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At Oxford University, a philosophy student was asked to write a 500-word essay defining courage for his semester examination. His answer paper had just three words: This is courage. He was given an A +. Acts such as these define the nebulous quality of excellence in institutions of higher education. A college, it is said, should be the abode of ideas and idealism. It must combine the quest for learning with the great voyage of discovery. It should allow freedom to inquire fearlessly and the willingness to doubt boldly; where good teachers continue to be students. Rabindranath Tagore looked upon colleges as the concentration of intellectual forces in the country. In his words, universities are the "nucleus of a living cell, the centre of creative life of the national mind".

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In these extraordinary times, where second best is just not good enough, colleges are the heart of the nation too, vital to its well-being and progress. More than at any other period in human history, the knowledge-base of a nation is critical to its prosperity. New Zealand's Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford once observed: "The Americans have money. We do not have it and so we have to think." It is also true of India where the quest for excellence must become a national passion if the country has to rediscover its greatness.

The quality of India's 10,000-odd colleges and 250 universities is a barometer of the nation's ability to travel speedily on the road to development. Surprisingly, for a country that prides itself on being a Michael Schumacher on the infotech race track, there is a woeful shortage of data on colleges and the standard of education they offer. Since 1997, India Today has tried to bridge the gap by carrying out annual surveys on centres of academic excellence in all major streams: arts, science, commerce, medicine, engineering and law. The survey is primarily designed to help the more than five million students who around May begin a frenetic search to find the best colleges to enrol in.

This year too India Today commissioned the Gallup Organisation to conduct a comprehensive survey of colleges across the country but with major improvements. In the past, the ranking was done based largely on the perception of experts. This year weightage was given to factual criteria such as the faculty-student ratio and job placement success to determine the final ranking. For the perceptual data, indepth interviews with nearly 450 senior academicians were carried out in eight centres: Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Lucknow. Around 400 colleges figured in the final list before a scientific statistical procedure determined the top 10 in each stream (see box).

The introduction of factual ratings uncovered new winners and pushed many of the previous years' top colleges down the rankings. In arts, Presidency College, Chennai, which was rated fourth last year, took the top spot shoving aside St Xavier's College, Kolkata. But in science, the new weightage saw Presidency College, Chennai, tumble from its pedestal giving way to its neighbour down the road-Loyola College. In commerce, law and engineering, last year's winners retained their positions. But it was medicine that produced the biggest upset. Christian Medical College, Vellore, which was rated seventh last year, moved rapidly upwards and ousted the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, from the top slot. If there is a message for colleges, it is this: it is no more lonely at the top.

METHODOLOGY

Homing in on the top colleges of India is a difficult exercise. The results are usually a cause for considerable heartburn among institutions that do not figure in it. Since India Today began the surveys to identify centres of academic excellence six years ago, it has constantly improved the quality of the assessments. This year saw major improvements. Previous surveys mainly sought to provide the reader with overall ranking based solely on the perception of experts. This year this subjective data was strengthened by factual inputs from colleges in the six streams surveyed: arts, science, commerce, engineering, medicine and law.

To ensure a wider coverage, at the start of the exercise, a long list of colleges was compiled. This year it included several colleges which had in the past years been mentioned under the "other colleges list". The final list of close to 400 colleges, while not exhaustive, was comprehensive. To ensure we didn't miss out on smaller colleges, respondents could still mention colleges that would have been part of the "other list". This year 447 experts at the level of principals, heads of departments and deans in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune and Lucknow were contacted for the perceptual ranking.

For the perceptual score, the respondents were asked to distribute 100 points across seven critical parameters: reputation, curriculum, academic input, student care, admission procedure, infrastructure, job/placement opportunities. The most important attribute would get the maximum points and the least vital parameter would get the minimum. The respondents were then asked to rate around 10 colleges (selected randomly from the list of colleges they were aware of) on the above set of parameters. In addition, they were asked to rate the colleges on some key overall measures, including advocacy. A net perceptual score was then determined for each college.

To get the scores for factual information, a module was developed around 35 parameters pertaining to four broad factors: admission (like the number of applicants, admission, pass percentage, placements, university ranks), academic standards (examination patterns, number and qualification of faculty, research work and awards won by faculty), infrastructure (number of courses, grants, number of PCs, library budget, residential facilities) and industry-college or, in the case of medical colleges, hospital-college interface. The final list had factual inputs from 350 colleges. All the parameters were rescaled to facilitate the computation of a single score. A weight of 70:30 was assigned to perceptual and factual data respectively. These weights were applied to the respective net scores and the final ranks obtained.