NIRF Overall Ranking 2025: Top 100 Institutes With Scores
IIT Madras tops the NIRF Overall Ranking 2025 with 87.31, ahead of the Indian Institute of Science (85.00) and IIT Bombay (81.62). The list ranks 100 institutions across all disciplines. Unlike the engineering list, its scoring contains no placement and no salary metric.
The Overall ranking is the one people quote and the one they should use least. It is a fair measure of an institution's total research and teaching footprint. It is not a guide to where you will get hired, and the reason is in its own methodology.
NIRF Overall 2025: the top 25
| Rank | Institution | City | TLR | RP | GO | OI | Perception | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IIT Madras | Chennai | 90.58 | 88.02 | 87.01 | 63.34 | 100.00 | 87.31 |
| 2 | Indian Institute of Science | Bengaluru | 86.47 | 88.16 | 83.69 | 60.29 | 98.41 | 85.00 |
| 3 | IIT Bombay | Mumbai | 83.79 | 83.05 | 86.04 | 60.13 | 83.35 | 81.62 |
| 4 | IIT Delhi | New Delhi | 80.52 | 86.67 | 74.71 | 63.54 | 92.23 | 80.67 |
| 5 | IIT Kanpur | Kanpur | 86.36 | 72.12 | 82.01 | 60.38 | 72.56 | 77.25 |
| 6 | IIT Kharagpur | Kharagpur | 77.73 | 71.21 | 81.52 | 60.63 | 69.51 | 73.99 |
| 7 | IIT Roorkee | Roorkee | 73.06 | 72.05 | 82.90 | 64.95 | 51.24 | 71.73 |
| 8 | AIIMS Delhi | New Delhi | 75.64 | 65.06 | 68.65 | 70.92 | 75.40 | 70.57 |
| 9 | Jawaharlal Nehru University | New Delhi | 75.53 | 45.59 | 99.93 | 78.82 | 54.13 | 69.62 |
| 10 | Banaras Hindu University | Varanasi | 76.41 | 51.17 | 95.42 | 65.95 | 47.63 | 68.71 |
| 11 | IIT Guwahati | Guwahati | 68.27 | 67.16 | 82.12 | 62.73 | 43.52 | 67.67 |
| 12 | IIT Hyderabad | Hyderabad | 79.81 | 56.77 | 73.89 | 58.56 | 54.35 | 67.04 |
| 13 | Jamia Millia Islamia | New Delhi | 73.81 | 50.03 | 92.56 | 83.83 | 29.47 | 66.99 |
| 14 | Manipal Academy of Higher Education-Manipal | Manipal | 79.44 | 61.76 | 78.52 | 67.71 | 20.28 | 66.86 |
| 15 | University of Delhi | Delhi | 60.65 | 58.51 | 96.94 | 70.15 | 40.55 | 66.19 |
| 16 | BITS Pilani | Pilani | 72.16 | 63.27 | 77.74 | 61.42 | 27.41 | 65.06 |
| 17 | Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham | Coimbatore | 76.85 | 51.06 | 81.91 | 71.42 | 30.67 | 64.97 |
| 18 | Jadavpur University | Kolkata | 71.61 | 52.19 | 87.82 | 52.34 | 44.10 | 64.34 |
| 19 | Aligarh Muslim University | Aligarh | 71.50 | 48.04 | 93.79 | 64.58 | 26.77 | 63.76 |
| 20 | Homi Bhabha National Institute | Mumbai | 76.94 | 54.16 | 84.47 | 56.40 | 11.67 | 63.03 |
| 21 | Vellore Institute of Technology | Vellore | 60.55 | 59.53 | 83.42 | 60.61 | 41.16 | 62.88 |
| 22 | S.R.M. Institute of Science and Technology | Chennai | 70.31 | 54.56 | 82.47 | 68.94 | 20.28 | 62.87 |
| 23 | Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences | Chennai | 76.12 | 56.28 | 73.63 | 71.44 | 6.42 | 62.23 |
| 24 | Indian Agricultural Research Institute | New Delhi | 74.07 | 46.15 | 80.08 | 78.51 | 16.61 | 61.59 |
| 25 | Siksha `O` Anusandhan | Bhubaneswar | 75.45 | 42.48 | 77.23 | 73.03 | 28.87 | 61.01 |
Source: NIRF India Rankings 2025, Overall, Ministry of Education. Scores run from 87.31 at rank 1 to 49.04 at rank 100.
