Farook College Autonomous, Kozhikode

Tuition at Farook College is Rs 1,050 a year for most undergraduate programmes and Rs 3,150 for Computer Science and Multimedia, and its fee documents have carried those two lines unchanged from the 2020-2021 allocation table to the 2026-2027 prospectus. Almost nothing else about admission at Feroke is that stable. The application, the ranking, the community lists and a compulsory interview all run on a portal the college operates itself, and the national placing it holds today, 82nd among Indian colleges in 2025, follows three years outside the numbered hundred.

Farook College is a government aided, autonomous arts and science college at Farook College post office in Kozhikode district, Kerala, run by the Rouzathul Uloom Association and teaching under the University of Calicut. Its own history puts the founding in 1948, as the only First Grade College in Central Malabar at the time, originally affiliated to Madras University, moved to the University of Kerala in 1957 and to the University of Calicut in 1968. The same page records that the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions granted it minority status in 2007, and its legacy page dates the UGC's grant of autonomy to 2015.

The student body is not the one the college's founding constituency might lead you to expect. Its 2026 submission to the Ministry of Education counts 646 men against 1,351 women in the three year undergraduate programmes, 285 against 753 in the four year ones, and 60 against 427 at two year postgraduate level. Women outnumber men two to one in the three year programmes, nearly three to one in the four year ones and seven to one in the two year postgraduate departments. The intake is also overwhelmingly local: of those 1,997 three year undergraduates, 1,915 are from within Kerala and 50 from outside India.

Aided tuition here is a government rate, and the college publishes it twice over: as an itemised list in the 2026-2027 prospectus and as a fee allocation table under mandatory disclosures that adds every head into a single annual figure. That allocation table is the only document producing one number per programme, and the last edition of it was published for 2020-2021. Its tuition, admission and laboratory lines still match the itemised prospectus exactly, but three university heads have crept above it since, the University Union, the Sports Affiliation and the Matriculation charge. So the totals in the table below are dated 2020-2021 figures, and a floor rather than the bill you will be handed: the prospectus stamps its own list subject to revision depending upon the Govt./the University Orders.

Two lines do most of the work in separating one row of that table from the next. The laboratory charge separates one science from another, running from Rs 160 for B.Sc. Mathematics to Rs 580 for Zoology, Botany and Statistics and Rs 1,260 for the M.Sc. sciences. And year one carries a caution deposit and an admission fee that later years do not, which is why the same B.A. seat falls to Rs 1,875 in the second year and Rs 1,885 in the third.

One gap matters more than either. Eight of the twenty four undergraduate programmes and two of the postgraduate ones are taught in self financing mode, and the prospectus prints no separate tuition table for them. The college's standing allotment instructions, last published for 2024-25, confirm a rate difference exists: an allotted candidate is told to select the appropriate fee category before paying, and that the fee will vary based on the selected category. If your allotment is to a self financing seat, the amount on the allotment slip is the figure that binds and it will not be one of the eight above.

Across the seven schools the prospectus counts 24 undergraduate programmes and 15 postgraduate ones, alongside the integrated M.Sc. and 11 doctoral programmes. The two newest are both self financing and both marked as new courses there, a B.B.A. and a B.C.A., each AICTE approved. Neither carries a published intake anywhere in the document, so a seat count for those two has to come from the college office.

You do not reach Farook College through a university allotment. Registration, ranking, allotment and payment all happen on the college's own site, farookcollege.online, which it runs under the name Common Admission Process. No seat is carved out of that: the prospectus requires every candidate, regardless of the quota (general merit, reservation, sports, community or management), to register online, and states that a candidate who does not register is not eligible for admission to a UG or Integrated PG programme. Aided, self financing and management seats alike are filled from the college's own lists. The University of Calicut supplies the rule book rather than the portal: the whole index scheme is subject to changes as per the regulations and directions from University of Calicut, with individual rules cited back to specific university orders.

Every programme scores its applicants on a different formula, so a mark that wins a seat in one department is meaningless in the next. A B.A. English applicant is ranked on the Plus Two aggregate with the English mark counted a second time on top, then picks up a further 20 if English, Functional English or Communicative English was carried as an optional subject. The Arabic and Islamic History double main doubles the Part II Arabic mark instead and hangs another 50 on history, Islamic jurisprudence or the history of Arabic literature. Economics is blunter, a flat 50 mark weightage for having studied the subject. A B.Com. applicant banks 25 marks per commerce paper offered at Plus Two, and the addition stops at 50. B.B.A. is the outlier, and its rule runs to two words: total marks.

