Intro

For more than 60 years, XLRI has been conducting an Admission Test on all India level to select the most appropriate students for management education. XAT is a pen paper examination and the candidates can carry the question paper out of the examination hall.

Pattern

Section	No. of Questions	Optimal Time in minutes	Difficulty Level	GoodAttempts
Verbal Ability	28	30	Moderate-Difficult	14
Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation	33	55	Moderate-Difficult	14
Decision Making	23	35	Moderate-Difficult	14
Total	84	170	Difficult	42

Important Dates

The XAT Examination is generally held on the first Sunday of January every year. The results are released within 3 weeks of the Exam and the group Discussion and Personal Interview for XLRI (the leading school accepting XAT results) commence within 2 weeks of the results being announced. Registrations for XAT open 2-3 months prior to the exam.

Analysis of XAT 2015

Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) 2015 was conducted on January 4, 2015 between 10:30 am and 1:35 pm.
The test was divided into two parts. The first part was the usual XAT paper which had 84 questions divided into three sections – Verbal and Logical Ability, Decision Making and Analytical Reasoning, and Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation. The total time allotted for attempting these questions was 140 minutes.
The second part consisted of General Awareness questions and a mandatory Essay Writing Section. The total time allotted to this section was 40 minutes.
The Verbal and Logical Ability Section had 28 questions. The section on Decision Making and Analytical Reasoning comprised 23 questions and the Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation section had 33 questions. Each question had 5 options and all the questions carried equal marks. There was a penalty of one-fouth of the mark allotted for every incorrect answer. The paper was quite challenging this year also.

The detailed analysis of all the sections is as follows:

As expected, the Verbaland LogicalAbility Section gave students a tough time. Last year, the questions on English Usage (Para Jumbles, Vocabulary, Para Completion) were considerably easier than the RC section, whereas this time their level was one notch higher. The RC section, on the other hand, was a bit easier than that of last year’s, maintaining the overall level of difficulty of the paper. The pattern of this section was more or less the same as that of the last year’s, except that  there was not a single question on grammar.
There was 1 Vocabulary-Based Cloze Test, 1 question on Sentence Completion and 2 questions based on Vocabulary. Unlike previous years’, these question types were no sitters and demanded a lot of deliberation. This section saw 5 Reading Comprehension passages followed by 17 questions in all. One of the passages narrated a scene from a story, another was based on science, the third pertained to behavioural science and the last two dealt with economics and management. The passages were not very difficult to comprehend and most of the questions that followed were inference based. There were 2 questions each on Para-Jumble and Para-Completion, which could have unnerved the students. Out of the three questions on Critical Reasoning, 2 of them were very difficult.  Around 10 questions were such that every student could have attempted them with 80% accuracy. While a good student should have been able to attempt approximately 15-16 questions with about 75% accuracy.

This year the DecisionMaking and Analytical Reasoning Section sawvery few calculation-based questions andmostly comprised DecisionMaking questions, rendering it slightly easier than that of last year’s. Also, unlike last year, the caselets were not lengthy and therefore less time consuming and doable. However, the students still had to be careful with the close answer options. In this section, questions will be a good attempt.

Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation:

The section on QuantitativeAbility and Data Interpretation was slightly more difficult than last year’s. There were 25 questions of QA and most of them were from Geometry, Algebra, Number System and Arithmetic. Majority of the questions from Arithmetic were doable whereas the questions on Geometry and Algebra were difficult in nature. There was one question based on directions whose language was ambiguous. One could have attempted 9-11 questions (QA) in 35-40 minutes.
In Data Interpretation, there were 2 sets of 4 questions each. One out of these two sets was based on unusual graphs. The other table-based set that required intensive calculation was doable and the first two questions of this set could be easily attempted.
In a nutshell, one could have attempted 3-5 DI questions in 20-25 minutes.

General Awareness:

The General Awareness section was comparatively difficult than that of last year’s. This section consisted of 30 questions. Most of the questions were single statement questions. Some of the questions having multiple-statements, had more than one correct statements. The students could have had sweaty palms while answering them as they required the student to know each and every statement independently. There were 2 questions from History and 6 from Geography and most of them were difficult. There were 6 questions on Economy, which were moderately difficult. While, 7 questions based on Current Affairs and 4 questions from Sports were sitters. Other than these, there were 5 more moderately difficult questions from miscellaneous topics. An attempt of 12-14 questions fetching a score of 8-10 can be considered good.

Essay Writing

This part of the test consisted of an essay. The topic of the essay was “Listening is a dying art. We hardly listen to understand, we only listen to repute and reply.” Like every year, XAT came with a very interesting topic yet again, on which students could ponder and bring out various perspectives.

Disclaimer: All information on cut-offs, analysis, answer key and scores are based on independent analysis and evaluation made by Career Launcher. We do not take responsibility for any decision that might be taken, based on this information.

Strategy for XAT Exam

The cut-off for XLRI generally ranges around 95 percentile (30-31 marks) for BM and 92 percentile (27-28 marks) for HRM. Thus, considering that the cut-offs are not very high whereas the Level of Difficulty is high the strategy of the students should be to attempt fewer questions but aim for accuracy. 42 attempts with 80% accuracy should fetch one a score around 30 which would be sufficient to clear the XLRI cut-offs.
However, the students have to keep in mind that there are sectional cut-offs required as well. Thus, the attempts should be evenly distributed. One should aim at scoring at least 8 marks in each section to be assured of clearing sectional cut-offs.

Leading Schools accepting XAT Results

In 2015 more than 100 Management Institutes selected students through XAT
Some good B- Schools accepting XAT scores are

1. XLRI - Jamshedpur
2. S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai
3. XIMB - Bhubaneshwar
4. IMT-Ghaziabad
5. TAPMI-Manipal
6. IFMR-Chennai
7. GIM-Goa
8. Welingkar-Mumbai
9. LIBA-Chennai