IISc Bangalore ranked 8th in World’s Best Small Universities ranking

Caltech retained the top position in the World’s Best Small Universities 2017 ranking from the UK’s Times Higher Education

IISc Bangalore is also the first and only institute from India to make it to the top 10 in these rankings

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) is the eighth best small university in the world, UK’s Times Higher Education (THE) said.

IISc is also the first and only institute from India to make it to the top 10 in these rankings.

The World’s Best Small Universities 2017 ranks universities with less than 5,000 students and teach and research across more than four disciplines. Only universities that find a place in Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings (WUR) 2016-17 were eligible to be considered.

According to the ranking, IISc Bangalore has 3,398 students. It featured in 201-250 range in the WUR 2016-17 rankings.

In 2016, two Indian institutes – Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and Savitribai Phule Pune University—were ranked 14th and 18th respectively in the list.

“The Best Small Universities in the World for 2017 highlights that small universities provide high student satisfaction and good working relationships between students and their professors. Many students are drawn to smaller class sizes, higher teacher to student ratios and the community-like feel that a small university can provide,” Seeta Bhardwa, student editor at Times Higher Education, said in a media statement.

Bhardwa added that students across the world enjoy attending a university with a more close-knit learning environment.

“It’s important to provide students with a definitive ranking of the world’s best small universities to ensure that we are providing as much information as we can to cater to all students’ needs. The more information we can provide students on the different types of universities there are, the clearer a picture they can gain about the best institution for them,” she said.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech), US, retained the top position. Three French universities also featured in top 10. They were École Normale Supérieure, ranked second, followed by École Polytechnique at fourth position, and École Normale Supérieure de Lyon that stood at seventh position. Three universities from Italy– Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in fifth place; Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna at sixth; and Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, at 10th—also made the list.