MICAT-1 2022 Test Analysis

There were 150 questions in this section.

Apparently, there are no correct or incorrect responses in a psychometric test. Around 33  questions presented a situation/course of action and the test-taker had to mark either True or False. Around 117 questions  were about a particular personality trait or a course of action. which required the candidates to respond with one of the following 8 options.

• Totally Disagree
• Strongly Disagree
• Disagree
• Somewhat Disagree
• Somewhat Agree
• Agree
• Strongly Agree
• Totally Agree

Given that 150 questions were to be attempted in 30 minutes, it was necessary to work fast and mark the answer quickly.

This section tested the analytical and descriptive writing ability and creative skills of test-takers. The first three questions were related to each other. The topic for the first three questions was “Cultural diversity is celebrated while individual efforts are made to assimilate the differences into the mainstream. Then why should we desire diversity?” For the first two questions, students had to write three points each, ‘for’ and ‘against’ the topic. These two questions carried 10 marks each.

In the third question, students had to write a 300 word answer to ‘Suggest steps by which a young manager can ensure creativity and innovation keeping in mind homogenous cohorts.” The instructions stated that the points for the third question should not include the points stated in the first two questions. 20 marks were allocated to this question.

The fourth question in this section consisted 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. The pictures were related to: ’A fire extinguisher, a horse in an open field, a QR code, a mason tiling the walls.’ This question carried 30 marks.

This section was to be attempted in 25 minutes and carried no negative marking.

The aptitude test part had 4 sub-sections with 20 questions per sub-section. These 80 questions had to be solved within 80 minutes. This year all sections in the aptitude test saw a mix of questions with 4 options and 8 options. This was a change from the previous year.

(i) Sub-section: DIVERGENT AND CONVERGENT THINKING

The Reasoning section comprised 20 questions including word-association, analogies, statement-assumption, data sufficiency, coding, puzzle(symbol based logic + family tree) and visual reasoning questions. Out of 20 questions, 8 had 8 options each while the remaining 12 had 4 options each.

Following was the break-up of the non-verbal reasoning questions in the section:

In this section, 11-12 questions in about 25 minutes with  90 % accuracy would be considered a good attempt

(ii) Sub-section: VERBAL ABILITY

This section consisted of jumbled paragraphs, word pairs, paragraph completion(cloze), choosing the grammatically correct sentence questions, and three Reading Comprehension passages.  Out of 20 questions, 11 had 8 options each while the remaining 9 had 4 options each.

In this section, 11 – 12 questions in about 15-20 minutes with 90% accuracy would be considered a good attempt.

(iii) Sub-section: QUANTITATIVE ABILITY AND DATA INTERPRETATION

There were 20 questions in the section, out of which 16 questions were on quantitative ability and 4 questions were on Data Interpretation. The Quantitative Ability section was dominated by 12 Arithmetic questions and then followed by 3 questions of Geometry and 1 question on Modern Math- Numbers. Overall, the section was Medium in terms of level of difficulty. and it was one notch more difficult than the corresponding section last year. One important characteristic of this section was that only 5 questions had 4 options and the remaining 15 questions had as many as 8 options.

There was one set on Data Interpretation involving a bar graph with 4 questions and a singular question on line graph.

Following was the break-up of the questions in the Quantitative Ability section:

In this section, an attempt of about 9-10 questions in about  30  minutes with around 85% accuracy would be considered good.

(iv) Sub-section: GENERAL AWARENESS

The General Awareness section consisted of 20 questions. Out of the 20 questions, 11 questions were based on national issues while 9 were based on international topics. Also, Static GK contributed 8 questions while the remaining 12 questions were based on current affairs. Overall, the section was more difficult than that of last year’s MICAT. The questions were about business, ad agencies, books and authors, awards, geography, economics, terms, laws and acts, and logos. 4 questions could be classified as easy; 8 as medium and 8 as difficult. 19 out of 20 questions had 8 options each.

In this section, an attempt of 8 – 9 questions in about 5-7 minutes with 70 percent accuracy would be considered good.