XAT was undoubtedly the toughest exam of the year, yet again. The paper structure was the same as that of last year, which was as expected. The Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning (VALR) section was tougher than last year. The Decision Making (DM) section was of moderate level of difficulty, which is similar to last year. The Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation (QADI) section was marginally easier than last year. Similar to last year, there wasn’t any essay writing section as a part of the Paper-2. There were not any non-MCQ questions as well regarding which there were a few speculations among the aspirants.
Overview of XAT 2020
Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) 2019 was conducted on January 5, 2020 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The test was divided into two parts. The first part was the usual XAT paper which had questions divided into three sections:
(i) Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning,
(ii) Decision Making, and
(iii) Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation.
As stated by the XAT authorities earlier, the total time allotted for attempting these questions was 165 minutes.
The second part consisted of General Awareness questions. The total time allotted to this section was 15 minutes.
Each question in Part A carried 1 mark each and attracted -0.25 marks for every incorrect attempt. Part B had no negative marking. Furthermore, the penalty for unattempted questions went beyond 8 such questions had been doubled to -0.10 from -0.05 marks.
Confusion regarding negative marking might have affected the performance of a few students. XAT Admin office has confirmed the presence of negative marking for all questions
The detailed analysis of all the sections is as follows:
Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning
Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning was tougher than last year, mainly due to the Verbal section. This would definitely make the cutoff go slightly down. There were 12 questions of Reading Comprehension with 4 passages of 3 questions each.
Along with that, there was one poem with 2 questions, a question type unique to XAT. The poem was of a moderate-difficult level of difficulty. The 2 para jumble questions were of moderate level of difficulty. The FIB questions were difficult even though the vocabulary in use wasn’t extremely difficult. Some of the CR questions were really difficult.
A serious candidate could have attempted 15-17 questions with 70% accuracy. It was definitely time-consuming and a student could have taken around 50 minutes for the section.
The breakup was as follows:
Decision Making and Analytical Reasoning
The level of the Decision Making was similar to last year but was extremely boring. Decision Making sections in XAT have usually been extremely interesting to solve purely because of the cases that come in the section.
There were no singlets and it made the task of reading easier. There were no questions from Mathematical/Analytical Reasoning, which made the life of students easier. All the questions were situational decision making questions.
However, there were more sequencing questions which lead to lesser attempts. Clarifying all the speculations about the negative marking, you must know that Decision Making does have negative marking.
The breakup was as follows:
Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation
The section on Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation was marginally easier than last year’s QADI section. There were 20 questions of QA and most of them were from Geometry and Arithmetic. The remaining 8 questions were from 3 sets of DI. Majority of the questions from Arithmetic were easy whereas the questions on Geometry were moderate in nature.
In Data Interpretation, there were 3 sets comprising 8 questions in total. These were one set on tables, another one on bar graphs. There were also two questions Set Theory.
In a nutshell, one could have attempted 4-5 DI questions and 13-15 Quant questions in about 65-70 minutes.
The break-up was as follows:
General Knowledge
The level of difficulty of the General Knowledge section was similar to last year. This section comprised 25 questions. Most of the questions were single-statement based. The key areas from where the questions were asked were static GK (Economy, Geography, Science and Technology) and Current GK (Business economy, personalities, and awards). Overall the difficulty level of the GK section was moderate.
An attempt of 12-14 questions fetching a score of 7-8 can be considered good.
The breakup was as follows:
Expected XAT 2020 Cutoffs
The expected cutoffs as per our team of experts and AI-driven predictions are as follows. These have been given below along with the actual cutoffs of the previous years.
*XAT 2020 Cut-offs are the expected cut-offs
Best wishes,
Team CL
Disclaimer: The analysis given above has been prepared by Career Launcher experts. The information given here has no bearing on your actual score. Career Launcher does not take responsibility for any discrepancy between the information in this document and the actual result.