MICAT 2019 Exam Analysis

MICAT 2019 is a Computer-based Test conducted by MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad) for selection of candidates for its PGDM-C batch. The test duration is that of 2 Hours and 45 minutes. This paper contains both Subjective and Objective Type of questions.

The selection process for PGDM-C 2019-21 was conducted twice – MICAT I (1st December 2018) and MICAT II (9th February 2019) for the batch commencing in June/July.

MICAT I was held on December 1, 2018. The paper was the same for everyone with questions in the same order, and the on-boarding process of the test was smooth. Students found the paper moderately difficult and there was no technical glitch in the paper.

MICAT II (MICAT 2019) was held on February 9, 2019. The overall difficulty level of the test was the same as that of MICAT I (MICAT 2018). The Verbal Ability section was also similar to MICAT I (MICAT 2018) in terms of difficulty.

Questions in MICAT 2019

MICAT 2019 Exam Analysis

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section – 1 (Psychometric Test)

• It comprised of 27 questions. In Psychometric Tests, there are no correct or incorrect responses.
• The first question had a list of 30 personal traits/characteristics. Students had to enter 10 characteristics to best describe their personalities. A text box was given at the bottom of the list. The instructions for the question stated that the 10 characteristics had to be entered separated by a comma. For example:  the student had to enter 2,4,6,11,15,21,24,25,28,29.
• In the second set, (Q2-217), there were 6 options for each question about a particular personality trait. Students has to select one option for each.
• The third set of questions, (Q18-Q27), students had to rank 6 actions/response sentences in order of decreasing importance.
• Some test takers were not able to complete the Psychometric Test while others mention the sequence of pictures in story writing with respect to the descriptive section.
• Most students were missed answers to in this section. They were also confused about answering questions in the same section. One student faced confusion about putting punctuation in between the option in the last bunch of questions where he had to rank options.
• Questions from General Knowledge centred around Radio Mirchi, Gulf Oil, Make My Trip while some of the questions were asked from Physics.

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section –2 A (Verbal Ability)

• This section was Easy.
• The section comprised of jumbled paragraphs, synonyms, double fill in the blanks, sentence errors, paragraph completion, idiom-based questions and a Reading Comprehension passage.
• Like MICAT I, there was only one RC Passage. The Passage was moderately difficult.
• In this section, 19-20 questions in about 25 minutes with around  80% accuracy would have been considered a good attempt.

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section –2 B (Quantitative Ability)

• The difficult level of this section varied from moderate to difficult.
• There were 25 questions in this section. 18 were from QA and 7 from DI.
• QA section was dominated by 7 Arithmetic questions followed by 3 questions each of  Modern Maths, Numbers and Algebra. Surprisingly, there were 3 questions on Inequalities and 2 on Geometry.
• Most questions were on an elementary level, but were time-consuming.

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section –2 C (General Awareness)

• The GK section has 25 questions. Out of 25, 17 questions were on National issues, 3 on international topics and 5 on miscellaneous topics. Also, 12 questions were of static type while 13 on Current Affairs. Overall, the section was of the same difficulty level as MICAT I.
• The questions were about business, government, politics, appointments, authors and awards.
• 9 questions can be classified as easy, 11 as medium and 5 as difficult.
• An attempt of 10-11 questions in 10 minutes with 80% accuracy would be decent.

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section –2 D (Divergent Convergent Reasoning)

• The Reasoning section combined 30 word-association, statement-assumption, data sufficiency and visual reasoning questions.
• The non-verbal reasoning questions varied from easy to moderate level of difficulty.
• 19-20 questions in 30 minutes with 80-85% accuracy would be a good attempt.

