XAT 2017 Analysis

The difficulty level of XAT 2017 was almost similar to XAT 2016. This year the number of questions was reduced to 72 from 78(previous year). Total time for this section was 170 minutes. There was penalty for un-attempted questions and it was only of 0.05 marks. However this feature is not going to affect the overall score significantly.

The paper had two parts: Part I and Part II. Part I was main question paper and Part II was General knowledge and Essay Writing. Part I had three sections A, B and C with 24, 21 and 27 questions respectively, i.e. a total of 72 questions. The three sections of Part I were followed by Part II that had 25 questions on General knowledge and an Essay topic. The time available for completing the three sections and general knowledge and Essay writing was 210 minutes. One was expected to answer first three sections in 170 minutes and General knowledge and Essay writing in 35 minutes. It was required for students to answer questions from all sections and expected to maximize score in each sections. General knowledge and Essay marks can be used by selective institutes at the time final selection. These scores will not be used for short listing candidates for Interview/GD. The three sections were as follows:

The Verbal section was moderately difficult and tested the candidates on their knowledge of the basics. Questions were asked on various concepts like Reading Comprehension, verbal reasoning, Critical reasoning, verbal analogies, sentence rearrangement, contextual understanding and two questions were based on knowledge of Grammar as well. The options were very close. In order to answer the questions well, it was imperative for the candidates to identify the traps set by the examiners.

Evaluation: All Decision Making questions carried equal marks. Decision Making consisted of 21 Questions; including 5 Table based reasoning questions. Most questions were quite tricky. The questions were based on Caselets and Case Studies taken from various areas like administration, business organization, small business units, HR issues, Ethical Dilemma, Customer retention, Personal decisions. The length of the passages was moderate. There was one set of Analytical Reasoning (Puri Bhaji) which was difficult and was time-consuming. Overall difficulty level of the section was moderate to tough.

Evaluation: The feel of this section was moderate to tough. Quant was moderate while DI was on the tougher side. Except 2-3 direct questions of quant, all others were molded to form difficult questions. A set of 2 questions on Data Sufficiency was of moderate to high difficulty level. In DI also, the tabular set was more calculation intensive while the other set containing correlation values / scatter graphs was difficult to interpret but the questions required more understanding of mean, median and mode to answer them correctly.

There were 25 questions in general awareness consisting of Static GK based questions covering Books Awards, Geography, History etc and Current Questions Based on, Science and Technology, Economics Data and General terms etc. The difficulty level was tough. Since there was no negative marking in this section so by guessing the right option or by elimination of options, one could get 3-4 questions correct in addition to what one knew actually.

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