State-Wise NIRF Ranking 2025: Best Colleges in Every State
NIRF does not publish a state-wise ranking. Grouping the 2025 engineering, management, medical and overall lists by location gives 233 distinct ranked institutes across 26 states and union territories. Tamil Nadu leads with 30. 10 states and UTs have none at all.
NIRF ranks nationally, by discipline. That is the right way to rank, and the wrong way to shortlist, because your realistic options are shaped by home-state quota and by what is within reach of home. This page rebuilds the 2025 data around location.
Every state, with its best college in each discipline
| State or UT | Institutes | Best engineering | Best management | Best medical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamil Nadu | 30 | #1 IIT Madras | #13 IIT Madras | #3 Christian Medical College |
| Delhi | 22 | #2 IIT Delhi | #4 IIT Delhi | #1 AIIMS Delhi |
| Karnataka | 20 | #17 NIT Karnataka, Surathkal | #2 IIM Bangalore | #7 NIMHANS |
| Maharashtra | 20 | #3 IIT Bombay | #6 IIM Mumbai | #12 Dr. D. Y. Patil Vidyapeeth |
| Uttar Pradesh | 18 | #4 IIT Kanpur | #5 IIM Lucknow | #5 Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medi |
| Punjab | 12 | #29 Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technolo | #32 Chandigarh University | #36 Dayanand Medical College |
| Telangana | 11 | #7 IIT Hyderabad | #46 ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, Hyder | #48 Osmania Medical College |
| West Bengal | 10 | #5 IIT Kharagpur | #7 IIM Calcutta | #23 Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education |
| Gujarat | 9 | #25 IIT Gandhinagar | #1 IIM Ahmedabad | #44 Gujarat Cancer & Research Institute |
| Kerala | 9 | #21 NIT Calicut | #3 IIM Kozhikode | #17 Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sc |
| Odisha | 9 | #13 NIT Rourkela | #34 IIM Sambalpur | #14 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhub |
| Rajasthan | 9 | #11 BITS Pilani | #21 IIM Udaipur | #19 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Jodh |
| Andhra Pradesh | 6 | #35 Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation Unive | #29 IIM Visakhapatnam | — |
| Haryana | 6 | #85 NIT Kurukshetra | #9 Management Development Institute | #33 Maharishi Markandeshwar |
| Jammu and Kashmir | 6 | #56 IIT Jammu | #35 IIM Jammu (IIMJ) | — |
| Madhya Pradesh | 6 | #12 IIT Indore | #8 IIM Indore | #25 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhop |
| Jharkhand | 5 | #15 IIT (Indian School of Mines) | #10 XLRI - Xavier School of Management | — |
| Uttarakhand | 5 | #6 IIT Roorkee | #22 IIT Roorkee | #13 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Rish |
| Bihar | 4 | #19 IIT Patna | #31 IIM Bodh Gaya | #27 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Patn |
| Chhattisgarh | 4 | #72 IIT Bhilai | #15 IIM Raipur | #31 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Raip |
| Assam | 3 | #8 IIT Guwahati | — | — |
| Chandigarh | 3 | #93 Panjab University | #92 Panjab University | #2 PGIMER |
| Himachal Pradesh | 3 | #26 IIT Mandi | #51 IIM Sirmaur | — |
| Puducherry | 3 | #99 NIT Puducherry | — | #4 JIPMER |
| Meghalaya | 2 | #83 NIT Meghalaya | #38 IIM Shillong | — |
| Goa | 1 | — | #43 Goa Institute of Management | — |
Derived from the official NIRF 2025 tables. "Institutes" counts distinct institutions in that state appearing in any of the four lists; an institute ranked in both engineering and overall is counted once.
Five states hold about half of everything
Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh together account for 110 of the 233 ranked institutes. Tamil Nadu alone has 30.
That concentration is the single most useful thing on this page. If you live in one of those five, a strong ranked college is plausibly within home-state quota. If you do not, the honest reading is that your best-ranked reachable option probably requires moving, and the fee and living-cost difference is part of that decision.
Ten states and union territories have nothing ranked
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura.
Every north-eastern state except Assam and Meghalaya is absent: Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura have no institute in any of the four 2025 lists.
This is worth reading carefully. It does not mean those states have no good colleges. NIRF participation is voluntary, and the framework rewards research volume, doctoral output and institutional scale, all of which concentrate in older and larger institutions. A regional medical or engineering college that teaches well but publishes little will not appear here even if it submits data.
Count is not quality
A state's headline total says how many institutes cleared the bar, not how high any of them reached. Taking the engineering list on its own, where all 100 entries are directly comparable:
| State | Ranked institutes | Best rank | Median rank | Mean total score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tamil Nadu | 14 | #1 | #36 | 59.85 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 7 | #4 | #37 | 59.96 |
| Karnataka | 7 | #17 | #75 | 51.79 |
| Punjab | 7 | #29 | #48 | 55.17 |
| Delhi | 6 | #2 | #46 | 60.26 |
| Maharashtra | 6 | #3 | #45 | 58.12 |
| Telangana | 6 | #7 | #56 | 55.84 |
| Rajasthan | 5 | #11 | #42 | 57.77 |
| Odisha | 5 | #13 | #36 | 58.57 |
| West Bengal | 4 | #5 | #34 | 63.2 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 4 | #35 | #68 | 51.83 |
| Uttarakhand | 3 | #6 | #43 | 62.56 |
Three patterns worth reading off that table:
- Karnataka has volume without a top end. Seven ranked engineering institutes, but its best is only #17 and its median sits at #75. Compare Delhi: six institutes, best #2.
