When you
aim big, you have to be
one step ahead of the competition. Following this thought, I
gave my 100%, whether it was work or my studies. After a hectic daily schedule and working 10-14 hours a day at a global professional services firm, it was challenging for me to study for the GMAT exam. Still, I try to
manage 3-4 hours a week, primarily on weekends. I spent two months preparing for the GMAT exam and
scored 710 out of 800. I converted
Imperial Business School MIM and
Purdue University MS in Business Analytics. But I didn’t stop there and aimed for
XLRI - Xavier School of Management, Asia’s best B-school for Human Resource & Management, and gave XAT 2020. I scored an overall
99.1% in XAT 2020 with 97.5% in QA, 93.7 in VARC, and 95% in Decision Making. I believe that every experience helps you in your learning process. The GMAT preparation helped me in cracking XAT with flying colors.
How did GMAT preparation add Masala to my XAT preparation?
For
Verbal and Logical Ability, I did not do much as I was preparing for GMAT prior to this and had done Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension extensively from the
GMAT Official Guide. I also referred to previous year’s XAT papers to understand the type of questions asked in XAT. This section of XAT is difficult when compared with CAT. This section needs a great understanding of the context, which I built while preparing for the GMAT.
Decision Making was the section in which I naturally did well somehow. I
solved all the questions from
previous year papers and analyzed the mocks to see where I was going wrong.
Quant was my
weakest section, so I prepared a dedicated strategy for attempting the section. I started by going through the theory well, as the questions are more
conceptual and time-taking. So, I feel it makes sense to have clear all my concepts rather than using tips and tricks to solve questions faster as the quant section in XAT is more about accuracy and getting a few questions correct. I also referred to theory from
Arun Sharma, practiced quant questions from
previous year CAT and XAT mocks, looked up
free questions available online (
2IIM particularly). I attempted the paper with a defined strategy, attempted about 5-6 easiest questions that I could within the first 10-15 minutes, which relieved a lot of pressure from the other two sections.
Gyaan for XAT 2021 aspirants:
First of all,
balance the three sections well as there are
sectional cutoffs and
score decent enough in the GK section. Try to
achieve accuracy in verbal and quant. It is a myth that attempting more questions will increase the score. Attempting a lot of questions is not necessary, but the accuracy must be high.
Quant - Try to
identify easier questions and solve questions in two passes. In the first pass, try to identify questions whose concept you can recall easily, rather than attempting to solve it by brute force, and
do not dwell on a question for too long.
Verbal and Logical Ability- The pattern is different from CAT, so do have a look at
previous year papers or the sample papers to get a good idea of what the section is like.
Decision Making - Attempt previous year papers and analyze the solution well to gauge what the section is really asking. It might seem
like a reading comprehension its the face but
requires opinionated reasoning, unlike any other test.
General Knowledge - Read about some
recent happening of past 6-8 months. This will help you score a decent percentile.
I hope the words mentioned above help you in cracking one of the top B-schools in Asia.
Break a Leg!!!
***
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