MICA Admission Cut Offs | CAT 2008 | GMAT

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.

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.
For a list of the non-IIM b-schools that are accepting CAT scores, you can click here.

It will be interesting to watch this trend next year if the Common Admission Test does indeed go online.

What's your dream B-School?

You must have noticed the 'Dream B-School' poll on this blog some time or the other in the last few months. Already 1164 votes have been polled and we have decided to finally close the poll now, as we have arrived at a very unambiguous conclusion.

B-School	No. of Votes
IIMs	584
MICA	98
MDI	58
FMS	106
GIM (Goa)	28
XLRI	136
TISS	43
Other Indian	66
B-School Abroad	45
Total Votes Polled	1164

No surprises at all at no.1 - the IIMs are definitely India's most popular B-Schools. Little wonder that the number of CAT takers is now swelling to close to the 3 lakh figure. XLRI Jamshedpur was ranked no.2 in our poll with 136 votes. FMS was not far behind, ranked at no.3 with 106 votes.

The two specialized B-Schools, MICA and TISS together garnered over 12% of the total votes indicating a huge marketing for specialized Business Schools. 28 MBA aspirants showed their keenness to do their studies from GIM, Goa. Located on the beautiful Mandovi, the Goa Institute of Management is the most picturesque of the Indian B-Schools, and the ideal place to mix partying and studying. What was the most surprising was the lack of interest shown in overseas B-Schools. Less than 5% of the voters said they want to study abroad; an indication of the student community's faith in the booming Indian economy. But given a choice between Harvard and IIM Ahmedabad, will they prefer the Indian school? I have my doubts there.