Vital Statistics

• WHAT IS IT? A B-school exclusively for women. • WHO’S THE BOSS? Dr S. Ramesh is the dean. • HOW CHEAP IS IT? The fees are Rs 20,000 per semester. There are two semesters each year • HOW ABOUT JOBS? There is a placement cell which handles both summer and eventual campus recruitment. • WHERE TO STAY? MCIM does not have a hostel. But PG accommodation has mushroomed all around the institute. • WHERE IS IT? MCIM, No 58, Palace Road, Vasant Nagar, Bangalore-52. Phone: 080-22261487. Website: www.mountcarmelinstitute.com

The Mount Carmel Institute of Management (MCIM), Bangalore, looks like a country cousin of its big brother, Mount Carmel College which stands across the road in Vasant Nagar. On one side of the road is the sprawling Mount Carmel campus while MCIM is housed in a single double-storeyed building opposite it.

But size doesn?t matter. The brand value that Mount Carmel enjoys in Bangalore gets MCIM all the attention it requires. Established in 1987, MCIM touts itself as one of those rare breed of management institutes ? one that is meant exclusively for women. The institute claims that its mission is empowering women through education.

MCIM is an autonomous institute approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). It offers a two-year postgraduate diploma course in business administration during the day and various postgraduate programmes and short-term programmes in the evening.

The short-term courses include one-year PG and six-month programmes in business administration, human resource management and public relations management. There are also short-term certificate courses in personality development, econometrics, legal literacy, PR and corporate communications.

The admission process is on the lines of the Common Admission Test. Women with a bachelors degree in any discipline, with an aggregate of 50 per cent marks can apply for the PG diploma course. The first step is the XLRI Admission Test (XAT), followed by a group discussion and interview. ?Weightage is given to graduation results. The selection process is a healthy mix of past academic performance and the entrance test results,? says Pallavi, an MBA student. About 10 per cent seats are reserved for corporate-sponsored candidates.

The faculty includes both resident and visiting teachers. Professionals are invited from the industry to give lectures so that the students get a taste of the real time work requirements. ?The idea is to make classes more practical than theoretical,? says MCIM dean Dr S. Ramesh.

Students second the concept. ?A practising chartered accountant was called in to speak on taxation. He got us in tune with all the latest changes that have happened in the field,? says Smitha Manjunathan, a final year student.

The business administration programme has four semesters spread over two years. The USP of the course is that it allows students a double specialisation in the final year. A student is required to choose two elective groups ? one in the third semester and another in the fourth. ?We even get to do two projects. This gives us more exposure to the industry,? says Pallavi.

Subjects for specialisation include marketing, finance, human resources, management information systems, banking and insurance, PR, mass media and communication.

MCIM claims to have an excellent placement record. ?Our students have been hired by American Express, HSBC, Richard Ellis, Smithkline Beecham, Standard Chartered, IBM and Wipro,? says Ramesh. Placements are managed by a cell, headed by a placement officer, who is assisted by a placement committee which comprises both faculty and students.

Extra-curricular activities are high on the priority list of MCIM. The institute organises an annual national-level fest Diakrisi, where students of different B-schools come together to exhibit their management skills. The students are also involved in Pragati, a Community Development Project (CDP) which in fact is part of the curriculum.

The CDP focuses on community consciousness and village development and adopts a village every year. ?This programme brings students in contact with rural India,? says an institute official. Last but not the least, all students are required to be a part of any one in-house committee ? PR, the institute journal, alumni association or the placement committee.

VARUNA VERMA

Old memories

Brinda Gopal Rao, senior support engineer, Oracle Software, looks back on MCIM

MCIM haS HIGH brand-value in Bangalore. This is one of the main reasons I joined the institute. It was a good decision. The rigorous two-year PG diploma course in business administration trained me well to take on working life.
We often had to put in long hours. Classes would start at eight in the morning and go on till 4.30 in the afternoon. Towards the end of the year, we often had classes till 7 or 8 pm. Yoga classes were a part of our curriculum. The idea was to alleviate the stress of long working hours through yoga therapy. It’s one habit that has stuck. I use yoga to beat stress even today.
The two things that I liked best about the institute was the dual specialisation it offered and the regular lectures by industry professionals. Classes were never mere theory. The industry people would pepper their lectures with real-time case studies. The course never became a dreary sequence of theory-based classes.
Besides the regular course curriculum, we were also taught how to brush up our communication skills. This helped me become a better professional.

As told to Varuna Verma