Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) will not consider CAT scores for admissions to its flagship program, PGDM (C) 2010-2012. According to Deval Kartik, faculty and admissions co-ordinator, MICA, the admission process followed by the institute this year will be MICAT, Group Exercise and Personal Interview (GE-PI). MICAT is the internal test conducted by the institute every year to further filter candidates short-listed on the basis of their CAT scores. Taking the CAT and GMAT will be a pre-requisite for admissions. However, as stated before, their scores will not be used for evaluation. Kartik assigns the reason for such a step to the delay in declaration of CAT results by the IIMs. She says, “We have booked our centers for MICAT for 7th march and wish to abide by our academic calendar and hence have taken this decision.” She however, denies that it has anything to do with the mismanagement of CAT or the way it was conducted.

Thus, all candidates who aspire to pursue their MBA from MICA will have to apply to the institute till January 27, 2010. All those who apply will have to take MICAT on March 7, 2010. The rest of the admission process remains the same.

One might wonder why is CAT a pre-requisite for admissions when its score does not affect the final decision of the admission committee? On this, Kartik says, “Since our announcement advertisement had mentioned CAT, we are calling all those who have taken CAT and are applying to MICA for MICAT. We had declared that we will take CAT and we are staying by it. It is the delay in result of CAT that has made us think on these lines (not considering its score for admissions).”

Kartik is confident that MICAT which as stated before, was initially a test to further filter candidates after they were short-listed on the basis of their CAT scores, will serve as a good enough indicator of a suitable candidate for MICA. According to her, as MICAT has components of Quantitative Aptitude, Data Interpretation and Verbal Ability besides tests for creativity and General Awareness, it will be able to test the candidates adequately.