An obscure turning with a small board saying ‘Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad’ leads you to a narrow road leading to MICA. The institute is so far removed from the humdrum of the city that students often call living there more of a ‘social experiment’ than a study course.

MICA is a specialized institute for ‘communication management’. This may be confusing to many aspirants who do not realize what communication management might entail. For many years, MICA has been considered as an advertising and media school. The name, Mudra Institute of Communications also makes it look more of a communication school than a business one. The news is, it is pretty much a business school with its flagship course in Communications Management. With that I mean at MICA you are taught the business side of communication and media. This is mainly media strategy, media planning, media buying, media selling, overall media management, brand and advertising management and market research. What connects everything is excellent marketing education and thus marketing is the foundation of mostly all courses here. Courses on finance and the likes are limited to what you might need, say for the pricing of your product or its delivery, which are thus, very basic.

If essentially a course for the ‘business’ side of communication, why is there so much stress on ‘creativity’ in an applicant? And doesn’t a graduate in marketing from other business schools become a brand manager too? “The stress on creativity is not so much on drawing and sketching as it is on ‘out of the box’ thinking”, says Deval Kartik, Professor at MICA. She gives a standard example to demonstrate the kind of ‘out of the box’ thinking or creativity expected from a MICA applicant through a problem of the placement of a heart oil advertisement on different TV channels. Ideally, the advertisement should be placed in a medical channel, because it is an oil to keep the heart healthy, however that will be a bad choice because not many women, who buy most of the household grocery would not watching it. Another place would be the family channels, but all the other competitors would also be putting their advertisements there. Reality shows should be a good place, because women are watching them. But again, which show and which channel. answer: ‘Sach Ka Samna’ on Star Plus. Why? because with the amount of stress you are under everyday, you are prone to a heart attack any time. Is it not a truth you should face?

To ensure the right student enter the institute (with of course the above mentioned creativity), MICA has an elaborate admission procedure spread across levels. The MICAT is the first of such levels. MICAT is held in the third week of February and is taken by candidates who clear the CAT cut off. It includes five sections, namely quantitative aptitude, awareness about advertising and brands, word association, a psychometric section and an essay writing section to check a candidate’s lateral thinking as well as writing skills. All five sections are compulsory and there is no negative marking in the test. After qualifying in MICAT, the candidate is invited to the MICA campus for a group exercise and an interview. The group excercise need not be a group discussion. The personal interview at MICA is taken by a panel of three people, who are all MICA faculty and they evaluate the candidate on the basis of a set of points. If the candidate secures high points on the scale of all the three faculty then he or she is given a spot offer. On the same time there are spot rejects as well. The spot offer means “we love you, we want you and we want to block you” according to Chandan Chatterjee, Dean, MICA. The interview is not a stress interview; the idea is not to reject but bring out the best in the candidate. In addition to the profile, attitude, learning and intent of the candidate also should match with that of MICA.

Students at MICA follow the cafeteria approach to the courses that they choose. Thus they are fully aware of every aspect of communication management and are also specialists in a single one. Due to the distribution of the number of credits, Chatterjee calls it “super specialty”. Hence, although, marketing majors from any good business school can become brand managers, students at MICA claim to have a better and deeper understanding of the brands, media and consumers due to their two year long focus on marketing and the design of their curriculum.

According to Chatterjee, the students “spend a lot of time inside the classes”. With approximately four to five lectures in a day, this might be true too. However, the academic rigor is not at its boiling point in MICA and the students do find their time to relax. The most popular hangout in the campus seems to be the ‘chota’, which looks like a village chaupal. The setting reminds one of the ‘Ganga Dhaba’ at JNU, with students chatting in small pockets and eating out of a small red brick canteen. There are other many places for the students to hang out and relax, the benches outside the hostels and the ‘recreation room’ for starters. The auto services outside the campus, available on phone allow easy commute to the city and thus students frequently visit the city for watching movies and eating out. Students exercise whatever options that deem fit to them, everything essentially being their decision.