How to choose the right college?

Career
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Choosing the right college or university for higher education can make a life-changing difference. It is very important not to choose the wrong college or university.

When it comes to higher education preference should always be given to Govt colleges or universities.
But there is a limited number of govt institutions and fierce competition. So to study a course of your interest you may also head to a private institution.

Here we assume that you have decided on your career path and have chosen a course/branch you want to take admission to. If you have not we recommend you choose a career path following these guidelines:

  1. How to choose a career?
  2. How to do a SWOT analysis?

When it comes to an institution for higher education, the following aspects are crucial:

  1. PAN India rank of the Institution
  2. Placement statistics
  3. Govt or private
  4. Is the institute has all required approval from govt bodies such as AICTE, UGC, etc. (for private institutes)
  5. Student to teacher/professor ratio
  6. Institution infrastructure
  7. Total fees
  8. Alumni success

We will assign a score to each of these aspects and discuss them in detail below. The score assigned will be used to decide whether it’s the right institute for you or not.

PAN India rank of the Institution

Ministry of Education has designed the NIRF framework to rank institutes in India. NIRF is the most authentic and trustable ranking body in India. You can find the ranking of any eligible institutes by visiting NIRF website.

  1. Overall Ranks
  2. Engineering College Ranks
  3. University Ranks
  4. Management College Ranks
  5. Medical College Ranks
  6. Law College Ranks
  7. Architecture College Ranks
  8. Pure Science/Arts/Commerce College Ranks
  9. Dental College Ranks
  10. Pharmacy College Ranks

Your aim should be to get into a top institute in your chosen field. Institute rank is very important as it will help to get good placement and learning experience fruitful.

RankScore = Rank of the institute (lower score is better)

Placement statistics

Placement success defines the institute’s success. Placement success defines how well the institute has prepared its students to face the world.
You should do a thorough analysis of the placement statistics of the institute.

To evaluate placement claim, please read our article Debunking the 100% placement claim

PlacementScore = Average CTC / Total Yearly Cost (Higher score is better)

Govt or private

For graduate studies always prefer a govt-funded institute over a private institute. Three important reasons behind this are:

  1. Experienced professors.
  2. Good labs and library.
  3. A very low fee in comparison to private institutes.

FundingScore = 1 (govt funded), 0 (private) (Higher score is better)

Govt approval

Does the institute have all requisite permissions to offer the courses? It is accredited by AICTE / UGC?

If the institute is not accredited , you should not consider it.

Student to teacher/professor ratio

Answers to the following questions are important:

  1. Does the institute have enough professors?
  2. Are all classes conducted smoothly?
  3. How many classes are held per semester for a particular subject?
  4. How many classes are canceled every semester due to a lack of teachers?

STR = (Number of students in the particular department) / (Number of professors/teachers in that department)

STRScore = STR (Higher score is better)

Institution infrastructure

Especially for Technical/Medical program institutions infrastructure is very important.

  1. Does the institute has the required laboratories and types of equipment?
  2. Does the institute has a state-of-the-art classroom, library?

InfraScore = 1 if the answers to both questions are Yes, otherwise 0. (Higher score is better)

Total fees

Total fees charged by the institute are also crucial. Is the institute offering good infrastructure, good professors?

FeeScore = 1 / (total fees) (Higher score is better)

Taking education loan to study in a private institute does not make sense.

Alumni Success

Alumni success also defines the success of the institute. Alumni is the reason an institute is respected worldwide.
IITs are respected worldwide because of their Alumni’s success.

  1. Where are the alumni of the institute working now?
  2. Have they started any successful businesses?

Conclusion

Note that we can not combine the scores from all these aspects to give one single score as the scales are different.

Recommendation:

  1. Shortlist a few institutes where you can get selected.
  2. Compute the above scores
  3. Select the institute with the best scores across all categories.