XAT Preparation Strategy And Advice | Kshitij Verma , 99.878 Percentiler

Kshitij Verma hails from the city of Navi Mumbai where he pursued his 10th and 12th from Delhi Public School scoring a CGPA of 9.6 and a percentage of 90.8 respectively in CBSE. He went on to pursue a bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Manipal where he graduated with a CGPA of 9.26 out of 10 and then pursued his Masters in Product Design from Berkeley. He came back to India and started working in Reliance as the Executive Assistant to the President for Reliability in the head office, where he looked after strategy management and implementation for industry 4.0 transformation. In this interview, Khsitij has shared his XAT preparation strategy in details. Have a look!

Hi Kshitij, please share your XAT score and percentile with our readers.
XAT Overall Percentage 58.33, XAT Overall Percentile 99.878,
Verbal, 67.30, 99.92,
Quantitative Abilities, 58.92, 98.70,
Decision Making, 46.4286, 90.89

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How Did You Prepare For XAT 2021?
I prepared for XAT with self-study, this was my third attempt at XAT and first serious attempt. I had actually targetted CAT as my main exam and hence was hoping for preparing for XAT by just covering whatever would be left out. But, as soon as I submitted my CAT exam I knew that I didn't do well, I knew that my doors to top IIMs were closed and hence decided to put all my eggs in one basket, XLRI. I remember coming back from my centre and focusing on XAT with Arjuna's precision. I googled "How to Ace XAT in a month". I researched the difference between CAT and XAT. I decided to not enrol in any test series, instead, I solved XAT Papers from 2015-2020 in an intermittent fashion. My strategy was simple: solve a paper, understand my shortcomings and focus on improving them for the next 3 days and then solve the next one. This helped me realise my inefficiency in Decision Making and given the short time span.

I decided to focus on how to up my scores in other sections rather than DM. I started solving all XAT verbal and quant problems I could find online, because I had prepared for and given GRE twice my verbal and quant skills were my strengths, and solving around 20 problems in each section every day was enough to build my confidence. My strategy was to bank on these two sections to cross the 99th mark. Dead week, (a week before the D-Day) I had covered all aspects, I thought was required to clear XAT. The only thing left was to remove the thought of how bad I did in CAT and just focus on XAT and relaxing my mind.

Check Out → From 44%ile In Mock Test To 99.2%ile In XAT 2021 || How Aman Garg Aced The Decision Making Section

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What Would You Advice To Future XAT aspirants?
To prepare for XAT, the foremost is that when you start preparing for CAT know whats the difference between the syllabus and exam pattern of XAT and CAT. Being aware of this will ensure that you don't find yourself in my shoes. In addition to your detailed CAT preparation take time out to prepare for Decision Making, its a very unique and different section and it requires heavy analytical thinking. Many youtube videos from famous sites such as Cracku, and other famous institutes helped me understand the basics of what to expect in such questions and situations. This was definitely my last resort, I would advise preparing for DM along with your CAT, as the other sections are almost completely covered. For XAT, finding exclusive books and mock series are difficult, but hardly anyone exclusively prepares for XAT. I utilized Arun Sharma and Ananta Ashisha's books to prepare for the Verbal and the Quant section. I strongly believe previous XAT papers to the best resource for XAT practice, especially in the DM section so definitely solve them. One month between the two exams is the ideal time to solve these papers. I hadn't taken any mock test series I wouldn't know which is best, but if you are managing the preparation with your work as I did, I would suggest going for online mock test series. I would also suggest taking two as statistically, this will help you understand the areas where you need to pay more attention. Lastly, CAT results are almost always out before the XAT exam, so if you get easily anxious prepare for that shock or exhilaration to play a little part in your XAT paper.

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