Sam Higginbottom Institute Of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences, Allahabad

Of the 47 B.Pharm students who finished on time at SHUATS Prayagraj in 2023-24, one was placed. That line sits in the pharmacy data the university filed for India Rankings 2025, the edition that put its Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences 87th in the country.

Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences began as a farm school and is still agriculture-first, yet in 2025 pharmacy was the only table that gave it a numbered national rank. So the fees, seat rules, outcomes and staffing below are read through that department, with the rest of the university in view only where it changes a pharmacy applicant's decision.

SHUATS is the third name of an institution founded across the Yamuna in 1910, and the older names have not gone away: the national pharmacy ranking still uses SHIATS, and alumni quoted on the university's own home page say SHIATS or Allahabad Agricultural Institute. The university sets out the sequence itself, in The University page and its History and Mission page.

The 2016 change is the one that matters on paper. The Uttar Pradesh Legislature passed the Act, the Governor gave assent on December 27, 2016, and the Act came into force on December 29, 2016, which reconstituted SHIATS as a full-fledged university under state law. The city changed name too: the university's address now reads Rewa Road, Naini, Prayagraj (Formerly Allahabad) 211007, and search listings still use both.

Whether that makes it government or private is the question most applicants ask, and the university's own wording answers it in two halves. It was created by a state Act, but it is established and administered by the Sam Higginbottom Educational and Charitable Society, an ecumenical minority Christian society registered under the Society Registration Act, 1860. The same page records that the Uttar Pradesh government certified the institute as a minority educational institution under article 30 of the Constitution in 1980, and the Association of Indian Universities member universities directory tags it Private University, although the same entry still tacks the old "Deemed to be University" wording onto its name.

The university describes itself as 42 undergraduate, 101 postgraduate and 16 diploma programmes on a campus its admission pages put at 1040 acres. The Faculty of Health Sciences, which houses pharmacy, was established in the year 2000, and the department started B.Pharm as the faculty's flagship programme in year 2002.

The 2026-27 fee sheet prices pharmacy at diploma, bachelor's and master's level by the semester, and the doctorate by the year.

The semester fee is not the whole bill. Degree students also pay a non-refundable registration charge of Rs. 5,000 at admission, Rs. 3,500 as examination fees every semester and Rs. 235 for insurance. The diploma is charged differently, with a registration charge of Rs. 1,000 and an examination fee of Rs. 3,500 per year for Diploma in Pharmacy.

B.Pharm is the most expensive undergraduate programme on the health sciences list. The same sheet charges Rs. 37,000 a semester for Medical Laboratory Techniques, Rs. 41,000 for Physiotherapy and Rs. 60,000 for B.Sc. (Nursing). It also carries no concession remark. Discounts on a higher list price appear only on agriculture, technology, computing, science and management rows, such as horticulture at Rs. 42,000 against a semester fee of Rs. 56,000 with a 25% concession, and on no health sciences row.

M.Pharm needs checking before anyone pays for it. It is priced on the fee sheet, yet the health sciences page lists five postgraduate programmes, public health and four physiotherapy specialisations, with no M.Pharm among them, and the department's own overview names only D.Pharm, B.Pharm and the Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Ask the department in writing whether an M.Pharm batch is being admitted this session, and in which specialisation.

B.Pharm is the only pharmacy programme with two published routes in, and the university prints both on one page. Under its 2026-27 procedure, B.Pharm sits in Table 1.1, filled after passing the SHUATS Online Entrance Test (SOET-2026), and again in Table 1.3, the open online counselling list that the admissions home page labels "Direct Admission, No Entrance Test Required". D.Pharm appears only under open counselling.

SOET is not a single exam day. It is a remotely proctored online test on your own laptop or desktop, conducted twice a week from February/March 2026 till June / July 2026, with results declared within 3 days, programme selection within 72 hours and fee payment within 48 hours of provisional admission. Seats left after that were moved to open counselling from 1st July 2026 onwards for a limited number of vacant seats, and the important dates page put the start of classes for new students in August 2026, so an applicant arriving after that is chasing leftover seats in a session already under way.

