Hey aspirant,

There are certain differences between autonomous colleges and non-autonomous colleges. Firstly, Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology (NMIT) is an autonomous institute but under VTU, which means degree is awarded by VTU itself, whereas institutes like Manipal Institute of Technology is a fully autonomous college and they award their own degree.

Now, the advantage with autonomous colleges like NMIT is that they have the freedom to regularly update the curriculum based on industry needs, unlike non-autonomous colleges affliated to VTU, which takes significantly more time for changes in curriculum. They can also conduct their own exams and also offer generous summer vacation holidays (in case that matters to you). In case of non-autonomous colleges, students have to write exams conducted by VTU, the results can often be slow and paper re-correction is often a mess.

If you go with NIRF rankings for 2020, NMIT has bagged the 128th position, while SMVIT finds itself in the 251-300 rank nationwide. So cutoff isn't necessarily an indication of which college is better, maybe the institution wants students with better ranks while NMIT is a bit more flexible with it.