Now that
CAT is done, it is time for the next big exam. XAT is a test taken by more than One Lakh students every year and is used by 150 + institutes. The Exam will be held on January 7
th this year. The deadline for XAT registration without Late Fee is 30
th of November.
XAT is going online this year and there are a few changes in the way the exam will be handled. But the core of it remains the same. You might have a lot of questions, now that it has gone online. This article is meant to address the same.
XAT Exam Pattern
The part one of the exams will have four sections
- Verbal Ability
- Decision Making
- Quantitative Ability
- Essay and GK
Of the above sections all the sections except the Essay+GK will be used to arrive at the XAT percentile. The Essay+GK is a component used to assess the candidate once he/she clears the XAT cut-offs.
The Total Duration of the exam will be 170 Minutes (VA +DM+QA) + 40 Minutes (Essay and GK)
The Cut-Offs for XLRI last year were
Business Management VA (79.46) DM (76.84) –QA (88.7)-Overall (96)
Human Resource Management VA (79.69) DM (71.628)-QA (70.07)-Overall (92.55)
(These cut-offs were for last year and are just to provide an indication )
How is the duration allocated between the sections?
For the 170 minutes, it’s up to you, how much time you want to spend on each section. This is in line with the XAT paper-based test last year, where candidates could choose how much time they want to spend on each section and can toggle between the sections. There will be no inter-section timer, unlike CAT. And all 3 sections will be open to the candidate at once.
This allows students to spend lesser time on their strong areas, while delving more on the areas that they are not comfortable with. It is very important to have a mental cut-off for each section, as sectional cut-offs have to be crossed. Scoring very well at one of the sections at the cost of others will not help. This is one of the challenges that students face every year, which is not going to go away when XAT goes online.
But there will be a hard stop after 170 minutes. And the essay +GK section will start, and will stop after 40 minutes. Again it is up to the candidate to decide how much time they want to spend on the essay and how much on GK in the 40 minutes available to them.
The essay+ GK section also will be online and there will be no break between this section and the previous section.
The pattern of the Exam remains the same as previous year.
On-Screen Calculator
There is no On-Screen calculator for the online XAT test.
In the unlikely event of a technical Glitch
In the unlikely event of a technical glitch, the candidate will be shifted to another terminal without loss of time.
SIFY will be handling the exam this year to support, XAT going Online.