Those who expected an easy paper in XAT 2016 would have been sorely disappointed as it was considerably more tougher than the previous years.
The announcement of changes in the examination pattern had promised a fair deal for all sections by bringing down the difficulty level, increasing the time for the test by 20 more minutes and reducing the number of questions.
“The candidates would have 170 minutes to answer the questions. The level of difficulty of the questions has also been carefully designed. In order to enable students to attempt as many questions as possible and encourage them to demonstrate all-round skills, the difficulty level of the questions has been brought down,” it had stated.
“The level of difficulty of the questions has also been carefully designed. In order to enable students to attempt as many questions as possible and encourage them to demonstrate all-round skills, the difficult level of the questions has been brought down,” it added.
The announcement of changes in the examination pattern had promised a fair deal for all sections by bringing down the difficulty level, increasing the time for the test by 20 more minutes and reducing the number of questions.
While the paper pattern was as announced with the first part comprising Verbal & Logical Ability, Decision Making and Quantitative Ability & DI.
This part is taken towards calculation of percentile used for shortlisting by all institutes that take the XAT scores. It has 78 questions to be completed in 170 minutes. The total number of marks is 78 with all questions carrying equal marks. Negative marking is 1/4 th of the mark being deducted.
The Second part, General Knowledge Section (no negative marks) and Essay section is used by XLRI at the time of the Interview and final selection.
It is to be attempted in 35 minutes with 25 questions in the GK section. The essay topic this time was “Technology and nature are natural enemies”.
“XAT 2016 was decidedly difficult. Even the Decision Making section, which at first glance appeared easy, was made complex by the closeness of the answer choices. Verbal area was full of Critical Reasoning questions and the
Reading Comprehension passages and questions were atrociously difficult!,” says VistaMind in an analysis.
Despite the time allotted for the exam going up, the cutoffs will still not be high in XAT 2016. For a person who has attempted reasonably well in the paper, it is advisable to apply to some of the institutes under XAT and expect GDPI calls, it said.
XAT scores are taken for admission into not only XLRI but also XIMB, GIM, LIBA, XISS, XIME and a host of other member and associate institutes.
A section-wise analysis found that of the 12 questions in the Verbal and logical area, six were critical reasoning questions with very close answers.
Even the vocabulary based questions were not direct and required high knowledge of vocabulary and usage While the section heading says it is Verbal and Logical ability, the section had a surfeit of critical reasoning and verbal logic.
The para jumbles and para completion (logical completion of the passages), while not being very difficult, required couple of minutes to be spent on each question.
Of the two para jumbles questions, one was from the Feynman Lectures and the second one from a book ‘Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious beliefs”.
The Reading Comprehension sets were not long but the questions required a lot of inference from the passages and critical reasoning abilities.
The section as a whole can be termed as a section of medium to high level of difficulty section.
A good student could have attempted around 17 to 20 questions in about 50 minutes in this section.
The total marks in this section was 26 with a difficulty level rating of medium to high. The cutoff for the section was 6.5 (80 percentile) and 7.5 (85 percentile).
The decision making section, a regular feature of XAT for several years, had nine sets with 23 questions in total. Four sets were with two questions each and Five with three questions each.
One set on matching criteria for buying a flat was probably the easiest among all the sets. Another set on Crops and the decision to plan these crops across the months in a year was probably the only set which could have definite answers. Every other set had very close answers choices and were too close to call.
A good student would have attempted around seven to eight sets and around 18 to 20 questions from among the 23 questions. However, we expect that the accuracy in this section would be hovering around 50% to 60% only,” VistaMind said. Cutoff for the section was 7 (80 percentile).
The quantitative ability and data interpretation section was comparitively easier than the other two.
Of the 22 questions in Quant area, Numbers and Geometry/Mensuration accounted for 11 questions. The section had six questions of arithmetic and a question each in Venn Diagrams, Functions, Heights & Distances and a miscellaneous (Order ranking) question.
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Around 10 questions could be solved by anyone who has a basic grounding in math.
Data Interpretation was however, a different ball game. The two sets were very difficult to interpret at first glance. The bar chart on Salaries at a campus was solvable but required patience to understand. Even in this set, the answers to at least two questions were very close and could go either way. The set on ‘Shop types’ was much more difficult to interpret, especially in an exam situation.
While the Number System question had a mistake, one could get an answer by solving the question in the normal manner.
Overall, the section was not easy and a good student could have attempted around 12 to 14 questions in about 60 minutes.
Cutoff for this section was 5.5 (70 percentile) & 8 ( 90 percentile).
XLRI has three programs, the HRM ,the BM program and the Global MBA Program. The HRM program typically has a lower cutoff than the BM program.
