XAT is a different ball game altogether: Several of my batchmates at XLRI had a messed up CAT and had lost all hopes but aced the XAT. With less than a week before the XAT, go through the following strategies and adopt them during the exam to make it through:
The Balancer (You choose your own battles)
You have 74 questions to answer within 165 minutes. The time is good enough is you manage smartly. The ground rules apply: Do not get stuck at a question, chose question sets (Caselets, decision problem sets, so on and so forth) wisely. The challenge is balancing between the different sections to clear the sectional cutoffs. Attempt all the easy-on-first-sight questions at first and you will be done with one run of the paper. Mark all the ones you consider difficult-but-doable and do them in the second run. The XAT has a -0.25 mark penalty for incorrect answers and a -0.05 for unanswered ones up and above 8 questions. I meticulously balanced the paper to leave only 8 questions unanswered, but do that with extreme caution, contain yourself to educated guesses: You still save 0.2 marks for not answering.
The Gyaani (General Knowledge Section)
The GK section has no penalty and you are expected to answer all questions. You are giving an ample amount of time and it requires no special preparation per se. The GK score is largely irrelevant to your selection. I have friends with single-digit marks which buttresses the aforementioned claim. Read the questions, recollect all the existing knowledge and make an educated guess.
The Tukka Master Gogo (Intelligent guesses)
You have to bring the number of unanswered questions as close to 8 as possible to avoid the penalty. There will be a higher probability of instances that require you guessing rather than being sure. Follow the usual process: Eliminate the options, evade the honeytraps (lucrative too good to be true) options, and jump in the bandwagon - Be a Tukka master.
Decision Making (Being as ethical as one can be)
This is the section unique to the XAT. You need to be exposed to a few questions of this type to understand the tricks of the trade. You are required to make business decisions and expected to be ethical. This is where most test-takers fail.
The simple rule-book is
1. Identify all the stakeholders being affected by your decision and chose one that satisfies the maximum number of people or harms the least (This is not a panacea, just a guiding principle and it shall fail at some instances).
2. Answer logically, do not be swayed away by emotions. Do not choose options that are too harsh or extreme (like firing an employee directly for minor misconduct, chose to warn first).
3. Do not focus on increasing or maintaining profits of the organization (avoid by hook or crook I shall have it).
4. Do not answer in a way that displays undeterred loyalty to the organization even when the decision is unethical. It is part and parcel of the corporate world is not the mindset you need to have while answering.
5. Go through the DM section specifically of the official last year's papers. The download links are available below.
Last Years Papers
XAT 2018:
https://bit.ly/2QuFqrW
XAT 2017:
https://bit.ly/2stM3mh
XAT 2016:
https://bit.ly/2ZyIzLj
XAT 2015:
https://bit.ly/2Zy4Dpm