* How to read the data

Overall score is the weighted sum of scores obtained in Factual as well as Perceptual surveys.

A factual survey entails data that is submitted by B-schools on a variety of questions. The questions are split up across five primary parameters - learning experience, living experience, brand value, return on investment and future orientation. A score of zero indicates that data was not submitted by the college for that particular parameter.

A perceptual survey is done on the B-schools that have participated in our factual survey. There is a separate questionnaire for this which is administered to a group of more than 1,200 stakeholders of the B-school ecosystem, including teachers, students, young executives and HR recruiters.

The scores obtained in both factual and perceptual survey are added up to get a composite, "overall" score. The B-schools are ranked based on this score.

In the perception survey, 'Base' refers to the number of respondents that have rated a particular B-school. A maximum of 120 respondents can rate each school. A B-school that is less known is rated by fewer people. But if those fewer people give it very high scores, it creates a skew in the ranking.

So, Business Today has used an awareness deflator to bring fairness to the rankings. B-schools that were rated by 40 or more respondents (one-third the sample) were assigned a weight of 1, which means their overall scores were multiplied by 1. B-schools that were rated by 30-39 respondents were given a weight of 0.9, so their overall scores were multiplied by 0.9, deflating their total score by a small margin. For 20-29 respondents, the weight was 0.8; and for B-schools that were rated by fewer than 20 respondents, the weight was 0.7.

Read full methodology here