India has made a debut among the top 200 universities globally in the QS World University Rankings. New entrant IISc Bangalore is ranked 147th, while IIT Delhi has climbed from 235th position last year to 179th in 2015.

The top two ranks were retained by MIT and Harvard University, which were ranked first and second respectively.

The QS Rankings are based on six indicators, with varied weightage given to each one: Academic reputation (40 per cent); employer reputation (10 per cent); student-to-faculty ratio (20 per cent); citations per faculty (20 per cent); international faculty ratio (5 per cent); and international student ratio (5 per cent).

One of the top indicators, academic reputation, is a perception-based exercise, in which academics were asked to identify the institutions where they believed the best work was taking place within their field of expertise.

Employer reputation For another perception-based indicator, the one on employer reputation, employers were asked to identify the universities they think are producing the best graduates.

Other indicators were ‘hard’ data-based, measuring the number of academic staff employed relative to the number of students enrolled; universities’ research impact; and a university’s potential to attract students and academics from other nations.

IISc Bangalore also scored very high on research and high on the student-faculty-ratio (84.4 out of 100) parameters in the rankings. The institute is also ranked fifth in the BRICS university rankings by QS.

IITs all the way IIT-Delhi also scored very high on these parameters: student faculty ratio (96.2 out of 100) and research, and has a high employer reputation. The institute is ranked 42nd on the Top Asian University rankings by QS.

IIT Bombay missed the spot among the top 200 by barely two points, landing the 202nd rank. The institute is rated very high on research and employer reputation. IIT-Madras stands at Rank 254 and IIT Kanpur is at 271. IIT Kharagpur and IIT Roorkee got the 286th and 391st ranks respectively, while IIT Guwahati is still way behind, at 451.

Delhi University has fallen by 60 positions from last year’s 421 to 481 now. The university lags behind when it comes to academic reputation, which was the top criteria while ranking institutions. It ranks 46th in the BRICS rankings.

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