India's Best Colleges by Nielsen Survey on The Next Revolution

The latest survey called 'India Today- Nielsen Best Colleges Survey' has revealed their reports with the list top institutes in streams like Arts, Commerce, Science, Law, BCA, BBA, Engineering, Medical, Fashion and Mass Communication.

Nielsen Team members Umesh Jha, Nitin Grover, Arnav Chandra and Sushil Kumar had worked on this project.

How the survey was held?

India Today's survey is held in four major steps as explained below.

Step 1: Shortlisting Eligible Candidates.

A comprehensive list of over 1,500 eligible colleges was drawn up by The Nielsen Company in 11 disciplines like Arts, Science, Commerce, engineering, medical, law, BBA, BCA, mass communication and journalism colleges in 13 major cities were considered.

The list of cities includes Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune. Colleges from across the country were considered for the remaining eight streams.

Step 2: National Perceptual Ranking.

Various academic experts, deans and principals from across the country were administered a structured questionnaire. They were asked to distribute 100 points across five parameters for each college.

The parameters included reputation of colleges, quality of academic input, student care, infrastructure and job prospects. To eliminate bias, the experts were asked not to rate their own college. The results were used to determine the overall perceptual score of each college.

Step 3: Factual Ranking.

Based on the perceptual scores, the top 50 colleges in arts, science and commerce, the top 25 colleges in engineering, medicine and law and the top 10 in BBA, BCA, mass communication and journalism, fashion and fine arts were contacted for factual data.

Each college was asked to fill a questionnaire stating their achievements in each parameter and providing relevant evidence for the same. Colleges that decline to provide factual data were not considered in the final ranking process.

Step 4: Final Overall Ranking.

The final overall rankings in each stream were calculated by combining the perceptual scores and factual scores. A weightage of 50:50 was assigned to the perceptual and factual scores respectively to give the final overall score, which was indexed to 100 and tabulated to arrive at the final rankings.

The top colleges are as following:

Stream	Name of College	City
ARTS	St.Stephen's College	Delhi
SCIENCE	St.Stephen's College	Delhi
COMMERCE	Shri Ram College of Commerce	Delhi
ENGINEERING	Indian Institute of Technology	Delhi
MEDICINE	All India Institute of Medical Sciences	Delhi
LAW	NALSAR	Hyderabad
FINE ARTS	Kala Bhavan (Institute of Fine Arts)	Santiniketan
BBA	Christ University	Bangalore
BCA	Christ University	Bangalore
MASS COMMUNICATION	Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication	Pune
FASHION	National Institute of Fashion Technology	Delhi