The route through open counselling runs in a fixed order:

1. Fill the common online application form and pay the application fee of Rs 1,000.
2. Log in to the counselling portal, upload your qualifying marks and choose a programme with a seat still open in your category.
3. Pay the first semester fee within 48 hours of the provisional admission letter, or the seat is cancelled and offered to someone else.
4. Report for the offline document verification drive before classes, where eligibility is checked and the ID card issued.

A Class 12 candidate still waiting for results can take a provisional seat on an undertaking, but must submit proof of eligibility latest by 30.09.2026, or the admission may be withdrawn.

Eligibility follows the Pharmacy Council of India. The university states that B.Pharma., D.Pharma. and M.Pharma. eligibility shall be as per the latest PCI norms, and its B.Pharm entry asks for a 10+2 pass with English, with Physics and Chemistry as compulsory subjects along with either Mathematics or Biology, and a minimum age of 17 years on or before December 31st. Unlike the physiotherapy and laboratory science entries on the same page, it prints no minimum percentage.

Two clauses in the procedure deserve a second read. The 80% entrance score and 20% Class 12 weighting that decides merit belongs to a separate health sciences test, SOETHS-2026, and applies to the programmes named in Table 1.4: the bachelor's degrees in laboratory science, radiology and physiotherapy and the master's in physiotherapy and laboratory science, not to pharmacy. And the Vice-Chancellor keeps the right to cancel any admission judged not in the interest of the university, even for a candidate who meets every academic requirement, with that decision stated to be final.

SHUATS publishes no cutoff for any pharmacy programme, and its procedure would not produce one. SOET is described as a test to pass, and no pass mark, score distribution or rank list for it appears in the admission procedure or the important dates page.

After passing, candidates choose their desired academic programmes, according to the availability of seats under Christian and General category, and open counselling works the same way without the test. The procedure describes allotment by seat availability with no merit-ranking step, so no closing score is generated for B.Pharm or D.Pharm. Merit lists do exist at SHUATS, but only for nursing and the Table 1.4 health sciences programmes.

For a pharmacy applicant this changes the planning. The real floor is the PCI eligibility rule, and the real risk is timing: an eligible candidate who applies after the Christian or general share of B.Pharm seats has filled may find nothing left, since no waiting list is published.

Counted outcome data for pharmacy exists in one place, the return filed with the national ranking framework, and it is thin on jobs. The university's own placement page lists students by name, roll number and employer, with no salary column for any programme.

The B.Pharm medians for the last two years are each one person's salary, because only one graduate was placed in each, so treat the Rs 3,00,000 filed for 2023-24 as a single offer, not a going rate. What the table shows more clearly is a turn away from jobs: placements fell from 8 to 1 while the number going on to further study rose from 2 to 18, then settled at 11.

The university's placement lists point the same way. The year 2025 list records two B.Pharma entries, both with Ananya Herbal Pharmaceuticals, and the 2024 list one, with Macleods Pharmaceuticals Ltd., among a much longer run of agriculture, dairy and food technology hires. The 2023 list carries no pharmacy graduate at all.

The approved undergraduate intake has not changed in four years, while a postgraduate intake was added. The ranking return gives a sanctioned undergraduate intake of 60 in each year from 2020-21 to 2023-24, and a postgraduate intake of 18 in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

B.Pharm fills; M.Pharm has not. Fewer than half of the 18 postgraduate seats were taken in either of the last two years on record, which fits the programme's absence from the 2026-27 admission tables.

