TopTSchools: The Flag Bearers

IIIT is the generic name for several Indian Institutes of Information

Technology, although some of them have been subsequently renamed now. The IIITs

were considered the frontrunners in the Information Technology education sector

at a time when India was going through a phase of unprecedented boom in the

software industry. The two IIITs that have made it to our Top 20 are

International Institutes of Technology, Hyderabad (#10) and Indian Institute of

Information Technology Allahabad (#11).With two IIITs coming into the top 10 for

the first time, apart from the IITs, it's a complete wipeout for the NITs, or

the regional engineering colleges, from the top 10. 

IIIT-Hyderabad



IIIT-Hyderabad was created with the vision to carry out advanced research

and technology development in information technology and their societal,

scientific, industrial and financial applications in 1998. The Government of

Andhra Pradesh, NASSCOM, and corporate partners including IBM, Oracle, Satyam,

Motorola, and Keane jointly set up IIIT-Hyderabad, a deemed university.

Some of the key recruiters in the campus this year were Infosys, IBM, Verizon,

Wipro, Computer Associates. The highest salary offered this year was Rs 8.5 lakh

(it was Rs 7.8 lakh last year) while average salary stood at Rs 4.5 lakh. It's

a jump of five places for IIIT-Hyderabad in the overall rankings. All students

in the BTech batch have been placed so far while 94.7% if all batches of BTechs,

MTechs and MS Computer Science are considered.

The placement season will continue till the end of June, by which time

IIIT-Hyderabad expects to place all its students. Over 61% of the students

placed so far have received multiple job offers in the current placement season. 

IIIT-Hyderabad slips a bit on infrastructure, which is unexpected from an

institute that is so focused on IT education. However, IIIT-Hyderabad emerges

strong on research orientation. At #20 on recruiter's perception score,

IIIT-Hyderabad needs to ramp up on this front.

The Institute has an ambitious plan to create next generation researchers,

faculty members and innovators through the Research Exchange Program. The

candidate registers for PhD and spends time at IIIT and with a partner research

group abroad. He may also obtain his PhD from the partner research group abroad.

The partnerships have been worked out with leading research groups at the

Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of

Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champagne.

IIIT-Allahabad



The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad was set up in

1999, as per the  recommendations of

the Rame Gowda Committee that was constituted by the National Task Force in

1998, with a budget of over Rs 4 crore.

IIIT-Allahabad jumped up 8 places this year. The single-largest driver of

this huge jump is placements. IIIT-Allahabad comes at #4 on the placement

scorecard, especially on sub-parameters like percentage of students placed. The

biggest recruiter was Google, in terms of compensation, with an offer of Rs 8.25

lakh per annum. The current placement season saw 24 recruiters visit the campus

for placements. Prominent among those were TCS, Induslogic, Patni Computer

Systems, HCL and IBM, among others.

IIIT-Allahabad's placement rank of #4 is a steep climb of 17 places from

last year.

However, it is not placement alone that creates centers of excellence.

IIIT-Allahabad's placement record has been exemplary this year. But, serious

improvement is required on parameters such as industry interface and academic

environment. Faculty and student-faculty ratio emerged as a concern for

IIIT-Allahabad. The institute's overall rank on academic environment stands at

#74, and at #67 on industry interface.

Interestingly, IIIT-Allahabad is one of the few institutes in the country to

offer a Masters program in cyber law and information security. However, the

institute needs to strengthen its focus on seminars and signing more MoUs that

would increase affiliations and linkages.