XAT Decision Making 2025: Preparation Tips & Strategies

Practice and preparation

• The best place and resource you have to pick is the past year's question paper for XAT. 
• The main reason to solve the past year's paper, especially for the DM section, is to know what the examiner wants us to think in a certain way while looking at the answer.
• That way, we can analyze the way we have to answer, as we will get whole new scenarios and questions in our exam, but the critical thinking we have developed while solving the questions will help us tackle this section better.

Read More:

• XAT Syllabus 2025: Exam Pattern, and Preparation Tips
• SNAP Syllabus 2024 | Exam Pattern, Top Books & Preparation Tips

Strategy to remember 

• Know the stakeholders

Knowing the stakeholders—those who are involved in the whole case—so that we know according to whom we have found the right solutions as per the question.

• Analyse the question thoroughly.

This may sound very trivial, but what the question is asking is very important, as the options may sound very right, but if we are not marking the option according to what has been asked, then it will not matter.

•  Maximising the benefits

In almost every scenario, we have to look for what can make the best, maximize benefits in general, and lower losses if any.

•  Avoiding personal biases

This is very crucial to keep in mind, as we sometimes won’t even notice, but personal biases and your experiences affect your decision-making skills, which have to be avoided to get the right answer.

•  Ranking the options

The opinions in the sets of many questions are very close, and getting a straight answer may not be that easy. Ranking them as we analyse every option and get to the right answer can be a strategy that can be used.

 Apart from all these strategies, giving some sectional tests created by experts and mentors would be beneficial. Full-length mocks to strategize how much you should do for every section as it's an open exam and keeping a check on the clock is very important.

Crack SNAP 2024 with 10 FREE Mock Tests + Rewards for Top 2000! 

Conclusion

• Analysing the question and every option is key to success in this section.
• Previous year's XAT papers are very important to get a feel for how to think about this exam.
• Keeping a check on the clock and not overthinking too much would be crucial to a good score.

Frequently Asked Question

Q.1 How much preparation is sufficient for XAT?

Ans. Usually, most aspirants prepare for this section after the CAT exam is done. So, a month is sufficient to get a grip on this section.

Q.2 How many past-year papers should we solve?

Ans. At least solve the last 10-year paper, which is easily available on the internet. If you feel you can solve 5 more years, but not further, as the section was a bit different from what it is now.

Q.3 Is leaving questions in XAT advisable?

Ans. Although we should try to solve almost all the questions, if we are confused with three options or the mathematical set is difficult, then we can leave and target other questions.

The author of this article, Tanmay Bhardwaj scored 99.29 percentile in XAT 2024 and joined XIMB (2024-26).