Website rates engineering colleges
By Resmi Jaimon

For aspiring Engineers, choosing a college in Kerala is a tedious task with 114 Engineering colleges battling each other to attract the best and brightest. The students have to evaluate a number of criterions before choosing a college.  Till a decade back, there were around only a dozen engineering colleges and so getting admission was considered a relatively simple task.

A decade ago, colleges themselves were sitting comfortably as student choice was limited on where they could study. In today’s world, students and parents have many more choices and so find it equally challenging on identifying the best college. How do they know which is the best and which tops the chart, unless they test it for themselves?

Here's where Helloengineer.org has come to the fore to help students who aim to gain admission to an Engineering college in Kerala. The portal Helloengineer uses a number of criterions to work out a rating of engineering colleges in Kerala.  It also has details of branches in each college, faculty, library, extra curricular activities, campus recruitment prospects, ranks obtained in previous years and articles on engineering education and career prospects.

An initiative of The Cochin Chapter of National Institute of Technology Calicut Alumni Association (NITCAA), Helloengineer has formed an expert committee of highly qualified personnel to prepare detailed questionnaire to evaluate each college credentials. The questionnaire included queries related to faculty, infrastructure, admission and academic information, pass percentage, ranks obtained in the previous years and co-curricular activity details.

"53 colleges participated in the survey and their data was tabulated and evaluated by an expert jury headed by Dr Babu T Jose, Dean (retd), CUSAT. The jury evaluated the data submitted by the colleges based on a scheme of evaluation having weightage for various parameters" says Sandeep Krishnan, Secretary, NITCAA, Cochin Chapter. The parameters carried a total of 1000 marks and were evaluated as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Very Good’ depending on the marks obtained, for the parameters mentioned below:

1. Branches – Accreditation & Certifications: 75
2. Infrastructural Facilities: 200
3. Details of Faculty: 280
4. Admission Details: 100
5. Academic Details: 130
6. Placement Details: 75
7. Co-Curricular Activities: 65
8. Reasons for Higher Ranking: 75

While explaining the Reasons for Higher Ranking (Point 8), Sandeep Krishnan revealed, "There is a provision in the questionnaire where the college Principal can indicate all the reasons/justifications for getting a higher rating in our survey. They are provided with the opportunity to indicate measures for teaching-learning process, innovative practices, research initiatives, entrepreneurship activities, student counseling, unique facilities available etc. This gives them the scope to present before the jury any additional information which they could not furnish in our standard questionnaire.  For example, some colleges claimed that they are one of the very few engineering colleges in the state owning a Digital Library."

As long as Helloengineer continues their good work and keeps updating their website whenever colleges have major changes, it will definitely be a popular platform to guide the engineering aspirants to making an informed choice.