XAT 2019: Toughest management exam of the year, expert says

XAT 2019: The Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT 2019) was the toughest paper in comparison to the last few years with some difficult verbal questions and tricky decision making (DM) problems. This year, XAT eliminated the essay writing section and had no subjective-type of questions even though the sample paper released just three days before the exam, had many non-MCQ type questions.

The exam which was conducted on January 6 from 10 am to 1 pm was divided into two parts. The first part was the usual XAT paper which had questions divided into three sections, verbal ability and logical reasoning, Decision Making, and quantitative ability and data interpretation. The total time allotted for attempting these questions was 165 minutes. The second part consisted of general awareness questions. The total time allotted to this section was 15 minutes.

The verbal and logical ability Section had 26 questions, same as last year. The section on decision making comprised of 21 questions and the quantitative ability and data interpretation section had 27 questions. Each question in Part A, carried 1 mark and attracted -0.25 marks for every incorrect attempt. Part B had no negative marking. Furthermore, from this year the penalty for un-attempted questions went beyond 8 such questions had been doubled to -0.10 from -0.05 marks.

XAT 2019: Exam pattern

XAT 2019: Detailed analysis

XAT 2019 Analysis: Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning:

Verbal ability and logical reasoning was tougher than last year, mainly due to the verbal section. The section was dominated by reading comprehension with four passages of three questions each. There was one poem of two questions and that was very difficult. The two para jumble questions were easy. The FIB questions were difficult and some of the CR questions were really difficult. The vague reasoning used in some RC questions made life difficult for the candidates. The RC passages were from familiar areas of Psychology, Art and Social issues.

A serious candidate could have attempted 16-18 questions with 70% accuracy. It was definitely time-consuming and a student could have taken around 50 minutes for the section.

XAT 2019 Analysis: Decision Making and Analytical Reasoning

The level of the Decision Making was similar to last year. There were no singlets and it made the task of reading easier. Situational decision making dominated the section with 18 questions. There were no questions from Mathematical/Analytical Reasoning, thus students might have attempted 2-3 more questions. However, there were more sequencing questions which lead to lesser attempts There were 3 caselets (Raket, Limo, ice-cream = music) which were similar to those that were there in previous year papers.

The breakup was as follows:

XAT 2019 Analysis: Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation:

The section on quantitative ability (QA) and data interpretation (DI) was slightly tougher than last year’s. However, one of the DI sets was tricky. There were 21 questions of QA and most of them were from Geometry and Algebra (including co-ordinate and Trigonometry). Majority of the questions from arithmetic were doable whereas the questions on Geometry were difficult.

In DI, there were two sets comprising six questions in total. There were a few questions which were a little ambiguous. One DI question on proportion of economists and that of engineers was incorrect and one quant question on roots was incorrect since x was mentioned in the root. In a nutshell, one could have attempted 2-3 DI questions and 13-15 Quant questions in about 65-70 minutes.

The break-up was as follows:

XAT 2019 Analysis: General Knowledge:

The level of difficulty of the General Knowledge section was similar to last year. This section comprised 25 questions. Most of the questions were single-statement based. Some of the questions having multiple-statements had more than one correct statement. The key areas from where the questions were asked were static GK (Economy, Geography, Science and Technology) and Current GK (Business economy, personalities, awards, sports and miscellaneous). Overall the difficulty level of the GK section lies in the “moderate-difficult” range. An attempt of 12-14 questions fetching a score of 7-8 can be considered good.

Expected Cutoffs

News Source (Indian Express)