For years it has been a suspense as to what the cut off for Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA) is - whether it's 80 percentile or 85 or 95? God knows how many times I have been queried about the sectional cut-off requirement for MICA. "Does MICA only check your Verbal Score?", somebody would ask. Yet others wondered if MICA had any sectional cut-off in the CAT for quant or DI or not. The suspsense is now over, and officially so.
MICA CAT Cut Off for Admission to the 2009 - 2011 PGDCM batch
MICA will shortlist candidates for the MICAT, Group Exercise (MICA holds GE instead of a GD) and the Personal Interview on the basis of their performance in the Common Admission Test ( CAT 2008 ) - Overall CAT 2008 Percentile cut off will be 90 and they will need a minimum sectional cut offs of 50 percentiles in both Quant and DI sections in the CAT. In the Verbal (VA) section that comprises Grammar, Language and Reading Comprehension, MICA aspirants will need to clear a minimum cut-off level of 60 percentile.
MICA GMAT Cut Off for Admission to the 2009 - 2011 PGDCM batch
A minimum GMAT score of 600 obtained on or after 1st January 2007
MICA aspirants can hence write either the CAT 2008 or the GMAT to get a call for the second round of the admission procedure. Unlike last year, MICA has removed XAT from its list of written test options.
Another Change in MICA Admission Process:
Unlike the previous years when all shortlisted candidates were called for the MICAT, Group Exercise/GD and Personal Interview, the 2009 - 11 admission process will be 3-stepped. Candidates shortlisted from CAT 2008 and GMAT will first write the MICAT, and only the candidates further shortlisted will be called for the Group Exercise and Personal Interview.
Preparing For MBA Entrance Interviews......
Let me begin with a question: Would you fear an examination if you were told most of the questions that would be asked, beforehand, and further given time to prepare the answers for them too?
Quite a few things in life are actually pretty simple - just that we somehow manage to complicate them on our own. The B-school (including the IIMs) interviews are one such thing. The interview board rarely ask you questions that you were not expecting or couldn't have expected if you had done even some amount of homework. Even if they do throw a few surprisers, it' s unlikely that a good interview board would reject you on the basis of your lack of knowledge of a particular fact. I have been on the interview board of one of India's finest b-schools myself, and believe me when I say this - each one, mark my words, each one of those rejected was rejected for failing to give a good answer to question/questions that they should well have expected. Yes, we did ask a student to tell us the exact number of districts in India, but she was never rejected because she failed to answer it correctly. We further gave her time to give us an approximate answer, but she was not even rejected for failing to do even that. Such questions are generally "select" answers rather than "rejection" answers. If she had told me that for administrative purposes the great country had been divided into 593 districts, you can't blame me for forming a positive disposition towards the country, can you? I'd have been even more pleased if she wouldn't have known the precise figure but worked out an approximate one. ( 10 small states x 8= 80, 10 mid-sized x 5= 150, 7 large ones x 25 = 175, total: 405 - each one of these figures is wrong, but full marks for an immediate approximate analysis).
If you could become a fly on the wall in any IIM interview room, you would be amazed with some of the answers that you will hear. Students don't go wrong with some of the tougher questions, it's rather the simpler ones which seem to elicit some very weak responses. Inane questions like "Why do u want to do an MBA?" or "What is Marketing?" - well if you want to do an MBA and you expect India's premier b-schools to pick you up you should have a good answer for that, shouldn't u? The marketing sitter is asked to only those students who show an inclination towards marketing, and then not being able to suitably define marketing is a crime, don't u think so? I mean, it's okay if you don't know the precise Philip Kotler definiton of marketing, but your answer should be sufficiently explantory, thats all.
The problem is - interviewees are looking for much external help but don't really sit down on their own and do some good old-fashioned homework. Please understand that the iim interview or for that any other interview is no rocket science. The interviewers are not going to ask you questions out of nowhere. The interview is not so much a knowledge of your test but a test of your aptitude again, just like the CAT. Hence it is not too difficult to gauge what the interview is going to be like, and it follows then that, it's a test where the interviewee already knows the questions beforehand. You just need to be ready with those answers.
Likely scenario:
"Tell us something about yourself/introduce yourself/give us a background et al" are the most common interview openers. There are 2 aspects you need to take care of while answering this question:
1. You should have a rough sketch of the answer ready - of course you know that don't rehearse or memorize the answer.
2. This answer will by and large dictate the rest of your interview. Spend more time or show sufficient enthusiasm while talking about areas that you would like the interviewer to ask you more questions on. If you are a cricket fanatic and would be very happy answering questions on the game, may be you could start with "I am a cricket lover born in a rare non-cricket state in India. It surprises me how Sachin Tendulkar became my favourite sportsman whereas most of my schoolmates at Kochi would swear by Ronaldo or Beckham". Just a suggestion, you could form your own ways of going about it. But don't overdo it as you should cover the various facets of your life and if you drag too long you might be cut short. Also, don't end your first answer talking about a segment of your life from which you do not want the questions to emerge. So don't wind up with academics if that's not where you want the questioning to happen.
to be contd....
