How every number on this site got here.

1. The three source tiers

Every numeric cell carries a tier dot next to its source name. Three tiers, colour-coded, visible at screen-share distance.

• T1 · Official

  The institution itself, a government portal, or a recognised statutory body. Includes .ac.in / .edu.in domains, nirfindia.org, josaa.admissions.nic.in, aicte-india.org, aishe.gov.in, and allowlisted private-university academic hosts (manipal.edu, bits-pilani.ac.in, pes.edu, etc.). The default we seek.

• T2 · Verified secondary

  Wikipedia (when the article cites the T1 source), OpenAlex, Crossref, ICPC official archive, GSoC archive. Used only to corroborate a T1 figure or fill a structural gap where no T1 exists (e.g., h-index via OpenAlex).

• T3 · Aggregator (visibly muted)

  Shiksha, Careers360, Collegedunia. Rendered in a dimmed colour + lower font-weight so the reader can see we used a secondary source. Never upgraded to T1 even when the value looks right.We fall back to T3 only when T1 and T2 both publish nothing for that cell.

Empty cells — cells where not even T3 has published — carry a NOT PUBLISHED · AS OF JUL '25 pill. Silence is the honest answer, not a design defect.

2. Refresh cadence

Every cell has a source_date captured when we pulled the figure. Cadences vary by axis.

3. What we refuse to do

• No inferred numbers.If a college doesn't publish a median CTC, we don't compute one from placement-brochure highlights. The cell stays empty.
• No borrowing across institutes.We don't use IIT-B's median as a proxy for IIT-M. No interpolation.
• No Shiksha or Careers360 as T1.They are aggregators, not institutions. Their numbers frequently differ from the institute's own PDF. We use them only as T3 fallback and flag the cell visibly.
• No marketing asymmetry.SST shares the same matrix frame, same source tags, same empty-cell treatment as every other college. One deliberate asymmetric-truth ribbon (“Curriculum refresh every 6 mo”) appears only where a structural difference exists — and it carries the same source tag as any other figure.
• No phone-number capture.No email drip. No “request a callback.” The Scaler BDA reaches parents through channels they opted into separately — not through this tool.

4. Request a college / flag a wrong number

We currently cover 196 colleges with JoSAA cutoffs, 34 with verified 2024-25 fees + placements, and 10 Wave-1 colleges with the full 21-axis depth. If yours isn't listed, or if a number looks wrong against the official source:

1. Email compare@scaler.com with the college name + axis + the correct figure + source URL.
2. We review against the T1 source within 3 working days.
3. If correct, the cell updates with the new source_date. If the original stays, we reply with which source we used and why.