This ranking has no jobs data in it
Graduation Outcomes is worth 20% of the score in every NIRF list. But what sits inside it changes by category. In the Overall framework it is exactly two things:
- University exam pass rate: 60 marks
- PhD students graduated: 40 marks
No placement metric. No median salary. Both exist in the engineering framework and neither survives into Overall. That single fact should change how you read the table.
| GO score | Institution | Overall rank | Total score | In the engineering list? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 99.93 | Jawaharlal Nehru University | 9 | 69.62 | not ranked |
| 96.94 | University of Delhi | 15 | 66.19 | not ranked |
| 95.42 | Banaras Hindu University | 10 | 68.71 | not ranked |
| 94.62 | Kerala University | 42 | 56.26 | not ranked |
| 93.79 | Aligarh Muslim University | 19 | 63.76 | rank 34 |
| 92.56 | Jamia Millia Islamia | 13 | 66.99 | rank 24 |
| 89.46 | Gauhati University | 52 | 55.27 | not ranked |
| 88.25 | Mumbai University | 92 | 49.80 | not ranked |
Look at who leads that column. Jawaharlal Nehru University scores 99.93 on Graduation Outcomes, effectively a perfect score, against IIT Madras on 87.01. JNU is an outstanding research university. Nobody should read that number as evidence that JNU places graduates into better jobs than IIT Madras, because the number does not measure jobs at all. It measures exam throughput and doctoral output.
We break the full weighting down in how NIRF scores are calculated, including why median salary is only 5% of an engineering score.
The same institute ranks very differently in the two lists
Only 56 of the Overall top 100 also appear in the engineering top 100. Among those that do, the two ranks often disagree sharply.
| Institution | Overall rank | Engineering rank | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| IIIT Hyderabad | 89 | 38 | 51 places better in engineering |
| University of Hyderabad | 26 | 74 | 48 places better overall |
| NIT Silchar | 97 | 50 | 47 places better in engineering |
| Visvesvaraya NIT Nagpur | 86 | 44 | 42 places better in engineering |
| IIT Bhubaneswar | 80 | 39 | 41 places better in engineering |
| Manipal University Jaipur | 98 | 58 | 40 places better in engineering |
| IIT Jodhpur | 66 | 27 | 39 places better in engineering |
| Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology | 99 | 60 | 39 places better in engineering |
| NIT Karnataka, Surathkal | 54 | 17 | 37 places better in engineering |
| Panjab University | 57 | 93 | 36 places better overall |
IIIT Hyderabad is the clearest case. It sits at rank 89 Overall and rank 38 in engineering, because it is a small, computing-focused institute: excellent at its subject, and penalised by a framework that rewards institutional scale and breadth. If you are choosing a CS course, the Overall number is actively misleading about it.
The reverse case matters too. The Indian Institute of Science ranks 2 Overall and does not appear in the engineering list at all, because NIRF classifies it outside that category. A list that omits your discipline's strongest names is not a list to shortlist from.
The bottom half of the list is a coin toss
Score gaps tell you where a rank stops carrying information. In the 2025 Overall table:
- Rank 1 to rank 10: 18.6 points
- Rank 10 to rank 50: 13.33 points
- Rank 50 to rank 100: 6.34 points
Fifty places at the bottom of the table are separated by barely six points of score. At that density, a small change in one self-reported figure moves an institution twenty places. Anyone presenting rank 62 as better than rank 81 is selling you noise. Read the total score, and treat differences under about two points as a tie.
As in the engineering list, the parameter doing the separating is Perception: a 60.3-point mean gap between the top 10 and ranks 51 to 100, against 13.8 for Graduation Outcomes and 2.9 for Outreach. Research is second at 37.5. Reputation and research output decide this table; teaching and inclusivity barely move it.
Homi Bhabha National Institute is the clean illustration, at rank 20 with a research score of 54.16 and a Perception score of 11.67. Serious research institution, almost no survey recognition, and the rank splits the difference.