Quite a few things in life are actually pretty simple - just that we somehow manage to complicate them on our own. The B-school (including the IIMs) interviews are one such thing. The interview board rarely ask you questions that you were not expecting or couldn't have expected if you had done even some amount of homework. Even if they do throw a few surprisers, it' s unlikely that a good interview board would reject you on the basis of your lack of knowledge of a particular fact. I have been on the interview board of one of India's finest b-schools myself, and believe me when I say this - each one, mark my words, each one of those rejected was rejected for failing to give a good answer to question/questions that they should well have expected. Yes, we did ask a student to tell us the exact number of districts in India, but she was never rejected because she failed to answer it correctly. We further gave her time to give us an approximate answer, but she was not even rejected for failing to do even that. Such questions are generally "select" answers rather than "rejection" answers. If she had told me that for administrative purposes the great country had been divided into 593 districts, you can't blame me for forming a positive disposition towards the country, can you? I'd have been even more pleased if she wouldn't have known the precise figure but worked out an approximate one. ( 10 small states x 8= 80, 10 mid-sized x 5= 150, 7 large ones x 25 = 175, total: 405 - each one of these figures is wrong, but full marks for an immediate approximate analysis).
If you could become a fly on the wall in any IIM interview room, you would be amazed with some of the answers that you will hear. Students don't go wrong with some of the tougher questions, it's rather the simpler ones which seem to elicit some very weak responses. Inane questions like "Why do u want to do an MBA?" or "What is Marketing?" - well if you want to do an MBA and you expect India's premier b-schools to pick you up you should have a good answer for that, shouldn't u? The marketing sitter is asked to only those students who show an inclination towards marketing, and then not being able to suitably define marketing is a crime, don't u think so? I mean, it's okay if you don't know the precise Philip Kotler definiton of marketing, but your answer should be sufficiently explantory, thats all.
The problem is - interviewees are looking for much external help but don't really sit down on their own and do some good old-fashioned homework. Please understand that the iim interview or for that any other interview is no rocket science. The interviewers are not going to ask you questions out of nowhere. The interview is not so much a knowledge of your test but a test of your aptitude again, just like the CAT. Hence it is not too difficult to gauge what the interview is going to be like, and it follows then that, it's a test where the interviewee already knows the questions beforehand. You just need to be ready with those answers.
Likely scenario:
"Tell us something about yourself/introduce yourself/give us a background et al" are the most common interview openers. There are 2 aspects you need to take care of while answering this question:
1. You should have a rough sketch of the answer ready - of course you know that don't rehearse or memorize the answer.
2. This answer will by and large dictate the rest of your interview. Spend more time or show sufficient enthusiasm while talking about areas that you would like the interviewer to ask you more questions on. If you are a cricket fanatic and would be very happy answering questions on the game, may be you could start with "I am a cricket lover born in a rare non-cricket state in India. It surprises me how Sachin Tendulkar became my favourite sportsman whereas most of my schoolmates at Kochi would swear by Ronaldo or Beckham". Just a suggestion, you could form your own ways of going about it. But don't overdo it as you should cover the various facets of your life and if you drag too long you might be cut short. Also, don't end your first answer talking about a segment of your life from which you do not want the questions to emerge. So don't wind up with academics if that's not where you want the questioning to happen.
to be contd....
Will CAT Go Online From 2009?
An article appeared in Business Standard dated February 4, 2008 which gives an impression that a decision has been taken that IIMs will introduce online CAT from CAT 2009. This is totally incorrect. In view of increasing number of candidates IIMs are considering various alternatives for modifying the process of conducting CAT, if necessary. Online testing is one of those alternatives. The proposals are at the preliminary stage of discussion."
While talking to newspersons earlier during this year after the news of the CAT going online from next year first surfaced in the media, the IIM-A director appeared to be pretty confident about the possibility of the CAT going online from 2009. What had strengthened the belief in this stand further were reports of the IIMs approaching various organisations for the conduct of an online CAT.
Various established players added to the rumour by publishing unconfirmed reports. This is an excerpt from the website of Career Launcher.
Look at the story in the bottom half of the image above (cached from http://www.careerlauncher.com/mba/news/mbanews.jsp). It says without a hint of doubt, " The common admission test(CAT) will finally go online from 2009. " This is utterly irresponsible journalism. Making things funnier the last line of the story ends saying, "According to sources, the IIMs are contemplating conducting CAT" !!! There ain't a full stop there, so obviously someone forgot to complete the sentence, and no one at Career Launcher has bothered to have a second look at the page, i guess.
So, is the CAT going online from 2009? The answer is "no one knows for sure yet, and if somebody at the IIMs does, he ain't coming out with a forthright answer". My take is - the IIMs are highly interested in going online, but are not sure yet if they will be able to put the required infrastructure in place by the next year end.
Watch this space for more.
IIM CAT 2008 Number of Applicants up by 25%
You may not yet have realized that the downturn in the US economy may have a more direct bearing on you - it reduces your chances of making it to the IIMs. With the number of jobs in the markets drying up, the beeline at the B Schools has increased tremendously.
Compared to the 2,30,000 applications received in CAT (Common Admission Test) 2007, the number of applications for the 2009-11 sessions have increased by a whopping 60,000 to reach to a figure just under 3 lakhs. Last year, there was at least one new IIM in the form of Shillong to cheer things up.
In terms of mathematical probability, an IIM aspirant this year stands a meagre chance of about 0.6 % of making it to one of the seven IIMs (including the Rajiv Gandhi IIM Shillong and the additional increase of about 200 seats across the various IIMs). Delhi has now firmly established itself as the MBA Entrance hub of the country; IIM Lucknow which receives applications from Delhi candidates has been flooded with over 62,000 applications.
CAT Year No. of Applications
2009 2.9 Lakhs
2008 2.3 Lakhs
2007 1.9 Lakhs
However there are about 15,000 seats on offer at the many non-IIM b schools that accept CAT scores. Only a handful of them - MDI, MICA and a few more are any good and not much can be said about the others.
It will be interesting to watch this trend next year if the Common Admission Test does indeed go online.
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