XAT-2012: Analysis

The XAT – 2012 saw a change in pattern this year with the paper becoming much easier and do-able. The general feeling among the students who took the test was that it was a good and standard paper with a good number of tricky but conceptual questions. Overall a well prepared student was at an advantage to crack the paper. The paper this year also had questions for 1 mark, 1.5 marks and 2 marks. The negative marking scheme was also ¼ (of marks for the questions) deduction for all questions attempted wrongly.

Break-up of the paper,

Total Time:  2 hours

Essay (administered after the 2 hour paper) – 20 mins, Word Limit – 350 Words
Statement I – Poverty is the major problem that is plaguing India. Because of the magnitude and complexity of this problem, government policies are not successful.
Statement II – Poverty is a consequence of the government policies. Instead of trying to address the problem, the government should concentrate on the root causes of the problem.
Support one of the statements. Justify it with examples.

Quantitative Ability

The QA section had 28 questions out of which 12 were easy to moderate and the rest 16 were moderate to difficult. The questions were mostly doable and a student choosing the questions judiciously could have spent 50 mins on the section and could have attempted about 15 questions with 80 % accuracy. A good score in this section would be 12 marks and the sectional cut-off is expected to be 9 marks.

EU & LR

In EU & LR, there were quite a number of direct questions which could have been attempted by the students. There were 5 questions which were direct/in-direct vocabulary questions which were easy and would have taken no more than 5 minutes for the students to do. There were 2 logical deduction questions which were also not time consuming. There were three RC passages with total of 12 questions. These passages would have taken 20-25 minutes for an average student to attempt. Overall a student could have spent 45 minutes and attempted 22 questions with an accuracy of 80 %. A good score in this section would be 15 marks. The cut-off is expected to be around 13 marks.

Decision Making

Unlike last year where the decision making section also had analytical reasoning question, this year this section was purely on decision making. This year the decision making questions were less tricky and ambiguous. An attempt of 18 questions with about 80 percent accuracy would be considered a good attempt which would fetch 13 marks. The cut-off is expected to be about 10 marks.

Overall one should be able to clear the cut-off of XLRI – BM @ 39 marks & for XLRI – PMIR & XIMB @ 37 marks. At 29-30 marks you can expect to get a call from LIBA & GIM.