Within each programme, seats are divided by community rather than by the state reservation categories. The university reserves 50% seats for candidates of the Christian community and the remaining 50% for general candidates, and NRI or NRI-sponsored candidates are admitted against a separate 15% over and above those seats, paying the foreign-candidate fee in US dollars. The 15% and 25% ICAR quota on the same page covers agriculture and allied programmes only. No category-wise pharmacy seat table has been published for this session; the procedure points to Table No. 8 of the 2026 prospectus, and that prospectus is not currently available from the link on the admissions page.

The students on the rolls are mostly from Uttar Pradesh. The return counts 232 B.Pharm students, 192 men and 40 women, 197 of them from within the state and 35 from outside, plus 15 M.Pharm students.

The rank of 87 is a pharmacy rank, filed under the university's pre-2016 name. The India Rankings 2025 pharmacy table lists Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences, institute ID IR-P-U-0536, 87th with a score of 43.11, and the university's NIRF page links the return as a file named "NIRF-Pharma-SHIATS-2025". It holds no place in the 2025 Agriculture and Allied Sectors, University or Overall tables, so the agricultural work the university is known for is not what earned it a national number.

The department has been ranked in six of the last seven pharmacy editions, and the direction since 2023 is down.

The gap is 2021: the department does not appear among the ranked pharmacy institutions in that edition's table.

Read across the columns, two things stand out. The research score has risen in every ranked edition, from 19.37 in 2019 to 44.67 in 2025, while the perception score has been zero in three of the six. Over the same years the teaching, learning and resources score slid to 57.18, well below where it stood in 2019 and 2020, so the research gains have not been enough to hold the department's position.

The university's own site has not caught up. The department page still advertises 85th in NIRF Ranking 2024 and 10th in Uttar Pradesh, and the home page repeats the 85th. The current figure is the 87th place in the 2025 pharmacy table.

Pharmacy's own spending on equipment has fallen to nothing in the latest year on record. The department reported no capital spending on library resources in 2023-24 or 2022-23, after Rs 9,61,100 in 2021-22, and no spending on new laboratory equipment in 2023-24, after Rs 8,12,880 in 2022-23 and Rs 16,57,890 in 2021-22. On access for disabled students, the same filing answers yes to wheelchairs and inter-building transport, and puts ramps or lifts, and purpose-built toilets, in the band covering more than 80% of the buildings.

The central library serves the whole university. It counts 1,17,624 volumes across the central and school libraries, 58,430 printed books in the central library, 831 print journals and a digital library of 50 computers, with CeRA agricultural e-resources and Krishikosh access, though the subjects it names for that collection run from agricultural sciences and engineering to management and biotechnology without mentioning pharmacy. The department page is no better guide to pharmacy laboratories: its lab facilities heading lists a crop production lab and a crop physiology lab.

Hostel rooms are priced per year, and the gap between the cheapest and dearest bed is wide.

Food is extra. Both hostels run mess halls charging tentatively Rs. 3500 a month for vegetarian and Rs. 4000 for non-vegetarian food, with a Rs. 3,000 mess deposit and a Rs. 5,000 hostel security deposit. The women's side also keeps limited seats in an OBC hostel for students from OBC backgrounds, allotted strictly on merit.

The department is staffed by 22 teachers, and the department's list and the ranking return agree on that number. Pharmaceutical Sciences names two professors, five associate professors and the rest as assistant professors, headed by Prof. (Dr.) Amita Verma, and the return records 22 faculty members.

Doctoral work is where the department is busiest. The return counts 44 full-time Ph.D. students on the rolls; the doctorates awarded numbered 7 in 2023-24 and 3 apiece in 2022-23 and 2021-22. Sponsored research brought in Rs 71,77,000 from 2 projects in 2023-24, against Rs 13,71,000 from one project in 2022-23, and consultancy earned nothing in any of the three years.

Doctoral output and project funding are the kind of work the ranking's research parameter rewards, which fits the steady rise in that score. For a B.Pharm applicant the practical question is how much teaching time reaches undergraduates when 22 teachers carry 232 B.Pharm students, 15 M.Pharm students and 44 doctoral candidates between them.

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