Application fees are published by category. General and Muslim category candidates pay Rs 450 and SC or ST candidates Rs 175 for a regular application, rising to Rs 700 and Rs 425 respectively for a management seat, which also needs a recommendation letter uploaded as a PDF. An application counts only once it is locked, and the same page warns that a locked application cannot be modified afterwards and that the fee is not refunded.

Then comes the stage most Kerala rank list colleges do without. Allotted candidates pay, upload their certificates, and are called to campus for an interview and physical verification at which a parent or guardian must be present. Miss the payment or the upload window and the seat moves down the list, because the college treats anyone who does not complete both as uninterested and excludes them from that programme.

The 2026-27 undergraduate calendar ran to published dates: applications from 6 May 2026 to 12 June 2026, a trial rank list on 17 June, the final rank list on 19 June, interviews on 22, 23, 24 and 26 June, classes commencing 1 July at 9 am and admission closing on 11 September 2026. One interview date then moved, after the college rescheduled the 26 June sitting to 27 June because the Government of Kerala revised the Muharram holiday. Postgraduate applications ran on a shorter window, closing 8 June 2026, with objections to the provisional rank list accepted by email to admissions@farookcollege.ac.in until 3 pm on 11 June.

Farook College does publish closing marks, but not in a form you can consult out of season. Its portal carries a rank list for every undergraduate programme, each split four ways into General, Muslim, SC and ST lists, with a selection list and a waiting list under each and every name carrying its index mark and rank. Those tables empty once a cycle closes. Checked in September 2026, the B.A. Economics general list loads with its headings, its weightage warning and its disclaimer intact and nothing underneath.

No closing index mark from the last cycle survives on that portal, and the college keeps no archive of earlier ones. What you can do is read a list live while admission is running, in the week between the trial list and the final one, since the college states that index marks and selection status published on the website remain unchanged until the completion of the final process. One warning is worth reading before you trust your own position on such a list: a mark can be revised downwards after ranking, because weightage claims for NCC, NSS, SPC, Scouts or Arts must have been earned at Plus Two level, and a candidate who cannot produce the certificate at verification has the assigned rank adjusted and is denied admission.

Undergraduate placements here ran in single and low double figures until 2022-23 and then multiplied.

Read the last two columns together and the picture is unambiguous. In the strongest year on that table, 665 of the 950 who graduated in minimum time went on to further study, seven in ten of them, against 115 placed. Kerala's own ranking framework counted the same year and did not arrive at the same figures: its return records 109 placed off the three year undergraduate programmes rather than 115, and 658 students moving on to a postgraduate programme with 61 more starting a Ph.D.. Those two progression counts are collected across the whole college rather than from the undergraduate cohort alone, so they do not add up to the 665 above and cannot be read as a breakdown of it.

Postgraduate outcomes are stronger and steadier. Two year programmes placed 54 of 208 leavers in 2022-23, 106 of 225 in 2023-24 and 95 of 220 in 2024-25, at medians of Rs 3,30,000, Rs 3,30,000 and Rs 3,50,000. The integrated M.Sc. Geology produced its first cohort in 2024-25 and placed 9 of 24 at a median of Rs 2,60,000, with 9 more continuing to study.

Now the caution, because it is unusually sharp at this college. For the single year 2023-24, three official returns give three different undergraduate placement counts: 47 in the ranking submission, 112 in the return the college filed to Kerala's own ranking framework, and 69 outgoing students placed in its NAAC annual report. The three rest on different definitions and the college reconciles none of them, so treat any placement number attached to this name as a count of something specific rather than a headline. Its placement cell page does not settle it either: it sets out objectives and training activity and publishes no recruiter list and no offer data.

Intakes are published department by department in the prospectus, and the aided side carries the volume.

One entry in that document does not reconcile with the rest of it. The Arabic department page carries a 60 seat B.A. Arabic Language and Literature Honours that neither the prospectus's own programme list nor the 2026 admission portal offers, so it is left out of the table above rather than counted into a total the college would not honour.

