IIT-Delhi, JNU in top 50 list of subject-wise QS rankings

In India, IIT-Delhi emerged as the top performer in Engineering and Technology, achieving a

rank of 26, higher than 45 last year.

The JNU (Development Studies), meanwhile, continued to be among world’s top 50 but its rank dropped – from 20th last year to 29th this time.

While the universities in the Capital, including JNU and Delhi University (DU), showed an upward trend in broad subject categories, crucial declines could be seen in specific subjects.

For instance, while JNU’s rank dipped in Sociology (101-150 in 2025) from 91 in 2024, its rank improved in the overall Arts and Humanities domain (from 244 in 2024 to 177 in 2025), implying that there was a shift in performance in regard to specific subjects in the category.

The QS analysed 21,000 academic programmes offered by more than 1,700 universities in 100 countries and territories on the basis of five indicators — academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, international research network, and H-Index, a measure of productivity.

The rankings span 55

subjects and five major faculty areas — Arts and Humanities, Engineering and Technology, Life Sciences and Medicine, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences, and Management.

While JNU and DU have shown consistent improvement in Arts and Humanities category since 2023, both had earlier faced a decline in their ranks — 188 and 227, respectively, in 2022, which dropped to 256 and 271, respectively, in 2023.

From 244th spot last year, JNU’s rank improved to 177 in 2025. Meanwhile, DU’s rank improved to 160 this time from 210 last year.

Though DU and JNU are strong in Humanities and Social Sciences, their performance in Engineering, Natural Sciences, and Life Sciences has varied.

IIT-Delhi has performed well in Natural Sciences when compared to previous years, as it bagged the 146th spot this time from last year’s 183rd. The DU, meanwhile, bagged its best rank of 275 this year, compared to 307 in 2022.

IIT-Delhi, JNU and DU have bagged best ranks in Social Sciences and Management, with DU showing considerable improvement — from 303th rank in 2024 to 137th in 2025). The IIT-Delhi, meanwhile, topped the list by bagging the 75th rank in the subject.

In subjects like Natural Sciences, while DU showed improvement, JNU is still far behind, securing 501-550 rank in 2025.

Further, IIT-Delhi was listed in the top 100 institutes for 12 specific subjects — Computer Science & Information Systems (64), Data Science and AI (51-100), Chemical (93), Civil Engineering (51-100), Electrical Engineering (47), Mechanical (61), Mineral & Mining Engineering (51-100), Environmental Sciences (94), Materials Science (98), Mathematics (95), Business & Management Studies (92), and Statistics & Operational research (51-100), a statement by the institute said.

Prof Vivek Buwa, head of the Ranking Cell and Dean of Planning, attributed the performance to the “international collaborative research projects” taken up by the institute over the last seven years.

“For the last several years, IIT-Delhi has been working on strengthening its international collaborations. The last seven years (2018-2024) also corresponds to the period when IIT-Delhi was selected as the Institute of Eminence,” he added.