NIRF Rankings 2021: IIT Madras continues to be India's best institute

IISc, IIM-A top universities and B-schools in the 6th edition of Ministry of Education's rankings

Devoid of any major disruption in a pandemic year, the latest National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) 2021 by Ministry of Education has seen Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras retain the top spot as India's best institute.

Ranked number one in both, the 'Overall' and 'Engineering' categories, IIT Madras, one of the 'Institutes of Eminence',  now holds the top position for the third consecutive year. In the 'Universities' and 'Management' categories, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad too continued to hold the top spot for the third consecutive year.

In the overall category, following IIT Madras were IISc Bengaluru, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and IIT Kanpur bagging their second, third, fourth and fifth ranks, respectively with the top four retaining their spots of last year. In other leading categories such as universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University, Calcutta University, and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham followed IISc for the second, third, fourth and fifth positions.

Among engineering institutes, the remaining top-5 positions were held by IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur, with all of them retaining their respective spots as last year.

In the management categories, business schools (B-schools) like IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta retained their second and third spot even as IIM Kozhikode improved its rankings from sixth place last year to fourth place, followed by IIT Delhi from ninth place last  year to fifth place this year.

The college category saw Delhi's Miranda House and Lady Shri Ram College for Women retain their first and second ranks, even as Chennai's Loyola College, Kolkata's St Xavier's College and Howrah's Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira rise from last year's sixth and joint seventh spots to rank at third, fourth and fifth this year.

The ranking framework evaluates institutions on five broad generic groups of parameters, i.e. Teaching, Learning and Resources (TLR), Research and Professional Practice (RP), Graduation Outcomes (GO), Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) and Perception (PR). Ranks are assigned based on the total sum of marks assigned for each of these five broad groups of parameters.

Pharmacy college rankings were led by the likes of Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, Panjab University Chandigarh, BITS Pilani, NIPER Mohali and ICT Mumbai, respectively.

While AIIMS New Delhi, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) Chandigarh and Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore continued to form the top three institutes in medical category, IIT Roorkee and NIT Calicut improved their rankings to top two spots with IIT Kharagpur falling to the third in architecture category.

NLSIU, Bengaluru, NLU, New Delhi and Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad retained their positions as the top three law institutions in NIRF 2021 while Manipal College of Dental Sciences, Udupi and Dr D.Y.Patil Vidyapeeth, Pune improved their performance to be the top two dental colleges.

Along with nine categories including overall, university, engineering, management, colleges, medical, pharmacy, architecture and law, the then Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had also added a new category of dental colleges in the NIRF 2020 rankings.