XAT 2021 Analysis

The level of XAT 2021 was slightly difficult as compared to XAT 2020 .This time ‘Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation’ was moderate to difficult. The RCs in verbal section, as usual, had close options. There was no surprise element this year as the paper was based on conventional lines. This year the number, of questions, was 75.Total time for this section was 165 minutes. There was penalty for un-attempted questions (after 8 questions) and it was only of 0.10 marks. However this feature is not going to affect the overall score significantly. There were no NON-MCQ (TITA) questions this year also. The overall feel of the paper was moderate to difficult.

The paper had two parts: Part I and Part II. Part I was main question paper and Part II was based on General knowledge. Part I had three sections A, B and C with 26, 21 and 28 questions respectively, a total of 75 questions. The three sections of Part I were followed by Part II that had 25 questions on General knowledge. The time available for completing the three sections and General Knowledge was 180 minutes. One was expected to answer first three sections in 165 minutes and General knowledge in 15 minutes. It was required for students to answer questions from all sections and expected to maximize score in each sections. General knowledge marks can be used by selective institutes at the time of 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 moderate to tough. The questions were based on Reading Comprehension, Critical reasoning, Sentence Rearrangement, & grammar. The length of the passages was moderate. One of the RCs was based on “number crunching”, and one was based on ‘gender inequality. There was one RC based on a short poem. One RC was based on ‘multitasking & swiftness. The options were very close in reading comprehension section and therefore it was time consuming. Almost half of the questions in RCs were critical reasoning based. In order to answer the questions correctly it was imperative for the candidates to identify the traps set by the examiners. The section was dominated by reading comprehensions and critical reasoning. The questions on grammar were based on fundamentals. The overall feel of this section was moderate as choices were too close and tricky.

Evaluation: All Decision Making questions carried equal marks. Decision Making consisted of 21 Questions based on contexts. Most of questions were quite tricky and options were too close. The questions were based on Caselets and Case Studies taken from various areas like business organization, small business units, Ethical Dilemmas, and context based problem and solution Overall difficulty level of the section was moderate.

Evaluation: The level of Quant and DI was moderate to tough. In DI, there were three sets of three questions each. One out of three sets was do able. There was a set of 3 questions on Venn diagram and it was of difficult level. The set based on male and female workers was time consuming. In Quant, the major focus was on Algebra & Geometry with 5 questions each. The doable questions were from topics such as simple interest/compound interest, TSD & Ratio etc.  The overall feel of this section was moderate to tough.

There were 25 questions in general awareness consisting of Static GK based questions covering Books, , Geography, art forms of states , History etc. and Current Questions based on Science and Technology, Economic Data and General terms etc. The level of this section was moderate. Since there was no negative marking in this section so by using guesswork or by elimination of options, one could have got 6-7 questions correct in addition to what one knew actually.