India's IT hub, Bangalore , continues to win new sobriquets. The electronics city, a veritable hub of engineering colleges, featured as many as 22 colleges among the Top 117 T-Schools listing of Dataquest-IDC based on a national survey of engineering colleges in the country. 

Dataquest-IDC identified 117 technology and engineering schools nationwide, conducted a survey of them, and ranked them based on composite scores arrived on the basis of parameters like placements, infrastructure, academic environment, industry interface and HR perception. 

And overall, Karnataka state (with Bangalore plus neighboring towns like Bellary, Mysore , Tumkur and Udupi) gets the distinction of contributing nearly one out of four of the best T Schools in the IT industry magazine listing.

The other cities which contributed significantly to the 117 best T-Schools from south India included Chennai with seven. India's capital Delhi had five among the Top T Schools. Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad city on the outskirts of Delhi had 6 of its T Schools in the Dataquest list of Top 117. 

Of the 22 Bangalore schools only one - P E S Institute of Technology - made it to the Top 5 list from South India. The following colleges from Bangalore were ranked among the Top 117 T Schools. P E S Institute of Technology (Rank 24); Sir M Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology (Rank 30); New Horizon College of Engineering (Rank 32); M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (Rank 36); RV College of Engineering (Rank 38); Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology (Rank 59); University Visversvaraya College of Engineering (Rank 60); Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering (Rank 65); HKBK College of Engineering (Rank 66); RNS Institute of Technology (Rank 67); East West Institute of Technology (Rank 69); KS Institute of Technology (Rank 73); JSS Academy of Technical Education (Rank 74); APS College of Engineering (Rank 84); Bangalore Institute of Technology (Rank 86); Acharya Institute of Technology (Rank 88); 

BNM Institute of Technology (Rank 92); BTL Institute of Technology (Rank 96); Global Academy of Technology (Rank 97); Government S K S J T Institute (Rank 99); Vivekananda Institute of Technology (Rank 105) and Atria Institute of Technology (Rank 115).

T School global salaries scale new highs
The T Schools had a very unlikely visitor on their campus looking for employees. It was European major Schlumberger Limited, the world's largest oilfield services corporation operating in 80 countries with 70000 people of 140 nationalities and revenues topping US $ 19 Billion. 

As per the 3rd Dataquest-IDC survey of 117 Indian Tech Schools, Schlumberger not only recruited heavily from Indian campuses but was also the highest paymaster in most colleges. The highest salary drawn in campus placements in 2007 was Rs. 45 lakh per annum to a student from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in Delhi. 

The company also recruited from BITS Pilani (Rs 40.83 lakh pa), NIT Tiruchirapalli, (Rs 40 lakh pa), IIT Guwahati (Rs 32.37 lakh pa), IIT Kharagpur, (Rs 23.71 lakh pa), IIT Kanpur (Rs 23 lakh pa) and Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi (Rs 23 lakh pa).

The other noteworthy offer was made by Bloomberg , USA to a student from IIT Madras, (Rs 40.5 lakh pa). The highest offer from an IT company was Rs 18 lakh pa to a student of IIT, Kharagpur. Capital One hired an IIT Roorkee graduate at Rs 34 lakh pa. 

Interestingly all these T Schools are among the Top 5 regional toppers in terms of placements, infrastructure, academic environment, industry interface and HR perceptions. 

The world's largest software firm Microsoft recruited engineering and computer science graduates at five T-Schools at salaries ranging from Rs 9.1 to Rs 9.5 lakh pa. 

The average annual salary for an Engineer recruited from 2007 batch increased by 28% to Rs. 3.41 lakh from Rs. 2.66 lakh. Maximum salary offered by IT companies has increased from Rs. 15 lakh per annum last year to Rs 18 lakh this year. 

Interestingly, IT companies recruited 28% students from IIT in 2007, down from 35% in 2006. This could be due to rising average salaries demanded by students of these premier institutes and the IIT graduates are now looking at non-IT sector also as a career opportunity, the survey reveals. 

IIT students received 2.13 times the average NIT engineer's salary and 2.68 times the salary of an engineer recruited from a private T-school. 

Growing intake
The intake of students in T schools has been on an increase in a number of institutes. Going by the final year student strength, Jadavpur University , Kolkata is the topper with 850 students; Manipal Institute of Technology, Udupi with 829 students came second, followed by BITS-Pilani with 785 students. The IITs have around 3,300 students in the final year, averaging 471 students per IIT. IIT-Kharagpur is the topper with 650 students, and IIT-Guwahati had the least students of all IITs, 209. 

Out of the top T schools which have been ranked, 78 colleges offer M. Tech programs, and 50 institutes offer PhD courses in engineering. On an average, 34% of the faculty members hold Doctoral degrees in the Top 100 institutes and there is one faculty member for every 11 students. 

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CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with thirteen publications (including Dataquest, DQ Channels and DQ Week, PCQuest, Voice&Data and Global Services) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics and biotech areas, and is a media value chain including Internet ( www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), job board (CyberMedia Dice), content management, multimedia, and media education. 

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