The Times of India recently reported that the CBSE board has signed MoUs with filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International to teach film and media studies and with Rolta India for geospatial technologies. Both the courses will be taught at Class XI and XII level. Apparently, only a handful of schools have introduced these courses.

Rolta India Ltd will provide assistance in various technical aspects, including teachers’ training and availability of the software for the GT course. The course in mass media, is intended to cover five principal areas — film, TV, print, radio and the internet.

This week, CBSE will sign another MoU with tourism ministry to introduce course on tourism in Class XI-XII. All courses can either be taken as a vocational subject or as an academic subject.

So why may this be particularly interesting to you if you are planning to study abroad? Universities in the US operate a holistic admissions process and focus on understanding an applicants interest beyond the traditional class room subjects. Well, if you are trying to show them that you have developed a set of interest other than purely academic subjects, taking the course in film and media studies could be one way of doing so.