C fore conducted the survey for ranking professional colleges in India.

For Engineering and Medical colleges perceptual survey was conducted among the faculty of different Engineering and Medical colleges. The perceptual data was collected using a structured questionnaire which was administered to senior faculty members and professionals from industry.  The respondents were asked to rate the institutes they were familiar with on ten point scale against different parameters.  They were also asked to assign weightage to each of the parameter. The parameters used for evaluating a engineering college and a medical college are Listed below. The weightage given to each of the parameter was derived by taking the average weightage that faculty gave to each parameter. In all, 1125 faculty members belonging to different Engineering colleges were interviewed. Similarly, for ranking medical colleges, 235 faculty members were interviewed. Not more than one faculty member from each department was interviewed. The rating that the faculty gave to their own institute was not considered. Institutes that were not evaluated by atleast 20 faculty are not listed.

Parameters for Engineering Colleges

Intellectual Capital: Competence of faculty, Faculty to student ratio, research output, number of patents 

Pedagogic Systems and process: Admission process, Teaching and Evaluation Methodology, Curriculum up gradation

Industry Interface : Summer projects and internship, number of research projects undertaken with industry

Placements: Number and type of companies visiting for campus interviews, Maximum, Median, Minimum salary offered for Indian and abroad  jobs, number of students who went for higher education in reputed Indian and foreign institutes  

Infrastructure and support systems: Campus area, total number of computers, number of books in library, number of faculty cabins to faculty strength ratio, number of seminar halls, number of engineering drawing halls, number of workshops, number of machine in workshops, number of laboratories, budget allocated for labs, residential facilities for students and faculty, Facilities like play grounds, gym etc. Responsiveness of administration to student needs.

For ranking institutes in Law, Hotel management, Healthcare management, Fashion Technology, Mass communication and media, faulty members and professionals in the respective industry were contacted. They were administered a structured questionnaire and asked to rate the institutes they were familiar with on ten point scale against  four broad parameters i.e. Intellectual Capital, Pedagogic systems and processes,  Placements, Infrastructure and support systems. They were also asked to give weightage to each of the parameter in terms of relative importance.  In order to eliminate bias, the rating that the respondents gave to the institutes that they were working in or had graduated from was not considered. The average rating that each institute got 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 institute and was ranked accordingly.