Regional Champs

There are four NITs in the Top 20 this year, but none in the top 10. NIT-Trichy
has moved down five places to number 13. Motilal Nehru National Institute of
Technology (MNNIT) is down seven places and NIT-Warangal (down five places) and
NIT-Calicut, a new entrant in the Top 20 are the other three. Incidentally, NIT-Suratkal
and NIT-Kuruskshetra did not participate in the survey.

NIT-Warangal

At #12, it tops the charts among NITs. Set up in 1959, REC-Warangal, later
renamed NIT was the first regional engineering college in the country. NIT-Warangal's
placement record stays intact this year as well with the institute performing
better than IIT-Bombay and BITS-Pilani. This year, there were 124 recruiters who
came for campus placements and prominent recruiters include the likes of TCS,
Oracle, IBM, Mindtree and Cognizant. NIT-Warangal does fairly well on
infrastructure. The institute's central library is computerized with barcode
facility and the computer center is well equipped to meet the demand of 3,000
students and 200 faculty members on the campus. There is also a campus-wide LAN
and a dedicated Internet connectivity facilitating computerization and
modernization of most of the college activities. The institute has slipped in
terms of industry interface, ranking far lower than most of the institutes
participating in the survey. 

How They Compare

NIT-Trichy

At #13, it does well on placements but slips on all other parameters. Of the
135 recruiters, Google made the highest offer of Rs 8.8 lakh per annum. The
compensation average also jumped to Rs 3.4 lakh from Rs 3 lakh per annum last
year. Nearly 41% of the recruiters were from the IT industry. NIT-Tiruchirapally
also had some recruiters from ITeS this year, which was 2.2% of the total.
Infrastructure, though not up to the standard of the IITs, is still at par with
the average. The hallmark of this NIT-Trichy campus is the octagonal computer
center. It maintains a campus-wide LAN with enough systems to provide computer
training to 1,000 students at a time, a CAD/CAM center, a library, 8 Mbps
Internet connection through STPI, centralized printing facility, seminar and
conference facilities, apart from an in-house maintenance facility. Although
NIT-Trichy signed an MoU with BHEL, the institute slips sharply on industry
interface.

NIT-Calicut

A new entrant in to our Top 20 this year. In fact, NIT-Trichy beats Calicut
by just a whisker-the difference between the composite scores of Calicut and
Trichy is just 0.2. Placement performance remains better than average but not at
par with the other NITs in the Top 20. Calicut does fairly well on academic
environment and infrastructure. Calicut suffers badly on industry interface. Low
recruiter's perception also plays spoilsport. In fact, NIT-Calicut does better
than its counterpart from Trichy on all counts, except placements and that is
what makes the key difference to the scores in the overall tally. Interestingly,
recruiter perception on an average remains fairly high for all NITs.

MNNIT-Allahabad

This fourth and last NIT in the Top 20, shows a fair bit of consistency too.
However, the institute slips seven places to take the 19th position. MNNIT
performs well on academic environment, according to our survey results.
Traditionally, MNNIT has a rich culture of pursuing academic excellence and
maintaining conducive environment for overall personality development of its
students. In addition to their excellent teaching, the faculty members are
actively involved in research and consultancy. A large number of research
projects and consultancy have been undertaken. The academic programs offered by
MNNIT are comprehensive and are continuously being updated to keep pace with
latest developments and innovations in associated disciplines, with necessary
blend of IT and management. Newer programs, especially at postgraduate level,
are regularly added in accordance with industry needs and academic requirements.
MNNIT is also in the process of adding two more BTech degree programs next year,
and will also help potential students of Master of Science inculcate
interdisciplinary research work. MNNIT, however, performs rather poorly on HR
perception especially in comparison to the others in the same bracket.