No IIM is in the Overall top 100
Not one. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Lucknow, none of them appear, even though they are the highest-ranked management institutions in the country on NIRF's own management list.
That is the same structural gap as the Indian Institute of Science being absent from the engineering table, and it is the strongest single argument against using this ranking to choose anything. A specialised institution either does not participate in the Overall category or cannot compete in a framework built around institutional breadth. Either way, the best institution for your subject may simply not be on this page.
The only medical institutions to make it are AIIMS Delhi at rank 8, AIIMS Rishikesh at 78 and AIIMS Bhubaneswar at 100. For management or medicine, the discipline lists are not a supplement to this one. They are the only relevant tables.
What the Overall top 100 is made of
| Institution type | Count in top 100 | Best rank |
|---|---|---|
| Universities and other institutions | 72 | 8 |
| IITs | 17 | 1 |
| NITs | 6 | 30 |
| IISc and IISERs | 5 | 2 |
Central and state universities dominate by count. That is not a flaw, it is what "overall" means: the framework is measuring whole institutions, and large multi-faculty universities are whole institutions in a way a specialised institute is not.
When the Overall list is genuinely useful
- Judging research depth across an institution, for a PhD or a research-track master's.
- Comparing universities that teach many subjects, where no single discipline list captures them.
- Spotting institutional trajectory over several editions, since the Overall score moves more slowly than discipline ranks.
And when it is not useful: picking an undergraduate course, comparing placements, or judging a specialised institute. Use the engineering ranking for that, and read its Graduation Outcomes column rather than its rank.
Jobs and study abroad: reading this list properly
If you want a campus placement
- Leave this page and open the discipline list. The Overall table cannot answer the question.
- In the engineering list, sort on Graduation Outcomes, then confirm against the institute's own placement report.
- Check what your rank actually reaches with the JoSAA predictor before shortlisting anything.
If you are aiming for an MS or PhD abroad
- This is where the Overall list earns its keep. Research and Professional Practice is 30% of the score, and a high-RP institution has the active labs that produce publications and credible recommendation letters.
- Admissions committees abroad do not read NIRF. They check UGC or AICTE recognition and assess your transcript directly, so use RP as a proxy for research access, not as a credential.
- Price the alternative honestly with the payback calculator, or read study abroad vs India on ROI and whether an MS in the USA is worth it.
What to do next
- Switch to your discipline's list. Engineering 2025 is live, with all five parameter scores and JoSAA cutoffs.
- Understand the scoring before you trust a rank. How NIRF scores are calculated shows what each sub-metric is worth.
- Match rank to reality. Run your rank and category through the JoSAA predictor.
- Compare the abroad option before paying for an expensive private seat.
Frequently asked questions
What is the NIRF Overall ranking 2025?
It ranks whole institutions across every discipline they teach, rather than a single subject. IIT Madras tops the 2025 list on 87.31, ahead of the Indian Institute of Science on 85.00 and IIT Bombay on 81.62.
What is the difference between NIRF Overall and NIRF Engineering?
Overall judges the entire institution; Engineering judges only engineering provision. They also measure different things: the Overall Graduation Outcomes metric is exam pass rates and PhDs graduated, with no placement or salary component, while the Engineering version includes both.
Should I pick a college using the NIRF Overall ranking?
No, use the discipline list for your course. The Overall list contains institutions that do not teach your subject at all, and it has zero employment content in its scoring. Only 56 of its top 100 also appear in the engineering ranking.
Why does JNU score so high on Graduation Outcomes?
Because in the Overall framework, Graduation Outcomes is 60 marks for university exam pass rates and 40 marks for PhD students graduated. JNU scores 99.93 on it. That reflects academic throughput, not graduate employment or salary.
Which institute is number one in NIRF Overall 2025?
IIT Madras, with a total score of 87.31 out of 100. It also tops the 2025 engineering list, which is unusual: most institutions rank quite differently across the two.
Sources and method
Ranks, total scores and parameter scores are parsed from the official NIRF India Rankings 2025 Overall table, checked 25 August 2026. Parameter weights and sub-metric marks come from the official Overall framework document. The cross-list comparisons are computed by us against the 2025 engineering table. Jobs to Education is not affiliated with NIRF or the Ministry of Education; see our terms.