MICAT 2019 Analysis: Section – 3 (Descriptive Test)

• The total time given to attempt this section was 35 minutes.
• The topic for the first 3 questions was ‘Does social media presence leads to damage to reputation ’. First 2 questions carried 10 marks each. Students had to answer in ‘for’ or ‘against.’
• For the third question, students had to write a 300 word answer to ‘suggest steps to young professionals on enhancing one’s reputation on social media’.
• The fourth question carried 40 marks and comprised of four pictures. Students had to write down a particular pictorial combination (A-B-C-D or D-C-B-A or any such combination) and explain it with the help of a story. Pictures were related to ‘a design resembling eye glasses on a cloth, some berries, top-view of an office building complex with a couple of tennis courts, and a monster’.

MICAT Analysis

MICAT is the entrance exam through which a student can get admission in the course for a Post Graduate Diploma in Management Communications at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad for the year 2019-2021
The Sectional Breakup of the Test is as Follow:

This year the test provided a 1-minute break between the different Sections.
The candidates were not allowed to navigate between sections. The Psychometric and Descriptive tests carried no negative marking. In Section 3 each question carried 1 mark and attracted negative marks of 0.25 for each incorrect response.
In the previous years, the instruction before the Psychometric test used to inform the students that ‘the Psychometric test was a qualifier and any un-attempted questions would lead to a disqualification’. However, this year’s instructions stated that ‘No marks would be provided for any un-attempted question in the Psychometric test’

MICAT Analysis Part I: Psychometric Test

There was no negative marking for the psychometric test. It was compulsory to attempt all the questions in this part. There was a total of 27 questions in this section. Most of the questions were based on ranking your preferences. In the first questions, the students were provided with a list of 30 personal traits/characteristics. Students had to enter 10 characteristics that would best describe their personalities. In the next set of questions Q2- Q17, there were six options for each question about a particular personality trait. Students had to select any single option.  These questions asked one to choose from a set of two arguments and to rate them in accordance with one’s personality traits. In the third set of questions Q 18- Q 27, the students had to rank 6 actions/response sentences in the given question in an order of decreasing importance.

MICAT 1 Analysis Part II: Descriptive Test

The section comprised four questions.
The first three questions were based on the topic: 'Equality is MYTH'.
In the first question, the candidate was asked to state 3 arguments FOR the topic.
Similarly, in the second question, the candidate was asked to state 3 arguments AGAINST the topic. The third question asked the candidate to state 3 points that we can do to maintain equality in the world.
The fourth question was picture based story writing. The choice of the sequence of pictures was available to the candidate. The section essentially tested the creative thinking and writing ability of the candidates.
All the questions here were very easy for a prepared test taker.

MICAT 1 Analysis Part III:

For this part, the penalty for every incorrect answer was 25% of the marks allotted to the question. A candidate could navigate through the sections and the test was automatically submitted after the allotted time was over.

Divergent & Convergent Thinking

This section had 30 questions. The section had some easy questions as mentioned in the table below, but the overall difficulty level of the section was a little bit higher than the previous year’s paper as the section contained more questions based on data sufficiency. The topics from which the questions came were:
Statement-Assumption, Data Sufficiency, Missing Figure, Odd one out (Figures), Figures (Sequence), Word Associations

Verbal Ability

The Verbal Ability questions were moderate. This section had 25 questions. The Grammar concept tested was Prepositions. The vocabulary questions were of moderate LOD. The Reading Comprehension passage was an easy-read with 5 questions: 2 were fact-based, 2 were based on the main idea and 1 was on meaning. All the questions were easy.

Quantitative Ability

The section consisted of 25 questions. This section was the most difficult of all. The difficulty level this year was very much higher than the previous year’s. A good percentage of questions were from Arithmetic while there was no question on Geometry and Mensuration. Most of the questions were calculation intensive. Overall, an attempt of 10-12 questions in this section will be considered as a good attempt.

General Awareness

This section had 25 questions. The level of difficulty was higher than the previous year’s. This section this year missed familiar questions like, match the following: brand taglines and logos. A lot of questions were related to Banking & Finance.

