What are the sections in MICAT?

There are 3 main sections in MICAT namely:

• SECTION-A: Psychometric test
• SECTION-B: This includes 4 parts namely Verbal ability, Quantitative ability & Data Interpretation, General Awareness, and Convergent thinking.
• SECTION-C: Descriptive Test

Section Wise MICAT Exam Pattern

This year (2020) MICA has made a change in MICAT Paper Pattern. The duration of MICAT has been reduced from 2 hours 45 Minutes to 2 Hours 15 Minutes for the current year. Refer Table below for the Section Wise Breakup

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SECTION-A: How does one go about the Psychometric Test?

• The Psychometric section is a compelling feature of the MICAT. Students are given 30 questions (MCQs) to comprehend their Aspirations, Motivations, and Behavior.
• The purpose of this section is basically to understand your thought process and views, and especially the stability in your thoughts.
• You will be given small instances and asked how you would react to them, or what you think of such instances to check how consistent you are in your thoughts and reasoning.

How to crack this section?

• The best way to crack this section is through honesty and early introspection. Students should practice writing 20 good and bad things about themselves and take a firm stand while attempting this section in the exam.
• Try avoiding neutral as the choice. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers, and this test in only to understand how you think.
• Try not to manipulate your answers or be diplomatic with every answer. They don’t want you to tick the ‘right’ option for everything, but how much you know yourself and accept it.

*Just be careful while attempting your psychometric test; if you do not clear this, you are automatically rejected. They wouldn’t even consider your other scores/credentials. A lot of free psychometric tests are available online, so you can give it a try before the final exam day.

SECTION-B: How to prepare for the four sections?

Quantitative ability:

Also check: How to save time in quants and DI

• If you are preparing for CAT/XAT, the Quant portion becomes easy, especially relevant is the fact, the Quant paper in MICAT is easier than CAT.
• The Quantitative Ability section has a total of 25 questions, with a 0.25 negative marking for wrong answers.
• The section mostly includes Arithmetic related topics including Time and Speed, Time and Work, Average, Allegations, and Mixtures.
• Other topics include Profit and Loss, Numbers, Venn Diagrams, Functions, Probability, Mensuration, and Equations.
• Try to go through the basics thoroughly, as most questions would be very basic in nature, and maximize your attempts for this section, as it is very scoring.

Verbal Ability:

• The verbal section of the paper has 25 questions on topics like para jumbles, reading comprehension, statement-assumption, statement- conclusion, etc., and there is a negative marking of 0.25 marks on every wrong attempt.
• Again, if you prepare for CAT and other exams, you should be able to solve these. These are usually of moderate level difficulty, so try to increase your accuracy in this section.

*In addition to this, one important hack for verbal is to prepare well for ‘statement assumption and conclusion’. Most of the students lack preparation for it. There are games available online that can help you test your word power and make it enjoyable too.

Divergent and Convergent Reasoning:

• This section consists of 30 questions, again with a 0.25 negative marking for wrong attempts where it tries to judge the logical and analytical abilities of the candidates.
• These are usually tricky questions, so ensure you read the question thoroughly and attempt them. Verbal reasoning and word association form an important part of the Logical Reasoning part.
• There is one hack to the Word association hack: you must know a lot of proverbs and phrases like Pride of Lions, Pack of Wolves, etc.

Check out the courses and success stories by MICA converts

GK (General Knowledge):

• The GK section consists of 25 questions with a 0.25 negative mark for wrong answers. Questions cover current affairs to business news to advertising agency trivia global brand awareness, etc. This is where one can beat the crowd and score, as most of the students fail to prepare for this one.
• General Knowledge is a thing that does not come all of a sudden, and even if you know something, it does not mean that you will remember it.
• Keep an eye on all major events and happenings in the marketing domain as well. If you have been up to date with the current affairs for the entire year, you should be able to score well in this section.
• You can read more on Campaign India, AFAQs, Bizquizzard, and Exchange4Media.

SECTION-C: How does one prepare for the Descriptive test in MICAT?

What is the descriptive test?

• A fascinating section of MICAT is Essay Writing and Story Writing, which includes 4 questions with a duration of 35 minutes.
• This section is especially important since MICA wants to check your creativity, which can be showcased in plenty through this section.

Tips for this test

• You can follow simple instructions to ensure that you excel in this section. first, note down your points briefly to decide on a flow for your essay.
• Once that is established, go ahead and write the paragraphs. secondly, stick to an argument that you have chosen, and do go about shifting between your views because inconsistency in thought is highly frowned upon by them.
• Finally, build a tempo to your writing, a good writing piece is when you follow the AIDA model. It should capture the reader’s attention and maintain it until the end.
• In order to do all this and excel in this section, you have to practice writing at least 2 to 3 months before the exam.
• Even though you think you’re good at it, keep reading some short stories to get inspired. The portion of essay writing is to test your thought process, your perspective, and your craft on topics based on you.

*Keep all these major tips in mind, and most importantly practice a lot! Section B can be easily handled by you because you might be already prepared with it from your passed exams. Focus more on descriptive writing practice and verbal ability, you have to ace them to get a good score!