04 — Dental
NIRF 2025 ranking. NIRF data only — no external benchmark appears in this note.
What NIRF reports
Section titled “What NIRF reports”| Level | Academic year | Institutes | Graduated | Placed | Higher study | Placed % | Higher study % | Institute median salary (p25 / p50 / p75) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UG | 2023-24 | 37 | 2,624 | 1,562 | 848 | 59.53% | 32.32% | ₹420,000 / ₹600,000 / ₹780,000 |
| PG | 2023-24 | 39 | 1,150 | 1,032 | 81 | 89.74% | 7.04% | ₹740,000 / ₹1,045,000 / ₹1,420,000 |
Reading
Section titled “Reading”The largest selection effect of any discipline: the wider set places 5.36 points lower, 55.31% against 60.67%, on 62 colleges rather than 38. And the highest placement rate NIRF reports anywhere — 89.74%, at PG. Its UG track places 59.53%, and the institute-median salary nearly doubles between the two levels. A third of the UG cohort goes to higher study, the same pattern as medicine: the first degree is a step, not a destination. The UG-to-PG placement gap of 30.21 points is the second widest, behind Pharmacy.
Across ranking editions
Section titled “Across ranking editions”Showing the UG track.
Each row is a different NIRF ranking edition, read at that edition’s best-covered outcome year — the academic year most of its institutes reported. Anchoring on the latest year instead compares a thin slice against a full one: ranking 2019 had 192 engineering institutes reporting 2015-16 and 25 reporting 2017-18.
The rows are not a time series. Successive editions re-report overlapping academic years, and the ranked set itself changes size — watch the institute count.
| Ranking | Outcome year | Institutes | Graduated | Placed % | Institute median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2016-17 | 29 | 1,947 | 46.48% | ₹300,000 |
| 2021 | 2017-18 | 40 | 2,804 | 49.93% | ₹400,000 |
| 2022 | 2018-19 | 39 | 2,642 | 49.47% | ₹540,000 |
| 2023 | 2019-20 | 39 | 2,770 | 36.64% | ₹480,000 |
| 2024 | 2022-23 | 39 | 2,847 | 60.27% | ₹520,000 |
| 2025 | 2023-24 | 37 | 2,624 | 59.53% | ₹600,000 |
By rank band
Section titled “By rank band”The board gives this discipline one placement rate. Across 62 colleges — each read at its last report, banded by the rank it held that year — it looks like this. Only the bands NIRF’s ranking reached are shown.
| Rank band | Colleges | Graduates | Placed | Placed % | p25 | p50 | p75 | Median salary | Female enrolled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–10 | 9 | 727 | 462 | 63.5% | 40.0 | 68.8 | 86.9 | ₹5.4L | 69.8% |
| 11–25 | 16 | 1,055 | 539 | 51.1% | 42.5 | 54.4 | 70.4 | ₹7.0L | 74.3% |
| 26–50 | 37 | 2,745 | 1,503 | 54.8% | 40.8 | 54.9 | 74.1 | ₹4.1L | 75.3% |
| All | 62 | 4,527 | 2,504 | 55.3% |
What the bands show.
- Salary falls 1.3× from the top band to the bottom — ₹5.4L at ranks 1–10 against ₹4.1L at 26–50.
- Placement rate does not fall cleanly with rank. It runs 63.5% at the top and 54.8% at the bottom — a 8.8-point drop — but the highest rate is in the 1–10 band at 63.5%. The ranking separates colleges on pay far more sharply than on whether graduates are hired.
- The 11–25 band is the most consistent, p25 to p75 spanning 27.9 points, against 46.9 in the widest. A band tells you more about a college where the spread is narrow.
- Women are better represented further down the ranking — 69.8% of enrolment in the top band against 75.3% in the bottom. This is enrolment: NIRF publishes no placement or salary by sex, so nothing here says whether women were placed or paid equally, and the counts are taken at ranking time rather than for the graduating cohort.
Placement is the institute’s own unaudited submission and NIRF publishes no definition of “placed”, so a flat rate across bands is also what generous reporting further down would look like.
The wider set
Section titled “The wider set”The table above is the currently ranked set. NIRF has ranked more colleges in this discipline than it ranks today, and each of them last reported something. Counting every one at its own last report:
| Colleges | Graduates | Placed % | Higher study % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Currently ranked | 38 | 2,713 | 60.67% | 31.44% |
| Ever ranked | 62 | 4,527 | 55.31% | 29.56% |
The wider set places 5.36 points lower. Colleges that left the ranking placed worse than those that stayed — which is what graduate outcomes feeding the NIRF score would predict. Quoting the current set overstates the discipline.
Mixed vintage: each college is read at its own last report, so this blends years. It is also biased low, because a college’s final report is often the year before it fell out. See COVERAGE.md.
What this note cannot tell you
Section titled “What this note cannot tell you”- Nothing about unranked institutions. NIRF ranks the institutes that apply to it; this is the ranked sector describing itself.
- Placement is the institute’s own submission, unaudited, and its definition of “placed” is not published.
- The salary figure is a median of institute medians, so it weights a small college the same as a large one. It is not the median salary of a graduate in this discipline and must not be quoted as one.
- Intake and outcomes are on different academic years, so no cohort funnel is computed here. See METHOD.md.