IIT Kharagpur is the best tech school in India, according to an IDC survey of 111 engineering colleges across India.Seven National Institutes of Technology (earlier called Regional Engineering Colleges), made it to the Top 30 T-Schools list compared to only four in 2007-08. Due to the good placement track record of NITs, the HRD Ministry is proposing to convert some of them into IITs.
Interestingly, while the average annual salaries of IIT graduates registered a drop of 5% to Rs 5.88 lakh, average salary of NIT graduates improved 6% to Rs 4.36 lakh. Amongst IITs, IIT Kharagpur scored highest on HR perception but it was IIT Delhi that ranked the highest on placement records. Economic slowdown in 2009, however, did have an impact on placements across all tech schools. Placements across T-schools in 2009 fell to 73%, from a high of 84% in 2007-08, the the T-School 2009 survey said.
1. IIT Kharagpur
The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is an autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institute of higher education established by the Government of India in 1951. The first of the thirteen IITs to be established, it is officially recognised as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India and is regarded as one of the best engineering institutions in India. IIT Kharagpur has been ranked amongst the top engineering colleges in India by various education surveys.
IIT Kharagpur was established to train scientists and engineers after India attained independence in 1947. It shares its organisational structure and undergraduate admission process with sister IITs. The students and alumni of IIT Kharagpur are informally referred to as KGPians. Among all IITs, IIT Kharagpur has the largest campus (2,100 acres), the most departments, and the highest student enrollment. IIT Kharagpur is particularly famous for its festivals: Kshitij and Spring Fest.
2. IIT Delhi
The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi is a major college of engineering in Delhi, India. It forms a part of the league along with other IITs in India: the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, and Roorkee.
IIT Delhi has 13 departments, 11 multi-disciplinary centers, and 2 schools of excellence. Together they offer around 700 courses every semester.
IIT Delhi, like all other Indian Institutes of Technology, is best known for its undergraduate program that include the Bachelor of Technology program, the Dual Degree Bachelor-cum-Master of Technology program and an Integrated Master of Technology Program.
3. IIT Madras
IIT Madras is an elite engineering and technology school located in Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India. It is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India and is regarded as one of the finest engineering institutions in India.
Founded in 1959 with technical and financial assistance from the Government of the erstwhile West Germany, IIT Madras is third among currently fifteen Indian Institutes of Technology (including 6 new IITs started in 2008 and 2 more in 2009) established by the Government of India through an Act of Parliament, to provide education and research facilities in engineering and technology.
4. IIT Kanpur
IIT Kanpur was set up in industrial city of Kanpur in 1959 and is currently celebrating its Golden Jubilee. IIT Kanpur has grown into one of the top technological institutes in India, primarily focused on research in engineering and science, and the teaching of undergraduates. IIT Kanpur has a sprawling campus spread over an area of approx. 4.3 square km, just north-west of the city.
Undergraduate courses in engineering are traditionally 4 year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and 5 year Dual Degree Programme leading to the degrees of B. Tech- M. Tech are also offered in most of the departments along with the five year MSc programmes.
Postgraduate courses in the engineering are 2 year Master of Technology (M.Tech) and PhD. The institute also offers MBA (2 years), M.Sc. (2 years) and M. Des programme. Admissions to MTech is made once a year through Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering.
5. IIT Roorkee
IIT Roorkee is located in Roorkee, a township in Uttarakhand, India. Instituted as Thomson college of Civil Engineering in year 1847 by the British, it was rechristened as University of Roorkee in year 1949.
Prior to independence, it awarded the degrees of the University of Calcutta and the Allahabad University, to which it was successively affiliated, followed by its own diplomas.
IIT Roorkee offers a wide range of academic programmes. It runs eleven Under Graduate, five Integrated Dual Degree, three Integrated M.Tech., three integrated MSc, sixty one Post Graduate and several Doctoral Programmes.
6. IIT Guwahati
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati is an autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institute of higher education established by the Government of India, located in Guwahati, in the state of Assam in India. It is the sixth member of the IIT fraternity.
IIT Guwahati is officially recognised as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India. The institute consistently ranks amongst the top engineering colleges in the academic ranking of Indian colleges by various engineering education surveys.
Owing to its establishment in the early 1990s, the institute boasts of providing the best and the latest engineering and computing resources in the entire country.
7. IIIT Hyderabad
International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad is an autonomous institute started in 1998 with seed support from the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
It emphasizes research from the undergraduate level, which makes it different from the other leading engineering institutes in India like the IITs. Raj Reddy, the only Indian to get the Turing Award, is the chairman of the board of governors.
It is a research university. The major goal is to impart a uniquely broad and interdisciplinary IT education of high academic quality. This is done through an diverse curriculum of IT courses, interdisciplinary IT research projects, interaction with industry, preparation in entrepreneurship and personality development courses.
8. BITS Pilani
Birla Institute of Technology & Science is an Institution declared as Deemed to be University under Sec. 3 of the UGC Act and features in the world map as a renowned science and technology institute.
It is located in Pilani, Rajasthan, India. In addition to Pilani, BITS has campuses in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Goa, India and Hyderabad, India and an extension center in Bangalore, India.
BITS Pilani is well known for its flexible academic structure and the institute's policy of admission purely on the basis of merit and not through any kind of reservations.
The institute is privately supported and fully residential. BITS Pilani is the first Indian institution to set up a campus outside India.
9. NIT Surathkal
The National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal is a premier autonomous university along the western shores of India. It was founded in July 1960, as a joint venture between the Government of Karnataka and the Government of India, originally under the name Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Surathkal.
The B Tech admissions are based on the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination). The exam consists of three sections on Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and is one of the most competitive examinations in the country, with lakhs of students competing for the privilege of a few hundred seats.
Post Graduate students are admitted to the program through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) conducted by the Indian Institute of Technologies and the Indian Institute of Science.
10. IT BHU
The Institute of Technology or IT-BHU is the engineering school of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi. It is one of India's oldest and highest-ranked engineering colleges.
Like the rest of BHU, it is a residential and co-educational institute. The University is situated in a magnificent campus spread over nearly 1300 acres at the southern end of the ancient city of Varanasi on the banks of the holy river Ganga. The admission for undergraduate students is through IIT - Joint Entrance Examination and for post-graduates is through Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).
The Institute has so far produced more than 22,000 BTech graduates, 2700 MTech post graduates and 650 PhD doctorates. IT-BHU is now scheduled to become India's 16th IIT and the first that will bear in its name link to another institution viz BHU.