life at smi (now)

Srishti does not have a set curriculum. during the first year, students are assigned classes at random. it is called the foundation year and the goal of it is to teach students the basic skills required of a design student. from the second year onwards students are allowed to pick their own classes. curriculum of a certain class is not revealed to the student until they attend the class. there class list comes with breifs about the classes and that is what the choices are made based off of. There are two 'exams' in a year at the end of each semester.

For our batch it is about 7 lakh in total including a travel fee of 40k that the institution takes for field trips yearly that is returnable upon graduation. The batches after the 2026 batch have a higher fee of about 10 lakh.

there are a lot fests organised by Manipal now that we are a part of them, but srishti's events are managed by student led clubs. there are about five to six events per year and some of them are paid depending on the size of the event and the area in which it is taking place. there are quite a few clubs that are very active in srishti, two of the biggest being scatter one and mujo, which are the dance and event management clubs respectively. both of these clubs are quite demanding and require a lot of time from students. students that are part of these clubs usually have social circles within them. on campus there is a football ground, a basketball court, a tennis court, and a running track. all these are free for all to use. the gym and other amenities can only be used by those with a membership which students have to pay extra for. the institution partners with CSE which is close by for extracurricular activities. students can pick extracurricular activities such as swimming etc

i did not apply to a lot of colleges other than srishti. i had applied to three other colleges, isdi, woxen, symbiosis. i got into both isdi and woxen and was waitlisted at symbiosis. my first preference was srishti and therefore the choice was very simple to make. due to covid the entrance test was online. we were asked to go through some material before the exam and told that we would be asked questions about that context in the exam. we were given almost the entire day for the paper; from morning to afternoon we were allowed to work on it how ever we saw fit. UCEED scores were also taken into consideration. The entrance test was very different from the others and i felt that it reflected a design process and assessed what a designer needs more accurately than other exams. i enjoyed the test itself and did not feel like i was being asked about things i didn't have knowledge about.

faculty to student ratio is usually 1:25. most faculty are very approachable, especially as they speak to students casually and the students are required to refer to the faculty by their first names. faculty have great work and are very good at what they do. There are no exams per say, we have what is called a performance of understanding. we are given a large assignment and a week and a half to finish it within college hours. after the assignment is submitted, we have a jury with two or three faculty, during which they try to understand our work and our thought process better.