The MICA aspirant's Guide to the Galaxy - II

Today we take a look into what MICA is about - its Positioning, Strengths & Weaknesses, and the million-rupee question: Placements.

MICA is NOT an Advertising school (we never get tired of saying this).
If you wanted to study marketing, MICA would be an interesting case study. It started off as a advetising & media school in the early 90s. By the late 90s MICA was supplying the industry with Account Planners, Media Planners & Market Research Managers. Over the last four years, MICA has made an attempt to reposition itself more than once. A stream called "Brand Management" was started in 2001. This was created to help MICA break into the big league of B-Schools. Some time back, another repositioning exercise took place, and now MICA is supposed to be a C-School. MICA produces managers of communication for any industry. It might appear as if we're contendors for a responsibility that doesn't exist in most companies. If you look closer, you'll see that it's an emerging area.

The course combines both communications and management subjects and produces managers for the business of communications. Here are some of the subjects that I learnt in the two years.

Management (pfaff:sense ratio in brackets)
Brand Management (70:30)
Marketing Management (20:80)
Corporate Venturing and Entrepreneurship (30:70)
Business Ethics (99:1)
Indian Business Environment - Macroeconomics (1:99)
Principles of Management (80:20)
Organizational Dynamics (90:10)
Introduction to Accounting (0:100)
Basic Business Finance (0:100)
Managerial Economics (10:90)
Strategic Management (60:40)
Consumer behaviour (40:60)
Strategic Marketing (20:80)
Sales Promotion (30:70)
Research Methodology (40:60)

Communications
Introduction to Communication (30:70)
Culture and Communication (25:75)
Advertising Management (70:30)
Mass Media in India (0:100)
Introduction to Media Planning (0:100)
Integrated Marketing (100:0)
Public Relations (90:10)
Event Management (90: 10)
Semiotics (debatable)
Film Studies (NA)

The concentrations (in brackets are the main subjects) in year two:

• Brand Management (Product Management, Return on Marketing Investment, International Marketing, Brand Management Seminar, Communication management of financial management)
• Media Management (Ad sales, Strategic Media Planning, Media Research, Media Software, Media Buying/Auditing/Negotiations)
• Account Planning (Agency Management, Live projects from agencies on real-time account planning & research - JWT, McCann, Euro RSCG)
• Marketing Research (Data Analytics & Modeling, Advanced Qual & Quant Research, Applied areas in MR)

Most MICAns from the PGPCM rank high on soft-skills, professionalism & detailing - and yes, we do think out-of-the-box (argh). The course has very little Quant focus (good math skills are restricted to folks who have an inclination towards it.

There's a fair mix of engineers and grads of BCom, BBA, BMS, BMM & BSc. Around 70% of the batch are fresh grads.

The Placement Scene: As Prof. Panda would say... Coming Soon.