 colleges across the country in nine streams—Engineering, Medicine, Architecture, Dentistry, Law, Social Work, Hotel Management, Mass Communication and Fashion Technology. Extensive follow-up—through phone calls, e-mails and field visits—was then conducted, to maximise the participation of colleges.

With a good participation from fashion institutes, we have moved the Fashion Technology stream from purely perceptual ranking to objective-perceptual data-based ranking as in the other eight streams. This is the first year that we are ranking all nine streams through uniform parameters. This has increased the robustness of the ranking process, and we thank the institutes in these streams for their enhanced participation. Till last year, we had ranked fashion institutes on the basis of their perceptual scores only while all others were ranked on an objective-perceptual basis.

The objective questionnaires, which were also put on the Outlook and Drshti websites, measured colleges on five key parameters—Selection Process, Academic Excellence, Infrastructure and Facilities, Personality Development & Industry Exposure and Placements. The weights of these parameters were kept the same as last year’s to ensure comparability with the previous years’ rankings. These parameters and sub-parameters, and their importance, were decided in 2010 in consultation with a panel of experts with reasonable experience in their respective fields.

A separate perceptual survey was conducted among students, faculty, HR professionals, recruiters, practising doctors, dentists, social activists, fashion designers, media professionals, engineers, lawyers, hotel managers and architects in 14 cities—Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Seemandhra, Calcutta, Patna and Bhubaneswar. Field researchers also conducted questionnaire-based interviews among 494 senior faculty members, 668 students and 310 recruiters and professionals. In the final phase, an extensive audit was conducted, and Drshti researchers visited about 20 per cent of the colleges. Final scores were calculated by adding the objective and perceptual scores for all streams. For details of the parameters and sub-parameters, and their weightages, please visit www.outlookindia.com.

The Drshti research team included Mukunda Giri, Angela Kallor, Vyoma Shah, Pawan Singh and Palak Chaudhary.