COVER STORY: INDIA TODAY-AC NIELSEN-ORG-MARG SURVEY OF COLLEGES
ENGINEERINGDelhi leads the IIT bandwagon again as four new colleges figure among the crème de la crème
By Shruti Maheshwari
PICTURE SPEAK
HEADING THE QUEUE: IIT, Delhi students Excellence, they say, doesn't come easy. You have to work hard at it. Professor Surendra Prasad, director, IIT Delhi, is unflinching when he speaks of the value additions that take place within the ramparts of this 320-acre citadel of excellence. "Just getting a bunch of good students doesn't mean a thing unless you ensure that excellence is not only sustained but also nurtured," says the institute director.
Not surprisingly, IIT Delhi manages to reassert its pre-eminent position time and again. It has emerged as the topper in the engineering stream for the second time in a row. And as always, the IITs have managed to corner most of the ranks this year too, with IIT Kanpur-up from No. 4 last year-nudging IIT Mumbai from second to third.
Staying ahead is not easy. When it comes to comparing the IITs with other engineering institutes, it is the system of open electives that enables them to maintain their lead. Almost half of the 180 credits students have to complete are not specific to any discipline. So if you are a student of biochemical engineering, you could find yourself studying the philosophy of language and even algorithms along with DNA technology. This enables them to get dual specialisation in any field of their choice, a feature that can work wonders in the age of multi-specialisation and multi-tasking. Take Mekala Krishnan, a final-year mechanical engineering student at IIT Delhi, who has got a lucrative job offer for a business analyst's post from the consultancy firm McKinsey & Co, even as she is toying with the idea of doing a Master's in fluid mechanics at Cornell University, US.
TOP 10
1 IIT, Delhi2 IIT, Kanpur
3 IIT, Mumbai
4 IIT, Kharagpur
5 IIT, Chennai
6 IIT, Roorkee
7 Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi 8 NIT Karnataka, Surathkal
9 Institute of Technology, BHU 10 NIT, Warangal
National rankings are derived from a combination of perceptual and factual scores. Colleges that did not provide factual information were not ranked. (-) Not ranked in the 2005
for details visit :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foetron/message/230