The self financing side is smaller and tilted towards commerce and computing: 60 seats each in B.Com. Computer Application Honours and B.Com. Finance Honours, 36 in B.Sc. Psychology Honours, 30 each in the two B.Voc. programmes and 24 in B.A. English Language and Literature Honours. Postgraduate intakes run from 12 seats in the M.Sc. sciences and M.Sc. Psychology up to 20 in M.A. Arabic, M.A. English, M.A. History, M.A. Economics, M.Sc. Mathematics, M.Com., M.Lib.I.Sc. and M.A. Journalism and Mass Communication, with Ph.D. places listed only as subject to availability.

Against that, the sanctioned intake the college filed for 2024-25 was 962 four year undergraduate places, 232 two year postgraduate places, 15 one year postgraduate places and 30 integrated places, and its NAAC report for 2023-24 records 1,309 students admitted that year and 398 seats filled against reserved categories. What the prospectus does not publish is the quota split. It names the categories a candidate registers under, general merit, reservation, sports, community and management, and prints no percentage against any of them, so the share held for the community quota has to come from the college office.

This college has been in and out of the numbered NIRF hundred rather than climbing steadily into it. It ranked 88th on a score of 51.23 in 2020 and improved to 73rd on 52.49 in 2021, then fell into the 101-150 rank band for 2022, 2023 and 2024, a listing that carries no number and no score at all, before returning at 82 with 55.83 in 2025. That three year gap is why so many listings still show a Farook rank that stops in 2021.

Kerala's own Institutional Ranking Framework reads the same college quite differently, placing it 5th in the state on 58.521, above St. Joseph's College, Devagiri, the only other Kozhikode college NIRF numbers, which sits 12th there on 57.683 while finishing eight places ahead of Farook nationally. The parameter scores explain both readings at once.

That outreach and inclusivity mark is the highest of any Kerala college in the 2025 top hundred, ahead of every ranked college in Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur. The perception mark, drawn from a survey of academic peers and employers, is close to the floor of the table: only four of the hundred ranked colleges scored lower, and two others tie with Farook at 1.91. A college that scores best in its state on who it educates and near the bottom of the country on who has heard of it is a specific kind of institution, and that is the one this table describes. Kerala's framework runs no reputation survey at all. Its heaviest marks for Farook are 86.64 on teaching, learning and resources and 85 on graduation outcome. Its lighter ones are 60.29 for outreach and inclusivity, 29 on the parameter that bundles scientific temper, secular outlook, innovation and entrepreneurship, and 22 for knowledge dissemination and research excellence. The parameter that sinks this college nationally simply has no counterpart in the state table.

Teaching is grouped into schools rather than a flat department list. The School of Language and Literature covers Arabic, English, Hindi, Malayalam and Urdu; Social Science covers Economics, History, Islamic History, Sociology and Physical Education; Science covers Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Physics, Psychology and Zoology; Mathematics and Computational Science covers Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics and Computer Application; Commerce and Management Studies, Media and Information Science, and Vocational Studies complete the set.

The doctoral menu is unusually arts heavy for a campus this science oriented: Arabic, History, Economics, Commerce and English sit alongside Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Zoology, and the college lists a research department behind each one. Three subjects exist twice over on this campus, once aided and once unaided: English, Commerce and Psychology each run a self financing department alongside the government aided one. Only the aided half is priced in the prospectus, so which of the two twins takes your application settles whether the fee table above applies to you at all.

The Abussabah Library is the part of this campus with a documented collection rather than a description. It holds 90,262 volumes including textbooks and bound periodicals, 800 CDs, 160 gramophone records, 40 films, 17 manuscripts and 168 subscribed periodicals, as recorded on 5 August 2022, plus a rare documents section whose manuscripts are older than 300 years and mostly in Arabic. The building, named for the campus founder Moulavi Abussabah Ahmed Ali, was commissioned by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on 17 November 2002, and spending on it has climbed sharply: Rs 28,63,041 on library acquisitions in 2024-25 against Rs 13,56,568 the year before.

Around it sit a masjid, a convention centre, an auditorium, an indoor stadium, an advanced science research lab, a business incubation centre, an audio production centre and a digital hub. Two support figures are worth reading together: the college reports lifts or ramps and specially designed toilets in more than 80 per cent of its buildings, which means a minority of it is still not step free, and its NAAC report puts the student to computer position at 3,708 students to 450 computers.

