How to Chose an Engineering College

7/31/2019 How to Chose an Engineering College

1/6

How to Chose An Engineering College

(Last update: Apr, 2011)

Since I write about IITs and JEE Counseling on my website as well as my blog, a lot of

people assume that I would have opinions on engineering colleges as well. Since I get somany emails, I once decided to write about how all of you could yourself decide which

institute would provide quality education to you. I try to update this document once a year,

but there is not much in this document which gets dated.

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 inthe 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 positiveimpression on me. This may be due to my visits to that college, or my interactions withfaculty 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 acollege, 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.

Here is the list of Recommended Colleges (for CS/IT 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 thedepartment 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 informationto provide. Besides, a lot of information that I ask you to check is mandatory information

as per AICTE guidelines.

If you go through the following details, you are bound to find it a very time consumingprocess. (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 likeAIEEE and use that as the basis of making your choices. But then you didn't need to read

even this much.
http://dsanghi.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-2011-list-of-recommended-csit.htmlhttp://dsanghi.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-2011-list-of-recommended-csit.html


2/6

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. The career earnings will depend on a whole lot of factors, but two factors

will depend on the institute that you select. One, how good is your understanding of thediscipline. Not just how good you are as a programmer, but do you have a feel for data

structures and algorithms. Do you think algorithmically. Do you understand the functioningof operating systems, compilers, database management systems, etc. (I am giving examples

from Computer Science, since I am more familiar with this part of IT.) The second factor is

whether you are excited about learning all the new stuff that you will come across duringyour career.

A whole lot of colleges will prepare you for the first job. They will teach you less basics

but more of technology. They will focus on preparing you for the interview for the first job,

including teaching you how to dress up for the occasion. They will also have a suave

placement incharge who can charm all companies to come to campus for placementinterviews. He will also be smart enough to give out doctored placement statistics to lure

fresh students to his/her institute. And sadly, most parents and students will join suchplaces.

So, if you consider money to be important, you should be joining an institute whose alumni

are earning a lot more after 5-10 years (and later) into the industry, and not those where an

odd graduating student is earning a lot more in the first one month after the graduation.And there are many good institutes whose alumni are doing very well or are likely to do

very well (in case of relatively new institutes), but there immediate placement record may

not be that great.

But in the absence of any scientific survey of alumni with 5-10 years of experience, how doyou know which institutes are likely to give you that push. Well, as I said above. You need

two things: good quality education, and developing an interest for life long learning. Both

these will depend primarily on the quality of faculty. And the latter (interest in life longlearning) can be guessed by the number of students who are going for higher technical

education, be is MS or MTech or PhD. So check for two primary pieces of information:

quality of faculty, and percentage of students going for higher technical education.


3/6

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 onestill 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.

Some people talk about brand names. The big universities spend a huge amount of money

on advertising, and that obviously creates a brand recall. (Today, education sector has oneof the largest budget for marketing in India.) In this game, the small universities are

ignored by students and parents. But a lot of small universities provide excellent education.

The brand name also means that corporate HR guys have heard the names, and they toocome to those campuses. But as I said above, campus placement should be only one of the

many criteria for deciding the college. The main criteria has to be quality of education,

which primarily depends on the quality of faculty.

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 ifthe 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 ranksin 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. Lakshmi Mittal) may have superior faculty. Some NITs areexcellent, 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 followinginformation:o 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. The important parameter is faculty tostudent ratio.

o 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.

o 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 thesame college, implies that they value the place enough that they returned

back to the same place after getting a higher degree from elsewhere.

o If the highest qualification for any faculty member is BTech or 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.


4/6

o What are faculty doing. Are they teaching three courses a semester or two.

Are they doing at least some bit of research publications.

Research output of a department is another factor to look at. This will also add toyour judgment about the quality of faculty. The better the faculty, the better should

be the research output. One might argue that research is not that important for

undergraduate education. Firstly, I do not agree with that statement. Doing researchkeeps 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 membersare doing research, then it shows that the college management is serious about the

quality of education. Research can be measured by the following parameters. (You

may need help from someone in the academic community to really understand theseparameters. Go ahead and ask whoever you know.)

o 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.o Sponsored research projects by various funding agencies like Department of

Science and Technology (DST), AICTE, Dept of Information Technology,etc.

o Any industry interaction in terms of research projects or consultancy.

o Do they invite several researchers to give seminars.

o Do they organize workshops and conferences.

o Does college management have any scheme to reward good research.

