Disclaimer: This article was written few years ago and may no longer be relevant as software engineering has changed a lot in the last few years. This is what may be more relevant now: Future of Software Engineering - Gaurav ChandakHi, I am Gaurav. I am the co-founder of workat.tech and have previously worked at Microsoft and Flipkart.
During the last 8 years, I and Sagar (Co-Founder, workat.tech; Ex-Uber, Ex-Directi) have interacted with a lot of engineering students and have done some research on the culture and placements of different colleges.
We've written this piece to help you decide which college and branch you should choose.
There might be multiple factors which you might consider while deciding the college and branch that you should choose:
- Job Opportunities and High Salary
- Interest in specific branch/field (Job/Research/Higher Studies)
- Brand/Tag/Status/Bragworthiness
- Proximity to home
- Government Jobs
- Any other reason
Job Opportunities and High Salary
Few things to note before going through this section:
- This section covers the first factor: job opportunities and high salary.
- An important factor here is the number of high-paying jobs available per student. A college with 4000 students and 200 high-paying jobs will be considered a worse choice than a college with 800 students and 100 high-paying jobs as the ratio and hence the opportunity is low.
- Some of the preferences might be considered controversial where we've asked to prefer CS at a non-IIT over ECE/EE/ME at an IIT.
- This is solely based on our understanding of the job market, the different colleges, and the branches.
We have divided the list of colleges into 4 tiers. The division is based on the following criteria:
| Tier | Chances of getting a high-paying job | Chances of at least getting a job |
|---|---|---|
| I | High. Most students would get a high paying job. | Extremely High |
| II | Decent. Companies offering high-paying jobs will be visiting your campus and you will have sufficient opportunities to get those offers. | High |
| III | Low. You will have very few opportunities for high-paying jobs. Most big institutes show high packages but the ratio of a high offer to the total number of students is low. | Pretty Good |
| IV | Extremely Low. Negligible. | Low |
How to choose a college and branch to get the best job opportunities?
What should be the order of the branch?
- CS: Computer Science (+different variations), Information Technology (+different variations), Maths & Computing, Software Engineering, and related fields related to computer science. This also includes any 5-year program related to the same field.
- ECE/EEE: Electronics & Communications Engineering, Electronics & Electrical Engineering (+different variations)
- Economics (+different variations)
- EE: Electrical Engineering (+different variations)
- ME: Mechanical Engineering (+different variations), Industrial Engineering (+different variations), and related fields
- Any other branch
Let's talk about sub-tiers
- All four tiers are further divided into sub-tiers.
- For Tier-I, sub-tiers just denote the college tag. The placements are almost the same.
- For other tiers, the job opportunities decrease as we go down.
- For any particular sub-tier: There won't be any noticeable difference in the opportunities that you will get if you pick up any college in that sub-tier.
- For a particular sub-tier, you can decide the college based on fees, city, proximity to home, lifestyle, etc.
- Considering the same branch:
- Sub-tier matters.
- Example: Prefer 1.1-CS over 1.2-CS
- Specific Example: Prefer IIITD CS over DAIICT CS
- Considering the same tier, don't go for a higher sub-tier if you are getting a better branch in a lower sub-tier.
- Prefer branch over college name for the same tier.
- Example: Prefer 1.4-CS over 1.1-ECE
- Specific Example: Prefer DTU CS over IIT Bombay ECE
Now, what should be the preference order?
