Interview and Insight

Went for an interview yesterday with the School of Communication Arts 2.0, self-described as London's top advertising school. Looking at the roll call of mentors, it certainly seems credible - 400 of them including Sir John Hegarty and a whole load of others from the top agencies. They pretty much guarantee getting you a placement at the end of the year, too.

Of course the problem is money - as a mature student it would probably cost about £25,000 including living costs and fees to complete the course, and the maximum Career Development Loan is £10,000. So I suspect that without scholarships it wouldn't be much of an option, but we'll see.

The interview itself went well I thought; we had to do a 4 minute presentation on 3 examples of our creativity in front of the other interviewees (5 of us in total) and some mentors. I managed to tie mine together with a loose theme (they were all in some way a failure), and got a few laughs.

Then we were split into groups of 2 or 3 to produce a response to a creative brief - a topical one about the rioting and clean up. I felt like our team had an overall concept worked out a little better but were perhaps a little conventional in our use of different media, whilst the other team were more innovative in terms of the individual elements, but perhaps displayed a less cohesive overall message.

During this task we were periodically taken aside for a brief chat with the mentors - we had Blair and Chris, a freelance creative partnership. Always hard to tell what they're thinking but there were no typical interview questions so I was never flanneling around for answers - it was more just a chat.

Obviously I hope I get in. But whether I do or not - or even if I do but can't afford it - it was just an inspiring day, surrounded by people passionate about ideas and visions, just kicking around ideas and appreciating each other's work. It's what I want to be doing every day.