The MICAT

Here is where you will start noting MICA’s penchant for suffixing itself with anything starting with CA. MICAnvas, MICAmpus, MICAmpaign, MICAreers, and now we call Roxy the MICAnine!

The MICAT is one of the most fun tests to take. A few years ago it used to be quite different and used to be called a relatively boring-sounding MET (links in a coming post). Anyways, I will deal with what happened this year (2007). The sections in the MICAT (1.5 hours) were:

A word association test

There are 8 words, 4 in 2 rows. There is one word in column A that can be associated with every word in Column B. For example :

Apple ………….. Orange
Mango …………. Eye
Banana ………… iPod
Watermelon …… Orchard

Answer is Apple because:
1. Apple and orange are both fruits.
2. ‘Apple of my eye’ is a proverb. Banana and eye? Naaah!
3. Apple iPod!
4. Apple orchard.

It’s a really fun exercise. There are 20 of these.

How to prepare:
1. It would be good to know a lot of proverbs.
2. General awareness – not the capital of Uzbekistan and pi upto 17 decimal places types – but normal stuff. And good English helps here, obviously.
3. May sound silly, but try studying up phrases like a PRIDE of LIONS, a PACK of wolves, etc. You know what I mean…!

Psychometric Test

There are about 30 questions here. Basically, situations are given to you and objectively, you have to state your reaction. In 2007 and 2008, we had two options … A question, followed by ‘Agree / Disagree’, while in 2006 we had 5 options (Strongly agree to strongly disagree). An example (5 options waala):

Q: When a task is given to me, I prefer to start immediately not bothering to waste too much time mulling over the problems that may arise.
A: Strongly agree
B: Agree
C: Neutral
D: Disagree
E: Strongly disagree

The clever part is, some questions are fiendishly rephrased so that both sound like a positive attitude. Example, for the above question, strongly agree shows you are not much of a time waster. But then, take this:

Q: When a task is given to me, I invest time thinking of possible obstacles and how to tackle them before starting.

So you see? A ‘strongly agree’ here would be considered positive too – a thinker, a planner. But a person temted to mark A for both will obviously show a mismatch. While we do not know if a psychometric mismatch will actually lead to lessening your chances at MICA (unlikely, really!), why take risks?

How to prepare:
1. You have a year. Get to know yourself. Be honest to yourself. You’ll find this is an enriching exercise. Accept yourself. It may be hard for you to believe some things. Like I didn’t want to accept I was an atheist, but accepting it made me know myself better and all that. Similarly, be honest to yourself – find who you really are, how you tackle situations and all.
2. Search for online psychometric tests. There are tons. You’ll get a feel of the thing, and also, you’ll have a few questions to ask yourself (Ref # 1)
3. Remember, you cannot afford to miss one question (miss even one in this section, and your MICAT will not be evaluated) so learn to be quick.

Quant and DI

if you passed the CAT, these will be a cakewalk. Very simple QA and DI questions. And even those of you who get jitterbugs at the sight of numbers should ace this easily. Trust me!

How to prepare:
1. This is one area where TIME and IMS can help you.

Essays

Essays are meant to test your writing skills, your creativity and your thought process. There will be 4-5 essays, some serious, some light-hearted. Some of the essays that appeared in MICAT 2008 were…

1. The moon exists
2. Bollywood truly represents the changing Indian society
3. Should euthanasia be lealised?
4. Identify a problem the society faces today. Think of a machine to solve
the problem. Describe the machine and give its features etc.
5. Poverty still exists in India. Sketch a situation of poverty you might
have witnessed in your locality. (It went something like this).
6. Something like reducing environmental pollution is not the
responsibility of the developed nations alone, the developing nations also
should pitch in.
7. A precis writing.
8. Tata nano will add to the congestion on roads. Discuss.

How to prepare:
1. Read a lot. Editorials, magazines, blogs, novels, autobiographies, porn, whatever. Anything that exposes you to writing. Recommended for all CAT aspirants.
2. Try to write, or type. Bloggers usually do very well in the MICAT essay. Develop a style. Make sure grammatical errors are weeded out. Remember, the checkers will be going through thousands of essays and weeding people out. So making a good impression is a must.
3. As trivial as it may seem, good handwriting is a plus.
4. This may sound crazy, but practice writing for a week before MICAT. Software engineers, tell me, when was the last time after Exam # 6 of S8 that you wrote something at length with a pen on paper? And doesn’t your hand hurt when you try to write a formal letter? I knew this would be a problem – and just wrote – arbit crap, yes, but it was good practice. Otherwise you’ll find that your hand really hurts in the exam and you can’t afford to waste time. This exam requires more than shading a few ovals, mind..!

Aaaaaand an important one:

4 hvns sake lrn 2 wryt propr Englsh n not shyt lyk dis whch no kmputr in d wrld cn decifr. use prpr grmmr n nt sms lingo n shrt frms n slang.
Take the pains to type out your IMs, your emails, your Orkut scraps, your Pagalguy posts, EVERYTHING in proper English. Even your SMSes, if it doesn’t cost you. It may seem a fuddy-duddy idea at first, but it helps. Believe me, it helps. Not just at MICA, but while working, too.

Fill-in-the-blanks

24 H in a D (hours in a day)
365 D in a Y (days in a year)
11 P in a FT (players, football team)

These are the easy ones. Among the tougher ones were:

DS of the M (Dark Side of the Moon. I got this, thank you Mr. Waters!!!
12 GB, S on the W (12 Great Bumblebees, Sitting on the Wall) :|

How to Prep:
1. Well, nursery rhymes will help!
2. I’ll give you the link to a post that has a lot of these puzzles – someone took the pain to search for them online!
3. Proverbs and anything related to such numbers. But such prep is limited and this section is likely to change next year.

Archie comic

No, really! This happened in 2007… They gave us a three-panel Archie comic, with the bubbles erased – we had to fill ‘er up. So, you never really know what to expect for a MICAT, now do you!

How to prepare:
1. Close that Engineering college textbook / Quant by Agarwal and get yourself a stack of Archie Double Digests!
2. Don’t fill the damn thing in haste: Space is limited in those bubbles.
3. Be funny, goddamnit! MICA is one insti where humour is appreciated!!!

Related Links: The PGPCM || Specializations || Admission procedure || SBI Loan || MICAT || GE || PI || Placements || Official Link || All posts

If you have any queries, please mail us at micampaign@mica.ac.in

~ by micampaign on July 26, 2008.