The new satellite townships of Delhi are not known for planning real large/huge city-parks. Most of the energy is gone towards planning the residential apartments, commercial complexes and then whatever little space is left, small parks get thrown in. There is one right in front of my house but its not really a city park, something which is usually very big and have different areas for walking, playing, recreation etc. So when we came to know about Swarna Jayanti Park, we decided to make a visit.

Location – Here’s google map. Its interactive and you can open it in a new window and search a way from your home/office.

View Swarna Jayanti Park in a larger map

The one called ‘GDA Park’ in the map is the one I mentioned above as something which is right next to my house.
Continue reading →

This is a simple list of the website of some of the well known schools of Noida. To keep it simple, I am not adding any more info and the list is arranged alphabetically.

. Amity International School – http://amity.edu/ais
. Apeejay School. http://www.apeejay.edu/noida/home.htm
. Cambridge School – www.cambridgenoida.com
. Delhi Public School – http://dpsnoida.org/
. Father Agnel School – www.fasnoida.org
. Khaitan Public School – http://www.kpsnoida.ac.in/
. Lotus Valley School. www.lotusvalley.com
. Mayoor School – www.mayoornoida.net
. Vishwa Bharti Public School – http://vbpsnoida.com

If I am missing any good one and you would like me to add it then please write a small comment and I would update the post. Hope its useful for some of us.

Somerville is one of the better schools of Noida. It doesn’t feature among big brothers (DPS, Amity, ApeeJay) or among new-age modern-thinking swanky ones (Mayoor, Lotus Valley, Step-By-Step etc) but is a decent school.

Location – Its in Sector 22, not the best of locations since its just next to ‘Chauda Village’ and there is a ‘liquor shop’ right at the gate, but thats fine.

The forms were out in early september and were available for a week. I think it was first week of September. They only allow Noida residents and all communication happens through courier.

Admission Process
1. Apply if you meet the age criteria. You need to be a resident of Noida, preferably a close-by sector.
2. In first round, they shortlist some of the cases (we dont know the criteria and it would be anyone’s guess) and send a letter through courier. For this year, they used DTDC so please ensure that you keep a tab on that.
3. In 2nd round, you interact with a very senior person. In our case, it was the Principal herself. She asked on
- how do we get time
- what stories she likes
- why Somerville

For the kid, they had some plastic fruits and animals. They call out names and the kid is to identify the animals and fruits. Non-torturous and pretty good for Kids. 3-4 minute interaction at max.

We were called on Sep 25 and successful candidates would get the letter via courier by next week. I would try to find from DTDC on whether they have started dispatching.

I would update on what I get.

Amity is not very old and for a long time it was perceived as a rich man’s school but over time that has been changing. Right now its considered as one of the better schools and probably a infrastructure which very few can challenge.

Location of School – Sec 44. This is almost on the South-West corner of Noida. Very apt for Sec 37, 28,29, 39,44, 41 etc. Also good for Sarita Vihar and Greater noida since its right on express-way.

Age – Born between 1st April 2005 – 31st March 2006 (This is for admission seekers in 2008)

Location Criteria – They only allow Noida and Gr. Noida since there is a Amity in Vasundhara (for Vaishali, Vasundhara and Indirapuram residents) and one in Mayoor Vihar.

Dates - For this year, the last date for submitting online was Sep 7 2008.

Website - http://amity.edu/aisadmission/

Admission Process

1. Round 1

Round 1 has two parts. They call all the parents and kids for interaction. For parents there is a 11 page extensive question paper. Its very time-consuming and you would need to really focus and work hard.

If I remember correctly then there were five sections.
1. There are about 5-6 questions around school/office details for parents and grand-parents, annual income, whether the children has any visual/hearing or other disability etc. The other questions were

- Why you think your child is ready for school
- Whats your expectations from Amity
- Why Amity
- Describe your child.

2. Part two questions
- How do you bridge work/home gap ?
- something around communication. Why its important and how do you encourage your kid to communicate ?
- how do you tackle a restless child.
- how to ensure that your child is not aggressive and impatient
- how do you handle ‘defiance’
- What skills are needed to make your kid good during his/her nursery class
- what are your child’s expectation from you
- Something around setting high-standard and whether thats good or bad
- how do you handle morning scene where you had to say bye to your child

3. Part 3 questions
- If your child misses school bus
- homework not done
- bully in bus
- loses his bag or tiffin-box
- scolding
- Are dads different than moms
- if kid gets his friend’s stuff (by mistake)

4. It was a short section and I think it had 4-5 questions. One was subjective and rest were objective/multiple-choice

5. This section was also mostly tick mark kinds
- a truth/myth section where there were thins which you had to mark either as ‘Truth’ or as ‘Myth’. Some examples are ‘working mothers are not good’, ‘children should be given enough money’ and all that.

As for the the kid.

They take the kid to a different room and they are asked to color and probably a poem. Whenever I asked my daughter on what she was asked, she very intelligently distracts me. I have a guess that she didn’t like whatever she was asked there. She is otherwise a very cheerful and talk-loving girl.

The results would be out on Sep 18 on the website.

Amity results are out.
http://www.amity.edu/aisadmission/index.aspx

My kid made it, All the best.

2nd Round details
It happened today morning. Very well managed. We were met by two very senior people. My kid was taken to a table nearby where I think they asked her that , what do you call a dog’s kid, and some other things.

Most of the conversation happened with my spouse. They asked her the name of the principal of her school (probably they knew the principal). Both of us work so they asked on how do we manage time. Since my spouse is with Media, they asked here that how watching too much of cartoons affect a child. Pretty in-formal and relaxed.

One of my friend was also there and as his husband did some analysis on the number of kid’s who were called for Round 2 and the availability of seats. It seems that they called 900 odd people and they have 650 odd seats so assuming that there is a lot of overlap and some people might choose other schools (like DPS Noida), the chances of us making in are more.

The results would be out on Sep’24, two more days of anxiety.

Update on 27th Sep
——————-
Sorry, we flunked. Now when we reverse-engineer the whole thing, I think being a nuclear-family + both-working thing worked against us. Anyway, no worries. We are still trying to influence upon our way since its a good school.

I would try to write a post on ‘how to crack this thing’ later. So far I have been to Somerville, Cambridge, ApeeJay, Indus Valley and Vishwa Bharti. Tomorrow it would be Khaitan and then we go to “Father Agnel” and “Ryan” in 2nd week of October.