MICAT Analysis

Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad conducted its Entrance Exam - MICAT 2- for admission to its 2 Year Post Graduate Diploma in Management Communications (2017-2019) on 12 February 2017. Just like last year, MICAT was conducted twice this year too. Students could have chosen either or both the exams.

During each section, the candidates were not allowed to navigate to any other section. Sections 1 and 3 carried no negative marking while wrong attempts in Section 2 would attract a subtraction of 0.25 marks.As per the selection process released by MICA this year,the Descriptive tests of only those candidates would be evaluated who qualify in the Psychometric test and clear the cut-off for Section 2.

MICAT 2 Analysis Part I: Descriptive Test

This section had four writing tasks pertaining to two questions. The questions were descriptive in nature. This section tested the critical and creative writing skills of the test-takers. The total time given for attempting the entire section was 35 minutes.
The first three writing tasks were based on the topic: 'Public opinion is vital for policy making". Firstly the student was to write three points IN FAVOUR of the topic. Then he/she were to write three points AGAINST the topic. These two tasks had a word limit of 250 words each and the screen didn't allow one to exceed the time limit. The third task asked the candidate to present his/her views in about 200 words in response to a request from a leading newspaper editor. This response could NOT BE NEUTRAL and a candidate was required to take a stance on the topic. As the topic is related to a burning issue in the global sphere, a serious candidate is expected to write coherently citing relevant examples. For example, Trump and Brexit will be two issues one could have cited to present one's stance effectively.
The last writing task was the story writing one which is a staple feature of MICAT. It had four images and test taker had to frame a story around the pictures and the pictures had to be sequenced as per the writer's storyline. You had to type in the sequence too. The pictures were inter-related and writing a story revolving around a mother-daughter duo would have been an easy task.

MICAT 2 Analysis Part II: Psychometric Test

The psychometric test had no negative marking. It was compulsory to attempt all the questions in this part. The instruction sheet clearly said that failure to attempt all the questions in this part would lead to disqualification.

The section had 36 questions. The first ten questions asked the student to select one of the three given statements which was "closest to one's personality". These were "personality - trait" based questions. The next 16 questions had two statements each describing two different personality traits. A student was supposed to select the statement which best reflected his/her personality on a scale of "Strongly - agree to moderately-agree". The last ten questions consisted of six statements each. Here, a candidate was supposed to rank the statements according to one's choice. The questions were pretty standard as per the psychometric evaluation is concerned. MICAT threw no surprise this time. However, unlike the last year's MICAT I and II, this year Psychometric test was an individual section and had a sectional time limit of 25 minutes.

MICAT 2 Analysis Part III:

Reasoning

This section had 30 questions. As expected, Verbal Logic dominated the section with 19 questions. The rest were from Data Sufficiency and Visual Reasoning. The word association questions were quite tricky and required a little time and effort. The statement-assumption questions were moderate as one question was really vague. The Data Sufficiency questions were moderate in nature.

General Awareness

This section had 22 questions. As always, most of the questions were from Business Awareness which asked a candidate to select the brand logos, taglines, and CEOs. MICAT persisted with the match the column questions too and the options were very easy to eliminate in most of these. Quite a few questions were from current affairs like the questions related to the current VP of the USA and the origin of plastic money facility. Any serious candidate is expected to know these answers. There was just one question related to static GK. There were no questions on book-authors or History.

Verbal Ability

This section was a mixed bag owing to a few tricky questions. There were 25 questions in total.Vocabulary and Grammar dominated this section with a few Sentence Jumble questions sprinkled here and there. Vocabulary was moderate in nature. A few words like prattle and vicissitudes might have been unfamiliar. Even the reading comprehension passage had a vocabulary based question. Grammar questions came from familiar areas like antecedent of pronoun, tense, and common errors. These questions were tricky. The Sentence Jumble questions were very easy.

The Reading Comprehension passage was an easy-read with 5 questions. The question where one had to match the words to their meanings was tricky.