- West Bengal is the densest on quality. Four entries, mean score 63.2, the highest of any state with three or more. Uttarakhand is second on 62.56 from three.
- Tamil Nadu's lead is breadth. 14 engineering entries, far more than anyone else, but a median rank of #36 and a mean score of 59.85, in line with several smaller states. It has the most options, not the best ones.
If you are choosing between staying and moving, the mean and the best rank matter more than the count. A state with four strong institutes may serve you better than one with fourteen mid-table ones.
Some states show up in one discipline only
Two states appear in exactly one of the engineering, management and medical lists. Assam appears only in engineering, through IIT Guwahati at #8. Goa appears only in management, at #43.
That is a sharper constraint than a low count. If you are from Assam and want medicine, or from Goa and want engineering, the state-wise view offers you nothing and the national list is the only one that applies.
Where the institutes actually sit
State totals hide how tightly clustered this is inside each state. The city view is blunter:
| City | Ranked entries | Distinct institutes | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Delhi | 24 | 16 | Delhi |
| Chennai | 23 | 12 | Tamil Nadu |
| Bengaluru | 14 | 10 | Karnataka |
| Mumbai | 13 | 9 | Maharashtra |
| Bhubaneswar | 13 | 6 | Odisha |
| Hyderabad | 11 | 8 | Telangana |
| Coimbatore | 10 | 6 | Tamil Nadu |
| Pune | 9 | 7 | Maharashtra |
| Jaipur | 8 | 4 | Rajasthan |
| Lucknow | 8 | 6 | Uttar Pradesh |
| Kolkata | 7 | 6 | West Bengal |
| Tiruchirappalli | 6 | 4 | Tamil Nadu |
Chennai and New Delhi dominate, and Bhubaneswar's showing is disproportionate to Odisha's size, driven by a cluster of deemed universities that rank across several lists.
Home-state quota against moving
- Home-state quota is a real advantage at NITs and state colleges. Closing ranks under home-state quota are consistently more generous than the other-state equivalent at the same institute, and state institutions usually charge residents less.
- Compare on parameter scores, not rank position. A home-state college ten places lower with a similar Graduation Outcomes score is usually the better deal once fees and living costs are counted.
- Check what your rank actually reaches in each quota before deciding. The JoSAA predictor runs both home-state and other-state on the official closing-rank files.
- Moving is worth it for a band change, not for a shuffle. Out-of-state for a genuinely higher band, yes; for five rank places, no.
Jobs and study abroad: what location changes
For placements
- Local hiring markets matter more than most rankings admit. A college in Pune, Hyderabad or Bengaluru sits inside a dense recruiter network that a similarly ranked college elsewhere does not.
- Read the college's own recruiter list and repeat-recruiter rate rather than inferring from the city.
- Branch still beats location and institute: our branch salary breakdown has the spread.
For going abroad later
- Foreign admissions teams do not read NIRF and do not know your state. They check UGC or AICTE recognition and assess your transcript.
- What does travel is research access. A high Research and Professional Practice score means active labs, which is what produces the publication and the recommendation letter. That is visible per institute in the engineering table.
- If your state's options are thin, weigh the total cost of moving within India against a public degree abroad: payback calculator, study abroad vs India on ROI.
What to do next
- Find your state above and note its best option in your discipline.
- Run your rank in both quotas with the JoSAA predictor before assuming you must leave.
- Compare parameter scores, not ranks, using engineering, management or medical.
- Understand what the score is made of first: how NIRF scores are calculated.
Frequently asked questions
Does NIRF publish a state-wise ranking?
No. NIRF publishes national lists by discipline only. This page derives the state and city view from the official 2025 engineering, management, medical and overall tables, which is why it does not exist on nirfindia.org.
Which state has the most NIRF-ranked institutes?
Tamil Nadu, with 30 distinct ranked institutes across the four 2025 lists. Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra and Karnataka follow. Those five states hold roughly half of every ranked institute in the country.
Which states have no NIRF-ranked institutes?
10 states and union territories have none in the 2025 engineering, management, medical or overall lists: Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Manipur and others. Every north-eastern state except Assam and Meghalaya is absent.
Should I use home-state quota or move for a better-ranked college?
Home-state quota widens your options at a given rank and usually cuts fees at state institutions. It is worth using unless the out-of-state option is clearly better on both parameter scores and outcomes, not just on rank.
Why does my state have few ranked colleges?
NIRF participation is voluntary and the framework rewards research output and institutional scale, which concentrates in older, larger institutions. A state with few entries may still have good colleges that either did not submit data or do not compete on research volume.
Sources and method
Built from the official NIRF India Rankings 2025 tables for engineering, management, medical and overall, all checked 25 August 2026. State and city fields are taken from NIRF's own rows; Pondicherry is normalised to Puducherry. Institute counts are distinct institutions, so one ranked in two lists counts once. The absent-state list compares against the 28 states and 8 union territories. Jobs to Education is not affiliated with NIRF or the Ministry of Education; see our terms.