IIT Madras, IISc B'luru, IIT Bombay top 3 in NIRF 2025

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras has topped the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2025 for the seventh consecutive year, and also emerged the top engineering college in India for the 10th year since the rankings were introduced in 2016. Like last year, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru is ranked second in the overall ranking, and IIT Bombay third.

- Sanjay Maurya

The first non-engineering institution in the Top 10 of the overall ranking is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi at eighth (seventh last year); the IITs at Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, and Roorkee (which swapped places with AIIMS) hold the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh places. Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and Banaras Hindu University (Varanasi) have moved up to the ninth and tenth spots, respectively.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar announced the overall rankings and rankings across 17 categories for higher education institutions (HEIs). The categories include engineering, management, medicine, university, law, research, and agriculture. There is also a category just for colleges. A total of 14,163 higher education institutions participated in the 10th edition of NIRF Rankings.

NIRF evaluates institutions based on 19 parameters organized under five heads: Teaching, Learning, and Resources (TLR) carries a weightage of 30%, as does Research and Professional Practice (RP), Graduation Outcomes (GO) account for 20%, Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) 10%, and Perception (PR) 10%. These weightages may vary slightly depending on the ranking category.

IIT Madras also secured the top spot in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) category added in the 10th edition of the ranking. Under this new category, HEIs were examined in terms of green initiatives and environmentally friendly practices. SDGs are a set of 17 global objectives adopted by the United Nations in 2015 to address pressing challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and environmental sustainability by 2030.