Quantitative Ability

This section had 25 questions. It was dominated by Arithmetic. There were a few questions from TSD and Higher Order Equation. Data Interpretation had two sets. The first one had both bar graph and pie chart. It had three questions. The other one was based on bar graph and had three questions. Overall, this section was the toughest as the level of difficulty increased sharply as per MICAT standard.

MICAT Analysis

MICAT is the entrance exam through which a student can get admission in the course for a Post Graduate Diploma in Management Communications at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad. The test was held on December 11 this year. All students reported receiving the same paper with the same order of questions eliminating uncertainties over grading and normalization.

During each section, the candidates were not allowed to navigate to any other section. Most of the questions varied from an easy to a moderate level of difficulty. Sections A and B carried no negative marking while wrong attempts in Sections C, D, E and F would attract a subtraction of 0.25 marks.

MICAT 1 Analysis Part I: Descriptive Test

This section tested the analytical and descriptive writing ability and creative skills of test-takers. The total time given for attempting these questions was 35 minutes. The first three questions were related to each other. For the first two questions, students had to write three points for and against a particular topic. In the third question, the students had to write a 300 word answer either in favour of or against the topic as a part of a letter to the editor. The instructions for the question clearly stated that ‘no marks would be awarded for a neutral viewpoint’. Students reported that the topic for the first three questions was based on whether expert opinion on Geo-Political issues was necessary or not.The fourth question in this section consisted of four pictures. Students had to write down a particular pictorial combination and explain it with the help of a story. The pictures were related to children playing in a field, a turtle in water, a library and a dumping ground full of electronic waste.

MICAT Analysis Part II: Psychometric Test

Psychometric test, had no negative marking. It was compulsory to attempt all the questions in this part. The instruction sheet clearly said that failure to attempt all the questions in this part would lead to disqualification.

There were three kinds of questions. The first set of questions had 30 statements out of which one had to pick 10 describing one’s personality traits without ranking them. The second set of question asked one to choose from a set of two arguments and also to rate them in accordance with one’s personality traits. In the third set of questions, one had to rank the various responses under given situations on a scale of 1 to 6

MICAT 1 Analysis Part III:

For this part, the penalty for every incorrect answer was 25% of the marks allotted to the question. A candidate could navigate through the sections and the test was automatically submitted after the allotted time was over.

Reasoning

MICAT’s Reasoning section is only one of its kind among all Management tests in the sense that it combines 30 word-association, statement-assumption, data sufficiency and visual reasoning questions to present an arrangement of questions with moderate-to-difficult complexity levels.
The verbal reasoning questions varied between easy-to-moderate level of difficulty. However, there were a few difficult ones as well, especially in the Word Association question type.

General Awareness

This section consisted of 22 questions. Out of 22, 12 were on National issues while 10 were on international topics. Also, 10 questions were of static type while 12 were on current affairs. Overall, the section was quite difficult.

The questions were about business taglines, mergers and acquisitions, corporate heads and other corporate topics such as brand and marketing campaigns. Some questions types were in the form of ‘Match-the-questions-with-the-answers’ format. However, these questions were quite simple and by eliminating the wrong options, the right answer could easily be arrived at.

Verbal Ability

This section consisted of phrase replacements, jumbled paragraphs, synonyms, double blanks and a Reading Comprehension passage. Like last year, only 1 RC passage was present this year. However, the passage was long with questions of moderate difficulty levels. The other question types were mainly easy with a couple of moderately difficult questions.

Quantitative Ability

There were 25 questions in the section, out of which 19 questions were on Quantitative Ability and 6 questions were on Data Interpretation. Quantitative Ability section was dominated by Arithmetic (7 questions) and Modern Mathematics (5 questions). Most of the questions were of easy to medium level of difficulty with a few questions at high level of difficulty as well. There were two sets on Data Interpretation with 3 questions each. The DI sets were characterized by calculation based questions involving calculations at easy level.