To inspire, aid and enable class XII students to select the most suitable undergrad colleges, since 2018 EducationWorld has been rating India’s Top 500 Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering colleges on several critical parameters of education excellence and ranking them in separate categories, writes Dilip Thakore Now that the novel Coronavirus pandemic which forced the longest disruption and closure of education institutions from pre-primaries to universities (March 2020-February 2022) in India, is over, and the world’s largest, national population of children and youth is streaming back into campuses at the fag end of the academic year 2021-22, all that remains for online school-leavers is to write their class X and XII board exams. How well they perform in these vitally important exams will determine their junior college and undergrad education destinations. According to all indications, after almost two years of online learning, all board exams will have to be written offline in designated examination centres this month (April). Even though syllabuses have been pruned, school-leavers have anxious times ahead. They have to score high marks in their chosen streams to ensure they enter the country’s best undergrad arts, science, commerce and engineering colleges. Inevitably, in a nation which has foolishly under-invested in education and human capital development, competition for admission into the Top 500 of the country’s 45,000 undergrad colleges and 1,005 universities is intense. The total number of India’s higher secondary school-leavers per year is estimated at 12 million. Against this, the Top 500 can at best admit 500,000 top-scoring school-leavers from across the country. To aspire to enter the best colleges, toppers need to know which are the country’s most-respected undergrad education institutions. Therefore to inspire, aid and enable class XII students to select and aim for most suitable undergrad colleges, since 2018 EducationWorld has been rating India’s Top 500 Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering colleges on several critical parameters of education excellence and ranking them inter se. In addition for the past nine years, we have also been ranking the country’s Top 300 universities and 100 private B-schools. The prime objective of this elaborate exercise which involves field interviews spread over three months with more than 4,000 informed sample respondents (faculty and final year students) is to aid and assist top-ranked school-leavers to choose the most aptitudinally suitable higher learning institutions for continuing their education. Admittedly, several other publications including India Today, some business magazines and dailies also publish league tables rating and ranking the country’s best higher education institutions. But we believe as an exclusively education-focused magazine of greater depth and experience of the education sector, EducationWorld is better qualified to provide context and analysis of our carefully curated league tables. Moreover, for ideological and accessibility reasons, unlike other publications, we rank public and private higher ed institutions (HEIs) separately. The rationale of this separation is that government HEIs provide highly subsidised education and therefore, tend to be the first choice of school-leavers. However…
