Just out of school, I noticed the serious dearth of genuine reviews about interviews and colleges and areas tested in various entrance test and the like.
So I thought I should share my experiences and maybe help somebody like me looking for information online.

The first entrance exam i gave was NID...I'm not going to comment on the written exam because the paper is available online on the NID website..but I'd say the pattern can change the next year.
Then I gave the entrance test for Srishti School of Design,Banglore.
Their exam was very interesting and again very well rounded.
The first question was to sketch a chair in a forest,the forest was printed on the answer sheet.Then the second question was to color an image according to a theme such as gloomy or happy etc. The image was sort of random and was in the answer sheet itself ,
to me it seemed like a village somewhere in the mountains.
The third question was very very interesting...
We were shown two images of Bharat Mata-pre and post independence era
and we were asked questions based on our interpretaion of the images.
The final forty minutes of the exam were devoted to English,Basic Math,logical reasoning, some puzzels and G.K.
the Gk paper had questions like who invented hot pants? what was the color of the pill Morpheus offered to Neo in the movie Matrix?...so it can get pretty random at times..The questions were all MCQs.


When I spoke to teachers and people around me who came from a design background I was told that even if someones sketching is not amazing or extraordinary ,a decent hand would do as they are not looking for artists but people with design sensibilities.
Yes this is true, the written exam did feel very rounded. But the interview, not so much.
These interviews are also portfolio reviews, so candidates usually line up with bag full of sketch work and paintings and sculptures and sound pieces and designs and what not, a person like me whose interest in design is only limited to filmmaking does feel intimidated in such a situation.
I had very little sketchwork, no paintings or sculputures or anything remotely artsy.
I did take along with me the shortfilms I had made ,the pictures I had clicked.
The panelists were happy with that ,I was able to answer whatever they asked confidently BUT they had a point to make:
I was told very clearly that i might have trouble in the foundation year as I dont sketch or come from a design background,so much so that i might feel like I'm a misfit here.My GPA might drop in the foundation year etc etc.
Well,they were very right.I do feel that as I do not have very good sketching abilities i might suffer.

This is true for all design institutes
NID,Srishti,MIT or Dj

Getting through the written exam is not too much of an issue but if you want to get through the interview and the portfolio review you need to have a very solid portfolio.They are not looking for only artists but artists with design sensibilities.Trust me there are a lot of good draftsmen around. So the competition is pretty tight.

The next entrance I gave was the symbiosis entrance test(SET).The written exam had Quantitative Aptitude(math),Basic English,G.K. and Logical reasoning.
I found myself struggling to keep up with time in the paper.I missed out on some Logical reasoning questions I knew, being the last section i did not have enough time to do all of them.
The answers need to be filled in an OMR sheet.one basically has to darken the option bubble infront of the question number.Sounds fairly simple but it just eats away the time.I found it very irritating.
So im just waiting for the Symbiosis results to come out.

I also applied at Amity.They conduct a small written english test on the day of the interview itself.Amity is not known to be very difficult and it is not.The interview panel did grill a couple of students but they were called too.

Apart from that I've applied for Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Jamia, and I will apply to other colleges in DU once the board results are out.

Surprisingly there is no concrete information about CATE(common admission test for english).Which are the colleges under the unbrella, What are the cutoffs, What are the sort of questions that might come in the paper? Nobody has a clue.Not even teachers teaching at DU.

I guess i'll stop about this here .
But i do have a lot to say about a lot of things politics,people,lives,movies..
so more should be up in the next post.
:)