How is the Infrastructure at the college. In CS/IT areas, what you really need is abunch 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 thatinfrastructure. Here is what you can check. (For many of these things, website may

not be good enough source. You may need to ask a student there.)

o What is their Internet bandwidth. (Consider the per capita bandwidth.)

o How good is the library both in terms of books as well subscription to

journals.

o How good are hostels. Do they have cooling (other than fans), very

important in most parts of the country.

o Do they have sports facilities on campus. (This also reflects my bias that

residential campuses are generally better for quality of education thancampuses where students are day scholars.)

Look at the Curriculum of the college. If the college is a university or a deemeduniversity, 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:

o 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


5/6

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 40-42courses in the undergraduate curriculum. Some of the deemed universities

require around 45 courses, and many of the technical universities require

even 60 courses in the undergraduate curriculum. There are surelyexceptions 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 beable to teach you something.

o How many electives are there in the curriculum, giving flexibility to the

students to learn what they are interested in. Many colleges may have slotsfor 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.o Do they have enough number of humanities and social science courses (at

least 10 percent courses). One cannot be a complete engineer withoutunderstanding economics, sociology, psychology, etc.

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 feelthat the education will result in a good career for you. But, the problem in this

parameter is that you really want to understand what happens to alumni after say, 5

years, when they have stabilized in the life. But getting that data is extremelydifficult. And second, there is a danger that the college may have deteriorated in the

last few years. So, unfortunately, you will have to just see what students are doing

immediately after graduation. Because of this, do not over-emphasize thisparameter. So look for the information on the following:o How many people are going for higher studies, whether in India or abroad,

whether for doing MS/MTech or for doing MBA. This is much more

important than placement statistics, since today, higher education is the keyto success. So, if a larger percentage of students are going for higher

education, it means that a larger percentage of students are going to do well

in their respective careers a few years down the road. Also, as far as highereducation in technical field is concerned, it is a reflection of how much

passion for studies the faculty has been able to imbibe amongst the students.

o Do look at the campus placement statistics, but take everything with a pinch

of salt. People lie so much, or do not explain what they mean by thestatistics that they share. I have seen claims of more than 100 percent

placement, for example (which basically means that number of jobs is more

than number of students, but it does not tell you how many students are stillwithout a job). But some of the things one could look at include:

What all companies did they attract for campus placement. Do they

attract only those companies who have local offices, or companieswith no presence in the local town also come to the college.


6/6

What percentage of their students have at least one job offer.

What is the median salary offer. (Maximum salaries are attractive

but very deceptive. Beware of colleges which only talk about thehighest salaries.)

o Do these students care about the college after they graduate. In particular,

does college have an associated Alumni Association. Is there anyinteraction (not necessarily donations, may be just visits) between alumni

and the college.

What do others say about this college.

o 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 anyway. So take the ranking information with a HUGE pinch of salt.

o Has the college gone through any formal accreditation by AICTE (NBA) or

NAAC, etc. If yes, what is the result.

o Is it a univeristy or deemed to be university.

o I wouldn't be swayed by the number of MoUs or exchange programs that acollege may have with so-called foreign universities.

On a couple of occasions above, I have referred to the status of Deemed University.

In my opinion, it is very important to have a university status. With this status, you

can decide your own academic processes, including curriculum, exams, grading,

and even admissions, etc. Invariably, colleges with this kind of autonomy havemuch better quality of education than others. There have been some recent concerns

about deemed universities based on report by one "Tandon Committee." I would

say that one shouldn't worry about this report, certainly not about the universities inthe list 'B' (which have supposedly been given three years to rectify some presumed

weaknesses). I personally wouldn't bother about list 'C' either.

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 andstudents. Hopefully, the website would have email addresses of faculty, and at least some

students (like those who organize events, etc.).

If you have any comments, you can send me email at: sanghi[AT]gmail.com

How to Chose an Engineering College

Documents

Transcript of How to Chose an Engineering College