NIRF rankings 2025: IIT Madras tops list of colleges, IISC Bengaluru adjudged best university

New Delhi: IIT Madras once again topped the list of colleges across India as per the NIRF rankings 2025, unveiled by the union ministry of education. This is the seventh consecutive year for the engineering institute.

Karnataka featured big with IISC Bangalore, IIM Bangalore, NLSIU and Manipal University featuring on top lists. IISC Bangalore was adjudged the best university in the country, and Manipal the third best university. IIM Bangalore is the second best management institute. NLSIU was once again adjudged the best law college, and IISC was also declared the best research college.

IIT Madras has clinched the top position for the seventh consecutive year in the overall category. It also retained the top rank in engineering, marking ten years of consistent leadership since the category’s inception. Similarly, IISC Bangalore continued its streak of being ranked number one in research for the tenth year in a row.

The overall ranking has been dominated by the IITs with IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Roorkee taking up top 10 positions, in addition to AIIMS, JNU, and BHU. SOA University in Bhubaneshwar is adjudged the 25th in the overall ranking.

Among medical institutions, AIIMS Delhi held on to its number one spot, while Jamia Hamdard emerged as the best in pharmacy. PGIMER Chandigarh, CMC Vellore, JIPGMER Pondicherry and SGPIMS Lucknow are the top five medical colleges. SOA University in Bhubaneshwar climbed six places from 21st last year to 15 this year.

Miranda House, Delhi University, continued to dominate the colleges category, followed by Hansraj College and Kirori Mal College. St Stephen's College, adjudged the third best last year, slipped to the fifth position this year.

Among universities, JNU ranked second, like last year while Delhi University’s rank improved from sixth to fifth this year. Jamia was ranked the fourth best, BHU is sixth, and at the seventh position is BITS Pilani which had improved significantly from 19th position last year.

In engineering, apart from the aforementioned IITs, IIT Guwahati and IIT Hyderabad are in the top 10, in addition to NIT Tiruchirapalli and IIT BHU. IIMs once again dominated the management list with IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Kozhikode, IIM Delhi, IIM Lucknow, IIM Mumbai, IIM Calcutta and IIM Indore taking the next positions. MDI Gurgaon and at the XLRI Jamshedpur are the ninth and tenth places.

The NIRF 2025 evaluated institutions across 13 categories, including engineering, medical, law, management, architecture, research, innovation, and state public universities, using parameters such as teaching, learning, research, professional practice, graduation outcomes, and perception. This year. 5₹3 rankings evaluated 7692 institutions, which is a significant increase from the 2426 institutions since 2016, when the rankings started.

While announcing the awards, union minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that a new ranking mechanism will be devised. “Very soon, a new mechanism for institutional ranking will be placed. We will go by the theory of one nation, one data,” he said.

He added that more institutes have joined the ranks in NIRF’s tenth year. “This shows stable growth of our higher education sector. Ranking framework is an important milestone towards our goal of a developed India in 2047. We have to increase the number of students and quality of education in the higher education sector,” he said.