Ranking educational institutions has become the next Big Thing amongst Indian publications. Mint, India Today and Outlook publish some of the most anticipated law school rankings in India. Once a year, each independently conducts a survey to determine India's top colleges across various disciplines. India Today publishes the twenty five top law colleges, Outlook publishes fifteen and Mint, ten.

With several students relying upon these surveys to choose a college, a three-way shootout would be in order.

 Disparity:

The publications agree with each other about rank 1 (National Law School of India University, Bangalore). The rest of the slots are widely disparate. Outlook and India Today both rank National Law University, Jodhpur at number 7, Mint and Outlook agree on rank 6 for the Faculty of Law, Delhi University and, India Today and Mint award rank 2 to NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

The slots NALSAR University of Law, National Law University and Amity Law School vary only minimally in the three surveys. It is the ranking of the other institutions that create concerns. For example, National University of Juridical Sciences, ranked second by Outlook and Mint, stands eighth in India Today's list. Another glaring disparity is the Dr. Ambedkar Law College, Chennai. Ranked 9 and 24 by Outlook and India Today respectively, it does not figure on Mint's list at all. Similarly, Outlook ranks the Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies at 11 but India Today, at 22, and it does not figure on Mint's list.

Methodology:

Outlook's first step was preparing a comprehensive list of colleges, vetted by experts. Subsequently, Outlook interviewed a total of 300 professionals (for all eight disciplines, which, on an average works out to 37.5 professionals per discipline and 6.25 professionals per city) across six metros. The professionals were required to rate colleges according to the following parameters; (a) Selection process; (b) Academic excellence; (c) Infrastructure and Facilities; and (d) Industry exposure and placements. Weightage for each parameter was arrived at using statistical formulae. They were required to rank the top ten institutes across India and the top five institutes in each zone. Final score for each institute was arrived at by adding the all-India and zonal scores.

India Today hired The Nielsen Company, a global market research group, to conduct the survey. Oriented around an opinion poll conducted on academic experts and on factual data furnished by the competing colleges, the final scores were a result of interviewing almost 1,000 experts across 12 cities on five parameters; (a) Reputation of Colleges; (b) Quality of Academic Inputs; (c) Student Care; (d) Infrastructure and (e) Job Prospects.

Mint interviewed faculty members and professionals in the respective industries with structured questionnaires rating institutes on a 10 point scale against four parameters; (a) intellectual capital; (b) pedagogic systems and processes; (c) placements; and (d) infrastructure and support systems. Each interviewee was required to assign weightage to each parameter in terms of relative importance. To eliminate bias, the rating that each institute received against different parameters was calculated. The average rating score was multiplied by the corresponding aggregate weightage. The sum total of the weighted averages was used to arrive at a score for an institution and was ranked accordingly.

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