The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai has topped the first QS ranking of India’s higher education institutes,proceed from  the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru and IIT Madras.According to the QS World University Rankings released earlier this year, IISc was ranked the best institution. But in the domestic ranking, IIT Bombay is in the top position followed by IISc and IIT Madras, the Indian Express reported According to the QS, the British company specialising in education, the criteria for both the rankings is different, hence the variation in performance of these institutes.

“The World University Rankings focus on research impact (citations per faculty) and the domestic league looks at research productivity (number of papers per faculty),” Simona Bizzozero, Communications Director of QS, told the Indian Express.

Earlier, on October 10, QS had released a similar list of institutes for China. Japan and North Korea are likely to follow.

“Countries like India and China are important for us because of the sheer number of domestic and foreign students. It makes sense for us to start domestic tables for the largest student markets. The India University Rankings look at the Indian university system with an international lens. The institutions ranked in this table are those that have appeared in our BRICS ranking in the past,” Bizzozero added.

IITs in Delhi, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati along with Hyderabad Central University and Delhi University are among the top 10 institutions.

Institutions have been scored on the criteria of academic reputation (30%), employer reputation (20%), faculty-student ratio (%), proportion of staff with PhD (10%), papers per faculty from Scopus database (10%), citations per paper from Scopus database (5%), proportion of international students (2.5%) and proportion of international faculty (2.5%).