NID to conduct aptitude test for design schools in India

Ahmedabad, Mar 10 (UNI) Even as the National Institute of Design (NID) here has increased its intake capacity from 60 to 75 in its under-graduate (UG) courses from June 2006, it has decided to conduct a Design Aptitude Test (DAT) for other D-schools in the country too.

Briefing newspersons here today, NID Executive Director Darlie O Koshi said the Inter-Ministerial Committee, at its meeting in New Delhi yesterday, approved, among other things, increasing the students' intake capacity for UG as well as Post-Graduate (PG) courses.

He said, earlier the Governing Council of NID, with Dr Ajay Dua as its chairman, had approved increasing the UG capacity from 60 to 75 from the year 2006-07 and to 90 from the year 2007-08. Similarly, the PG capacity will be raised from 165 to 175 from the year 2006-07.

''Since the interviews are scheduled to begin in April,'' he said, ''we are inviting about 180 shortlisted candidates for 75 UG seats and 400 for 175 PG seats for the next academic session beginning June this year.'' Talking about the proposed DAT, Dr Koshi said, ''We are already conducting internal written aptitude test at 16 centres across the country for admission to NID courses. Over 3,000 students will write the NID test.'' ''Meanwhile, we have received requests from several D-schools in the country to share the NID's internal aptitude test score-card, which is not possible in the present format and arrangements. That is why we have decided to formally extend the scope of this internal test into a national-level Design Aptitude Test (DAT),'' he added.

''As against the 40-odd D-Schools in the country, we have invited representatives of 20 D-Schools to attend the DAT's first meeting here on April 7-8, 2006 to decide on how to go about it,'' he said.

DAT would be more or less on the lines of written Common Admission Test (CAT), jointly conducted by six Indian Institutes of Managements (IIMs). The CAT score becomes the basis for calling candidates for Group Discussion (GD) and Personal Interviews (PIs) by 75-odd B-schools in the country, besides IIMs, for admission to respective institutes.

Dr Koshi informed that its second campus outside Ahmedabad will be inaugurated at Bangalore on March 31.

He said the new campus at Bangalore, touted as India's first Design Research Centre, with a built-up area of 4.186 sq m and equipped with four state-of-the-art laboratories, has been completed at a cost of Rs 5.16 crore.

The Centre would cater mainly to the post-Masters and doctoral research, to meet the needs of industrial design in the country. A number of corporate houses, like Titan and Infosys, have already shown their interest by way of starting the academic chairs or seeking consultancy.

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