- Pick up Tier-I
- Fill CS branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ECE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill Economics branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill EE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ME branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill any other branch
- Pick up Tier-II
- Fill CS branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ECE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill EE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ME branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill any other branch
- Pick up Tier-III
- Fill CS branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ECE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill EE branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill ME branches starting from 1st sub-tier to the last sub-tier
- Fill any other branch
- Pick up Tier-IV
- Fill CS branches
- Fill ECE branches
- Fill EE branches
- Fill ME branches
- Fill any other branch
Engineering College List in India
Tier-I Colleges
1.1 (Old IITs, IIIT H, BITS Pilani)
- IIT Bombay
- IIT Delhi
- IIT Kharagpur
- IIT Madras
- IIT Kanpur
- IIT Roorkee
- IIT Guwahati
- IIIT Hyderabad
- BITS Pilani (Pilani Campus)
1.2 (Not so old IITs)
- IIT Indore
- IIT Ropar
- IIT BHU (Varanasi)
- IIT ISM Dhanbad
1.3 (Other IITs and Top Govt. Colleges)
- DTU
- NSUT Delhi (NSIT)
- NIT Tiruchipally (Trichy)
- NIT Warangal
- NIT Surathkal (Karnataka)
- Jadavpur University
- All other IITs
1.4 (Other BITS campuses, IIIT A)
- BITS Pilani (Hyderabad Campus)
- BITS Pilani (Goa Campus)
- IIIT Allahabad
Tier-II Colleges
2.1 (Almost Top Placements)
- IIIT Bangalore
- IIIT Delhi
- IGDTUW
- NIT Calicut
- IIITM Gwalior
- IIIT Lucknow
2.2 (Good Placements)
- MNNIT Allahabad
- Punjab Engineering College
- DAIICT
- MNIT Jaipur
- NIT Durgapur
- VNIT Nagpur
2.3 (Above Average Placements)
- LNMIIT
- BIT Mesra
- SVNIT Surat
- NIT Jalandhar
- NIT Jamshedpur
- NIT Kurukshetra
- NIT Patna
- NIT Raipur
- NIT Bhopal
- NIT Rourkela
- NIT Silchar
- NIT Sikkim
- IIIT Jabalpur
- Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College
- IIEST/BESU Shibpur
- R.V. College of Engineering
2.4 (Decent Placements)
- All other NITs
- All other IIITs
Tier-III Colleges
3.1
These are mostly big colleges and few companies paying high-paying jobs visit but you need to be the top performer in your college to grab that.
Colleges:
- Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru
- TIET/Thapar University
- Manipal Main Campus
- VIT Vellore
- SRM Main Campus
- KIIT, Bhubaneswar
- Amity University
3.2
Few decent-paying companies will be visiting the campus but you need to be the top performer in your college to grab that.
Colleges:
- BMS College, Bangalore
- PES University, Bangalore
- USIT, Delhi
- MAIT, Delhi
- MSIT, Delhi
- Dayanand College of Engineering, Bangalore
- Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata
- IEM, Kolkata
- Techno India, Kolkata
- Jaypee, Noida
- Amrita University, Coimbatore
- Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Pune
Tier-IV Colleges
- Pick up any college based on fees, city, proximity to home, lifestyle, etc.
- You are on your own. Take guidance from people in the colleges in Tier-I or II and follow it.
- Do not even rely on the college to help you get a job.
- You would have to work hard to get a job.
- You would have to work extremely hard to get a high-paying job.
Interest in specific branch/field
- Do this only if you have genuine interest in a branch. Do proper research about the branch.
- You might consider future opportunities in the field:
- Job Opportunities, Job Profile and Salary
- Research Opportunities
- Higher Studies Opportunities
- Follow the above college tier list and methodology. Just change the order of the branches by keeping your preferred branch and related branches at the top.
Brand/Tag/Status/Bragworthiness
- If you care about the brand either for status/bragworthiness or future opportunities, do this.
- Follow the previous year opening and closing ranks. It is mostly based on a combination of brand and job opportunities. Refer to the above college list if you have any confusion.
Proximity to home
- You might want to stay at home or closer to home or maybe far away from home.
- If you can then prefer colleges in bigger cities closest or farthest to you based on what you want. Follow the same college and branch order as mentioned above. Just push colleges from your preferred location to as top as possible.
Government Jobs
- If your ultimate aim is to get into a government job then prefer core branches like ME, EE and related branches.
- You won't get to work on modern cutting-edge tech in most cases if you opt for this.
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