How is it that IIIT Bangalore has much better placements than the CSE department of most of the top 10 NITs and still the cutoff is 8500? I mean it has a median salary of 15.9LPA then why so?

First, let us discuss some reasons for the high placement records of IIIT Bangalore CSE department-

1. IIIT Bangalore does not believe in the system of mugging before an exam and filling out the answer sheets.
2. The curriculum is updated every few years, and assignments and projects are an important part of all courses.
3. Unlike the NITs, IIITB won’t make you study irrelevant subjects in your first year. You’ll study only the subjects relevant to your CSE degree from the beginning itself.
4. You’ll learn basic CS in the first few semesters. The rest of the semesters will be utilized in teaching you advanced topics like ML, AI, CV, NLP, etc.

Now the reasons for low cutoffs, despite high placements are-

1. It is a public-private co-owned college. This is why its fees are much higher in comparison to NITs. 
2. The admissions are completely merit-based. This increases the availability of seats. 
3. There can be a huge rank difference between the second last admission, and the last admission. So one should not judge the merit of a college based on its cutoff ranks.
4. IIITs are comparatively new in this race. Even then, they are growing at a tremendous speed. 
5. IIITB offers limited courses. It offers iM.Tech instead of B.Tech. 

These are the reasons why iM.Tech CSE cutoffs are so low at IIIT Bangalore, while their placement records are better than even top NITs.