Chennai: CEG, MIT, PSG top Anna University’s latest rank list – Times of India

By- Raghu Raman
CHENNAI: Engineering aspirants now have a credible guide to help them choose the right college. Anna University, has released a new rank list of engineering colleges in the state, prepared using the five-year average cut-off mark for admission to the computer science engineering (CSE) program as the benchmark. Till now, ranking was done based on the pass percentage of the college. College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) is at the top of the list, which was released on the university’s website on Thursday. CEG’s five-year average cut-off is 198.90 out of 200 marks. The Madras Institute of Technology in Chromepet came second (196.69), followed by PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore (196.65) and SSN College of Engineering, Chennai (195.50). The ranking, unlike in the previous years, provides insights into how toppers choose colleges. For instance, there are 23 government colleges, university campuses and constituent colleges in the top 100 ranks. Academics think this could be because state-run institutions charge much less fee compared to their private counterparts. Similarly, colleges within the city limits are in high demand. The Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College in Kodamb a k k a m , Chennai, is ranked 21. Explaining how the ranking system was created, Anna University vice-chancellor R Velraj said computer science was chosen as the benchmark course as it has remained as the most preferred branch for the past five years. “We took the open category (OC) cut-off for the CSE branch in all the 481 colleges and ranked them based on the five-year average. The ranking indicates the preference of toppers and reflects the public perception of top engineering colleges,” said Velraj. International ranking systems, such as QS rankings, give considerable weightage to public perception. There’s an added benefit. “As the university has made studying artificial intelligence, data science, and internet of things, mandatory for all engineering branches from this year, the ranking would help students avoid joining colleges that have low cut-off for computer science branch,” he added. Colleges such as Alagappa College of Technology at Anna University, which do not have a CSE branch, were not featured in the ranking. The university stopped the practice of ranking colleges based on academic performance due to concerns surrounding the unsupervised exams conducted during the pandemic. Critics and sections of the public felt the scoring system no longer reflected the true picture. As per the last year’s rank list, as many as 332 engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University secured a pass percentage over 84% in the NovemberDecember 2020 examinations. In contrast, during the same time in 2019, PSG Institute of Technology and Applied Research in Coimbatore secured the highest pass percentage – at 83.8%. “Ranking based solely on academic performance was misleading,” says car e e r c o n s u l t a n t Jayaprakash Gandhi. “Along with cut-off, the university should consider adding other criteria, such as placements, to reflect the true quality of these colleges in the ranking.”