An Analysis

Phew! The long-awaited XAT (XLRI’s entrance exam) is finally over! While there was a lot of disappointment among the students when the exam was postponed in January, finally, the paper-and-pencil test went off without any further hiccups. However, the attendance at a number of centres was lower than what is normally seen at such entrance exams. One reason could be that the students who have already received calls from various Management Institutes might have decided not to write XAT.

As in the last few years, there were three sections in the paper with separate time limit given for each of the sections. The overall difficulty level of the paper this year is more than that of last year. The main reason for this is the difficulty level of Section II this year. The questions in Section II this year are reminiscent of questions that appeared in the past – during 1998-2000 period.

The contents and expected performance levels in each of the sections are given below.

SECTION I

This section is essentially a “Verbal and RC” section. Unlike in some of the earlier XLRI papers where the section with Verbal and RC had some questions on Reasoning or Quantitative Ability, this year’s paper had only Verbal and RC questions in this section. There were 80 questions to be answered in 40 min. For most students, this section did not pose much of a difficulty. The break-up of the section is as follows:
 

For students who are very good at Verbal and RC areas, attempting 70-75 questions in 40 min. would not have been any problem. Such people would have been able to score a net of 65-70 marks. However, large majority of the students would have been able to attempt 65-70 questions and ended up with net scores of around 55. A score of 55-60 can be considered to be a good score in this section.

SECTION II

This section threw some real bouncers. There were six sets of questions each with ten questions. Brief description of the sets is given below:

Out of the above sets, Set II should be attempted only by students who are very comfortable with Permutations and Combinations. All the other sets do not require any base level of knowledge to understand and attempt. Students who are very good at Quantitative Ability would have been able to attempt almost all the sets of questions. However, reading and being able to understand the definitions given in at least three sets is very difficult for most students – particularly under exam conditions. So, a number of students were left with only two sets for them to attempt comfortably (Sets IV and V above). While students tried reading and interpreting the definitions given, most students could not attempt more than 20-25 questions in this section. The time given for this section (50 min.) was not felt inadequate by a large number of students because they just did not know how to go about some of the questions given in this section.

Students who have good quantitative skills would have been able to attempt about 35-40 questions to end up with a net score of 28-34. However, considering the overall difficulty level of the section, a score of 18-20 can be considered to be a good score.

SECTION III

This section had 60 questions on General Awareness to be answered in 30 min. – giving the students 30 sec. per question. In general, 30 sec. per question is quite high for questions on General Awareness. So, availability of time was not a problem at all in this section. In fact, some students tried their best to sneak into earlier sections in the extra time that they were left with in the third section.

Of the 60 questions in this section, only 12 questions were on “current issues” and the balance 48 questions were “stock questions” on general awareness (not related to current issues). Again, of the 60 questions, only 13-14 questions were on economic / business / corporate related issues and the rest were general questions.

So, being in touch with newspapers and magazines alone would not have been sufficient for a student to do well in this section. Attempting about 30 questions and getting a net score of 20-22 can be considered to be good in this section.

OVERALL PICTURE

In arriving at the overall picture, we should keep in mind a few points. XLRI has two different programmes each of which has about 65-70 seats. While XLRI calls about 800-900 students normally every year for interviews, this figure includes the students called for Business Management as well as those called for PM&IR. Hence, the number of students called for any one programme is less than that called for other institutes like the IIMs. So, the cut-offs may look at little higher when compared for a CAT paper with similar levels of difficulty.

The score level required for XIM, Bhubaneswar will be a shade less than the level required for XLRI.

Thus, the overall picture will be as follows: