Love at first sight: visiting MICA for GE/PI
April 9th, 2011
The day had finally arrived for which I had waited for so long. I had secured a call from MICA, an institute I had dreamt of getting in for years, after clearing their written test round called MICAT (MICA Admission Test). I had my GE and PI (group exercise and personal interviews) scheduled for this day. MICA does a GE instead of GD, which is a nice approach in my personal opinion. I have never found GDs serving much purpose.
I had arrived the previous evening flying-in from Bangalore. Some of us who had their interviews scheduled for the same date had formed a closed Facebook group and have been helping each other with the preparations for this day. This had made us friends as we had been chatting to each other every day for few months now. We all had the same goal and this proved to be a great way to prepare. We had also planned our stay and travel plans accordingly. It was quite soothing to know that there would be people whom we know to some extent, may be not in person but still, and people who believe in helping each other to get selected instead of making it a dirty cut-throat competition which I had witnessed at few other colleges earlier. I was also relatively calm because it wasn’t a desperate attempt to get into MBA for me. I had already secured a couple of final admissions at institutes like TAPMI, IMT-Ghaziabad, Symbiosis etc. and was waiting quite positively for TISS results. I was already at a happy place in my career and wasn’t going for MBA to get rid of my job. I wanted to get in because that’s how I had envisioned my career and I was headed in that direction. It’s important to get your reasons right, it makes a world of difference in your preparation and can be the make or break answer for your interview. Also, because it’s an important career and eventually becomes a major life decision.
It was a bright and pleasant Saturday morning. MICA had arranged buses to transport the aspirants from the gates of IIM-A, to-and-fro its campus. MICA is situated in the outskirts of Ahmedabad and reaching to its campus for the first time without any guidance could prove to be quite a daunting task. We appreciated that we didn’t have to do any of that and were thankful for the transport. Such small things make a difference when you’ve a big interview scheduled in a new city. So our Facebook friends’ group started our ride to MICA from IIM-A gates and it went rather smoothly mostly making small-talks to fellow aspirants. It took us about 50 minutes to reach the campus.
As we got down the bus, there was this little beautiful landscape (yes, I would call it that) spread around us in middle of nowhere. And yes, it really felt that romantic at that very moment. It was lush green, well manicured, very clean, well planned, quite and cosy. There were small red-bricks buildings giving lending it a rustic charm. It could very well serve like a film shooting location. We had a feel that we were in for something good.
We were served some morning tea and snacks in the academic block. After some initial documentation and formalities, we were divided in groups of 20 each. We were told that we would have both our GE and PI in that sequence only. I was in Group-1 for the day.
We were called in a Seminar Hall (which is basically a classroom at MICA). The Seminar Hall was an impressive class-room. It was a round structure. When we enter the room, there a counter and a semi-wall right in front of the entrance, which leads to both right and left sideways. There are some counters on that wall and also the controls for audio-visual facilities, projectors etc. On the opposite side, the wall serves as the writing board and is also used for projections. The walls were made of sound-proof material. The rooms were centrally air-cooled. There were huge Yamaha sound systems installed in each room. There were about 80 wooden-seats in 4 semi-circular rows in step-wise formation. It looked like a mini-parliament to put it simply. There were beautiful ethnic hand-paintings on the air-cooling vents below the ceiling. It looked quite beautiful.
There were 2 faculty members, 1 male and 1 female; and 1 supporting staff member in the room. A table was placed in the center of the room and there were some stationary items like chart-papers, colors, sketches, colorful wrapping papers, scissors, tapes, glue-sticks etc. spread on that table. We were intrigued about what was to come. The faculty members divided us in 2 sub-groups of 10 each and the task was to be performed by each group simultaneously. They explained us about what we needed to do, the rules of the game, the time-lines etc. It was the most interesting GE that I had witnessed so far in any college (and I had witnessed a few). We all had a lot of fun while doing it and made the final presentations. We were quite excited when we came out of the seminar hall. The day was just getting better with each passing minute.
To be continued….
