Methodology

Every salary, fee, cutoff, placement rate, and AI-risk rating on the site is synthesised from one or more of the following public sources, weighted by how directly they observe the underlying fact:

• NIRF rankings and disclosures— official placement reports from the Ministry of Education's National Institutional Ranking Framework for engineering, management, medical, law, and pharmacy institutions.
• Regulator filings — AICTE handbook, UGC notifications, AYUSH annual reports, ICAI exam disclosures, NTA exam pattern + cutoff PDFs, NBE FMGE results, state medical and dental council registers.
• Government and PSU pay scales — 7th Pay Commission tables for IAS / IPS / IFS / Group A officers; published PSU pay matrices (NTPC, IOCL, ONGC, BHEL); state medical officer pay scales; AIIMS / PGIMER salary structures.
• Named-company disclosures — Apollo Hospitals, Fortis, Max Healthcare salary tiers; FAANG India, top product-startup, and quant-firm fresher CTC ranges from company-published levels or Levels.fyi India aggregates; IIM placement reports.
• Crowdsourced aggregators — AmbitionBox, Glassdoor, Naukri, layoffs.fyi. These are marked as Medium or Low confidence on the source table because they rely on self-reported data with selection bias.
• Editorial judgment— AI-risk ratings, difficulty grades, work-life-balance scores, and the “uncomfortable truths” sections are written based on the above sources combined with industry observation. These are flagged Low confidence where appropriate.

NextClimb is built by one person. We don't want to overstate what that means.

• We do not run original surveys or paid interviews. The reality-check, salary-tier context, and college-tier-impact sections are synthesis from public reports plus editorial judgment — not first-party research with named respondents.
• We do not have direct access to placement-cell data. When we cite IIT/NIT/IIM placement numbers, those come from published NIRF disclosures or institute placement reports — not internal data.
• We do not paid-rank colleges or test-prep brands. There are currently no paid partnerships influencing what appears on the site. If that changes (for example, when affiliate programmes for online courses are added), we will disclose it inline on every affected page and in the footer.

Being explicit about these limits is the trade-off for being specific elsewhere. The site is most useful as a starting point for your own research, not a replacement for it.

Every source on every career page carries a confidence label. Here's exactly what each one means:

• High — sourced from a primary regulator or named institutional disclosure (e.g. NIRF report, NTA cutoff PDF, ICAI pass-rate notice, 7th Pay Commission table). Should be accurate within the reporting window.
• Medium — sourced from a credible aggregator (AmbitionBox, Levels.fyi India) cross-checked against at least one secondary source. Salary ranges should be treated as directionally accurate; exact medians may vary.
• Low — editorial judgment, qualitative ratings (AI risk, work-life balance, difficulty), or thinly-sourced figures. Treat as an opinion informed by data, not a measurement.

Anything labelled Low should be the start of your own research, not the conclusion.

Each course, career, exam, and guide page on the site can carry its own updatedAt timestamp. When a page is materially revised — new data, new sources, refreshed reality check — that timestamp gets bumped, the visible byline updates, and the sitemap reflects the new lastmod date.

Pages without a per-entry timestamp fall back to a site-wide review date that gets refreshed when we do an editorial pass. The current site-wide review date is May 28, 2026.

Salary, fee, and cutoff data are reviewed when official sources publish new figures (typically annually for NIRF and entrance exam cutoffs; quarterly for crowdsourced aggregators).

• One named editor. Every page on the site is reviewed by Mallikarjun Bhise. See About the Editor.
• No fake authority signals.We don't use ghostwritten expert bylines, fabricated credentials, or AI-generated “reviewer” names. If a page is attributed to a person, that person exists and is reachable by email.
• Affiliate and ad transparency. If affiliate links or display ads are added, they will be disclosed at first appearance on every page that contains them and in a site-wide disclosure page.
• Corrections are public. When a number or claim changes substantively after a reader points it out, the relevant source row in the methodology table on that page is updated with the new figure and the date of change.