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Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) will revert to accepting the Common Admission Test (CAT) score for shortlisting candidates for the MICA test (MICAT) for admissions to the 2012-14 batch. A minimum of 90 percentile in the Common Admission Test (CAT) will be required to reach the MICAT stage, said GK Nair, admissions coordinator of MICA in a conversation with PaGaLGuY.

We have to consider the score of any one of national tests (CAT, XAT, MAT, ATMA or JMET) in the admission process as per the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) guidelines, he added.

MICAT 2012 will not have verbal and quantitative ability sections in it but according to Shubhra P Gaur, admissions chairperson of MICA, Verbal and quantitative ability section will be tested in the CAT. MICAT will serve to assess a candidate’s divergent thinking, written communication ability, creativity potential and general awareness about contemporary social and industry issues including areas around media, marketing, advertising and business. All these are considered important by communications industry and are not assessed by CAT, Gaur added.

Whether a sectional CAT cut-off will be accepted by MICA has not been decided yet, nor has it been confirmed if the CAT scores will be used only for shorlisting candidates or will they be considered during the final stage of the admission too, said Gaur.

MICAT was held across 10 centers across India last year and approximately 5,500 candidates had taken the test. Out of that, 164 candidates joined the institute, confirmed Nair. MICA has 180 seats approved by the AICTE for this year. MICAT will be held sometime during first week of April next year. There will be no increase in the number of test centers this year.

AIMS Test for Management Admissions (ATMA) to go computer-based

Association of Indian Management Schools (AIMS) Test for Management Admissions (ATMA) conducted a pilot computer-based test on July 23 this year to evaluate the response of b-schools and MBA hopefuls.

Dr Rakesh Khurana, Chairman, ATMAOnline said, Computer-based tests are more convenient, eco-friendly, comparatively cheaper and as there is no physical movement of papers, there are less chances of error. So keeping in mind the technological trends in the industry and the advantages of computer-based test we decided to conduct a pilot test this year.

Following the good response to this experimental test, ATMA will conduct two paper-pencil tests and six computer-based testing sessions starting this year. A candidate can opt for any one of the eight testing slots. Whether a candidate can reappear in a later slot has not been decided upon yet. The ATMA score will be valid for one year, confirmed Khurana.

Knowledge Network India Limited will be the service provider for the ATMA computer-based test and the normalisation process of marking will be followed.

The tentative dates for ATMAOnline that will be held during 2011 are October 15 and November 26. The paper based test for ATMA will be held on December 24 this year.

The exam dates have been decided keeping a gap of 20-30 days and the results will be declared within one week time from the test date. So a candidate can take time to decide and prepare for the next test accordingly, confirmed Khurana.

The registration for the online test to be held on October 15 will open on September 1. A candidate needs to pay Rs. 1250 towards registration for the exam.

Keeping in mind the various specialised MBA courses approved by AICTE, ATMA is also planning to add one new section to the test called ‘specific tools on disciplines’. The section will be modular and will be helpful in evaluation of the candidate’s attitude to a particular specialisation.

This will be a 30 minutes section. There will be separate set of questions for each specialisation. A candidate is required to take the test for the specialisation of his choice.

As of now, every candidate applying to any specialisation is evaluated on the basis of a single test. Therefore, ATMA has decided to add this new component to the test. Going forward, this component will be added to both the online and the paper pencil test.

ATMA has also designed three sets of sample tests of 30 minutes, 50 minutes and three hours to make students comfortable with the test pattern. The students can get access to these on the ATMA website.

Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT)

There will be no major changes in the entrance test for Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) this year. Sometime during the first week of September, it will be decided if there will be any sectional cutoffs or not, confirmed LD Mago, registrar, IIFT.

The IIFT has approached the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) for declaring the institute as a nodal agency to conduct entrance exams to all MBA programs in International Business across the country.

The request is still pending with the Ministry of HRD and we hope to hear from them within this year. Only after that we might consider conducting an computer-based entrance test, said Mago.

The date for the IIFT written examination this year is November 27, 2011. The important dates are,