Hyper Island is actually pretty neat. They have schools in Karlskrona and Stockholm, the school is only 15 years old and their look on new media is as fresh as it can be. They have a unique way of teaching (if I even may use that word) and you work and learn in buildings you thought you would’ve never work and learn in. Putting all this together makes Hyper Island the place to be for new media lovers, and internet addicts. The problem is: you have to get in…
Just to give an impression, the roadmap to enter Hyper Island:
- Write the best motivation you have ever written!
- Collect all of your best work, and make the most wonderful portfolio you’ve ever designed!
- Call UPS and make them deliver your motivation and portfolio asap!
- Drive yourself nuts while you wait for your admission for a recruitment day…
- Go to Stockholm for the recruitment day without the admission…
- Call Hyper Island from your hotel room and ask if you are admitted…
- Wait a little longer…
- Get your admission and do the first victory dance!
- Go to the recruitment day, do the hardest interviews and tests you’ve ever done, and meet the most interesting people…
- Say goodbye the Stockholm and hope you’ll come back sooner than expected.
- Have the most horrible weeks of your life while you wait for your final admission at Hyper Island…
- Do your second and biggest victory dance ever when your get a mail that starts with “Welcome to Hyper Island!”
I’m at step 10 now, and I must say: the recruitment day was a unique experience.
It consists of a personal interview, a language test, an individual creative test and a group creative test. The interview was the hardest I have ever done, really difficult questions, hardly any reaction from the people of Hyper… But I didn’t mind, a rather liked it. I made me realize Hyper is really critical and only choses the best.
The individual creative test wasn’t easy either. You had one hour to come up with a complete solution for a new media problem. I had tons of ideas, the problems was: which of my ideas was the one they were looking for. They give you a problem where you have to choose between finding a simple one-case solution, or look at it bigger, and re-invent a part of the media-usage.
And the creative test in group was the most exciting one. This was the schedule:
- Look at the material you get, and think of the possibilities, but don’t talk (5 minutes)
- Discuss what you will do as a group, but don’t start yet, only think (15 minutes)
- Bring your idea to life, work it out, but don’t talk, just do (10 minutes)
It was pretty stressful. We came in the room, and on the floor lay some objects: some paper clips, some white sheets of paper, some blue placemats, some paper plates, and 12 cards with Roman numbers on it. The strange thing was, all number from 1 to 12 where there. Only the 3 and 8 were missing, and we had the 2 and 11 double. So the first five minutes, we looked cluelessly to the objects, try to figure out what Hyper Island wanted us to do. We started to discuss what we were going to do, no real ideas came out. But in the end, Filip came up with the idea to make a world-map. We made continents from the plates, attached the placemats to each other, and placed pins on the map to indicate where we all came from. The result you can see in the picture below. Perhaps it looks a bit crappy, but you can see that it’s a map (I hope). So we were pretty confident about the result. Especially since the idea came out so late, but we all understood it and grabbed it. The last 10 minutes were really intense. Everybody worked together to finish the map, without a planning or dividing tasks. Afterwards we discussed the result, which was very interesting. We all gave good feedback to each other, which I enjoyed.
After the creative task in group, the day was over. We got a last presentation by some Hyper Students, who gave us a good idea of the projects you get during the year, and how much experience you’ll gain. If you love the digital media industry, you knew Hyper Island was the place to be after the presentation. It totally convinced me.
The whole recruitment day was already a great experience. But now comes the hardest part: wait for an answer. In two weeks I should now, so cross your fingers 
