Madras Christian College BBA Review By Renu Sharma

If your whole aim is to develop academically, then MCC is not the one for you. In other words, MCC will build your personality overall. The college is adamant about having many co-curricular activities as they give their students maximum chance to showcase all their talent. The college has a large crowd, and once you perform for them, you will get confidence automatically. MCC has had a strict stance on that even if somebody performs poorly; no one is allowed to mock them. The college management is poor though, as many people from management can’t speak in English, and they don’t care whether you are from a northern state or what, they will only speak in Tamil. This is what baffled me, as learning Tamil in a short time is impossible. Even for admissions, I had to wait in scorching with my parents. I came so far as I heard many things about MCC, but from what I saw, things have changed here.

Academics were strong, but attendance wasn’t. 60% attendance was said as compulsory, but all three years, I had close to 50, but the college was ok with it. The curse of education has hot so badly that BBA is no more a course that guarantees placements. Case studies of higher-level were given, which helped a lot while doing PGDM. The college has done well in academics but can do a lot more in this regard. The fight for the best was always on as the one who comes first was rewarded heavily.

Faculty always believe in spoon-feeding as they would hand over question papers, and 80% of the questions will come from that. Thus, scoring over 60% was relatively easy at MCC. BBA had maths in the first year, which was weird, but the faculty made us learn proofs and theorems. I have never told this to anyone, but it’s ok now as I have left college three years back. Students were already sure of what was coming in the exam as faculty made it quite easy for the students of MCC.

Some start-ups and some banks knocked on the doors for BBA students. It was delightful as we were never promised placements, but the college’s placement cell still asked us to show our interest. Many students showed interest, but only a few had the opportunity to see themselves getting placed in banks like ABN Amro and Standard Chartered. BBA is not a niche course, and therefore placements will always be a challenge, be it MCC or any other college. Even the best of BBA colleges like NM and Symbiosis doesn’t have that great placement for BBA course. So, placements weren’t a worry for me as I never expected to get placed directly from the college after doing BBA.

Six halls in the campus had resident facilities. For the first year, I stayed at Margaret Hall, and for the next two years, we were shifted to the newly constructed Barnes Hall. The halls were amazing as Barnes Hall had 20 rooms, and 60 girls stayed in one hall. Each hall had their own mess, but the mess fees were extra. The mess bills were rocketing months after months and the kind of food that was provided at the mess was not worth the money that I paid. Didn’t had a choice, though, as the curfew time was 7.30 pm. The college used to get over by 2 pm, and we could leave campus after that. However, we have to be back at our halls by 7.30 as 8 pm was the attendance time.

The college was vast but lacked in modern facilities like Wi-Fi, ECT-enabled classrooms, and bio-metrics for attendance. These are common facilities at almost all the colleges in India now. Though still living in the old days, MCC is made to sit on the rocks and click selfies. The college has a central library with over 100k books for sure. The reading hall was humongous as over 500 students could sit and study simultaneously. There’s an outdoor stadium and an indoor stadium. The sporting facilities include badminton, tennis, carom, table tennis and squash. Outdoor grounds were used for playing football and cricket. The college’s strength was high, but there was just one cafeteria on the entire campus. The area is vast, but the college hasn’t made optimum use of it.

If you are not for Tamil Nadu, make sure you have your reservations elsewhere. The language was always a problem as the hostel warden, even after knowing that I didn’t know Tamil would give instructions in Tamil. Not many northies come now as the college has lost its charm a bit. The college has events galore, and there’s no shortage of developing your personality as Chennai has produced some of the best talents in the country. The annual fest Deepwoods mostly had Tamil skits and dances as not many dances on Bollywood songs were allowed. Not many people knew Hindi, so they didn’t find them interesting or entertaining.