Residence is this college's structural distinction and its least documented feature. It calls itself the largest residential campus under the University of Calicut and names eight blocks, Azad, ALM, Iqbal, Presidents', IDB, Sir Syed, W.W. and Zahira.

Nothing beyond those eight names is published. The site gives no capacity for any block, no room count and no occupancy figure, and the prospectus fee list stops at the classroom door: none of its three schedules, undergraduate, postgraduate or B.Lib.I.Sc., carries a hostel line. So the one thing this college claims as its distinction is the one thing an applicant cannot cost from the website, and the rate for a block has to be asked for by telephone.

Between the two most recent filings the roster grew, and the growth sits at the bottom of the ladder. The college entered 149 faculty members in its 2025 ranking filing, and its 2026 filing publishes the roster itself, running to 165 numbered rows naming each member with designation, qualification, months of experience, joining date and whether they are still in service. Read down it and assistant professors outnumber associate professors and professors together by a wide margin, and every row marked Adhoc or Contractual rather than Regular carries a joining date in the most recent year on the list. That is a roster an applicant can read name by name, which is more than a college of this size usually makes possible, though it stops short of saying which department each name teaches in.

Where the money goes is equally legible. In 2024-25 the college spent Rs 25,08,38,614 on teaching and non teaching salaries against Rs 5,88,12,009 on maintenance and other running costs. The principal is Prof. (Dr) K.A. Aysha Swapna.

The best known scientific name attached to this college is an alumnus rather than a member of staff. Thalappil Pradeep received the Padma Shri in 2020 for nanochemistry based water purification and arsenic removal and is Institute Professor in chemistry at IIT Madras, and he chairs a conference series run by the college's own chemistry department.

The alumni association, formed in 1971, keeps its own roll of honour rather than leaving the list to third parties. It records having honoured Adv. M.I. Shanavaz on his election to the Lok Sabha, Dr. A. Jayakrishnan on his appointment as Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala, and Dr. Azad Moopen on his Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the last of whom now sits on the college's own managing committee.

Every news item on the college site carries its date, which is rarer than it should be and makes the run readable at a glance. The newest entries are a multimedia department website launch and internship certificates on 31 July 2026, the 2026 convocation address on 20 July, and a Kerala Excise Department commendation for the NSS unit's anti-drug campaigns on 30 June.

Its announcements strip runs in parallel and is more useful to an applicant, because that is where research and admission notices appear: currently a four day workshop on AI powered e-content production for educators, the Raghu Rai Memorial Young Photographer Award, and a call for Ph.D. applications from the commerce department.

Only two Kozhikode colleges appear in the 2025 national top hundred, and they publish opposite halves of the same picture. Farook prints an aided fee sheet down to the rupee and no self financing table; St. Joseph's College, Devagiri, ranked 74th that year, prints self financing tuition per semester and no aided schedule. A family comparing the two on cost is therefore comparing two different documents, not two prices. The same asymmetry runs through the seat rules: Devagiri's prospectus prints its aided split to the percentage point, 50 per cent open general merit, 20 per cent SC and ST reservation, 10 per cent community merit and 20 per cent management quota, where Farook's names the same categories and attaches no figure to any of them.

The ranking split between them reverses depending on which table you open. Devagiri finishes ahead nationally, 56.89 against 55.83, while Farook finishes ahead in Kerala's own, 58.521 against 57.683. Farook leads on outreach and inclusivity in both, 64.24 against 53.69 nationally and 60.29 against 57 in the state table; what changes is that the state framework never asks anyone's opinion, and the national one does.

The address on every prospectus, notification and rank list reduces to one line: Farook College (Autonomous), P.O. Farook College, Kozhikode District, PIN 673 632, Kerala. The switchboard numbers are +91 495 2440660 and +91 495 2440661, and general correspondence goes to mail@farookcollege.ac.in.

Admission queries have their own lines. The prospectus gives an admission enquiry number of 9188910729 and a technical support number of 9562977811 for the online portal, and objections to a postgraduate rank list go to admissions@farookcollege.ac.in rather than to the switchboard.

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