MICAT (1) 2018 Analysis

Endeavor Careers Posted on December 1, 2018

MICAT 1 for admissions to MICA’s PGDM-C programme for the year 2019 was conducted on 1^st December 2018.

There was a slight change in paper-pattern – the number of questions in psychometric test were reduced to 27 this year from 36 last year.

MICAT 1 Pattern
Parts	Section(s)	Number of Questions	Duration
Part 1	Psychometric	27	25 minutes
Part 2	Descriptive Test (DT)	4	35 minutes
Part 3	Verbal Ability (VA)	25	1 hour and 45 minutes
	Quantitative Ability (QA)	25
	General Awareness (GA)	25
	Divergent-Convergent Thinking (DCT)	30

The sectional, in depth analysis is as follows:

Part 1 Psychometric Test:

Unlike last year wherein there were 36 questions in Psychometric test, this year the number of questions in this section were reduced to 27, to be answered within 25 mins.

At the start of the psychometric test a list of 30 statements that indicated Human traits was given. For example:

I like to help people.
I like to resolve conflicts in my own unique way.
I like to go out with my friends.
I like reading

Students were supposed to select any 10 out of these 30 statements and then they had to arrange them in order of priority.

The remaining questions in this part can be classified into 2 types which were present in last year’s paper as well. In fact, some questions in this part were also a repeat from last year’s paper:

The first type of questions contained two contradictory statements, say for example:

Will you consider other person’s opinion while taking a decision or You will just listen to his opinion and do what you want to do.

1.When you have time do you prefer listening to music at home or

2. Do you go out and play a sport.

And for these contradictory statements there were six grades namely:

Agree Very Strongly
Agree Moderately
Agree Strongly
Disagree Very Strongly
Disagree Moderately
Disagree very strongly

The second type questions were open ended statements. These statements were followed by six traits. A student had to rate them from 1 to 6 according to his/her preference. 1 being the most important and 6 being the least important. One example of such question is given below:

What kind of job would you prefer? Followed by six traits like:

One which is high paying, but provides less recognition.
One that is Goal Oriented
One that does not give you enough time to spend with family and so on….

Part 2 Descriptive test:

This part, can be further divided into 2 parts of which the first was “Argument or Opinion Writing” The topic this year was “Equality is a Myth”

This was followed by 3 questions, where in first question asked the students to present 3 points in favour of the topic and 2nd question asked the students to present 3 points against the topic.

For the third question – Students had write down 3 points suggesting the ways in which the World as it is today can be made more equal.

The second part of the Descriptive test was “Creative Writing” in which the students had to connect 4 pictures, write a story and mention the sequence in which the pictures are used in the story. The four pictures were of:

A Parking Plot full of Vintage or old cars
Red Blood Cells
A Tree with dried leaves in front of a wall
The magnifying glass emoji.

A Total of 35 minutes were given to attempt the entire Section of Descriptive writing. Also, the fact that MICA like last year asked to students to write 3 arguments instead of 5 arguments meant that students had enough time to properly attempt all 4 questions.

Part 3 Aptitude test:

This part had 105 questions and the time given for the same was 1 hour 45 mins.

The part can be further broken down into 4 sections namely:

Section 1: Divergent and Convergent Thinking:

This section had a total of 30 questions which included 10 questions on Word Associations, 6-7 questions on statement assumption, 6-7 on sufficient/insufficient arguments and 7 on Visual Reasoning. One change that was evident was that the number of questions in Word Associations were reduced to 10 this year from 15 last year and proportionate increase in all other question types. All in all, someone who would have given time to this section would have been able to crack 22 to 24 questions in this section. Hence, the section can be rated as Easy.

Section 2: Verbal Ability

This section had 25 question which included 5 questions on RC. There were around 2 questions of the type wherein the underlined phrase of the sentence had to be replaced by a single word from the given options. There were around 6 Fill In the Blanks questions of which 3 were based on prepositions and 3 on Idioms and phrases. Apart from these there were around 5 questions on parajumbles and 2-3 questions on grammar. 2-3 questions on Logical continuation and complete omission of direct vocabulary based questions would have surprised some students.

All in all in verbal, someone who has trained for MBA Entrance Exams, would be able to crack around 15 to 17 questions out of 25. Hence, the section can be rated as Moderate.

Section 3: Quant and Data Interpretation

This section had 25 questions of which around 5 questions were based on Percentage and Profit & Loss, 4 questions were based on Ratio and Proportion. This was surprising because MICAT has been known to ask questions that are spread across different topics. Apart from these there were around 2 questions on Set-theory and Time, Speed and Distance. Around 1 question on Probability, Inequality and Permutation and combination. Apart from these there were 7 questions of Data Interpretation spread across 2 sets. Unlike last year, wherein there were 6 questions on geometry, this year no questions of geometry was asked. The difficulty level of this section was lower than that of last year.

So someone who is trained in MBA Entrance Exams would be able to crack around 20 to 22 questions in this section. Hence, the section can be rated as Easy.

Section 4: General Knowledge

This section also had 25 questions, of which surprisingly only 2-3 questions were based on brands, taglines and advertising. Of the rest there were around 5-7 questions on current affairs and remaining were based on static GK. In all there were more questions based on static GK than on current affairs.

A well-read student will be able to crack around 12 to 14 questions in this section. Hence, the section can be rated as Moderate.

Overall, for Aptitude Test with 105 questions to be addressed in 1 hour 45 mins, a potential safe score could be somewhere around 52 to 55 marks.

View MICAT 2019 Analysis Below:

https://endeavorcareers.commicat-2019-exam-analysis/