10 Days To XAT 2021-Preparation Strategy | Ft. Students Of XLRI Jamshedpur

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Here are a few tips from the current batch of XLRI:

Ashil Varghese Alexander

A Computer Science engineer by qualification, I have 2 years of work experience at a financial technology company - Envestnet. I then worked as a Consultant for 7 months at a consulting startup called mByom, that focused on sustainable development and institutional reform projects.

The major part of my preparation was spent on solving previous XAT question papers and attempting mock XAT papers and analyzing them. Being pretty familiar with verbal and QA sections after preparing for CAT, I devoted a good amount of time to practice decision making questions and get the hang of it, as I felt that this section was always the make-or-break factor. The VA section demanded a lot of focus and persistence to strike at the right answer. This again, comes only through practice, but I felt that this section was not very different from that of CAT, at least with regard to preparation strategy.

1. Practice previous year papers as much as possible and analyze them

2. Develop an appropriate strategy to choose questions to attempt based on your strengths and maximize scores

3. Persistence is key when solving RC passages. So, try to not give up if the passage turns out to be too tough to grasp

4. Ethicality is the keyword in the decision-making session. Choose the most ethical and sensible option

Sai Satya Nikhilesh Gudla

I am a GEM Fresher with one gap year after B.Tech. I think what helped me the most was replanning my study as per the results of previous exams. While I was comfortable in Quants, I knew that I had to improve in DM and Verbal. DM was an entirely new section. So at first, I went through previous year papers to familiarize with it. While solving them, I knew finding out the reason behind my train of thought for both the right and wrong answers was very important. I reduced the amount of time I used to dedicate to quants but ensured to brush up the key concepts and take sectional mocks frequent enough not to jeopardize the practice done so far. In verbal, I had trouble with my reading speed. I picked up both fictional and non-fictional books and slowly reduced the amount of time I used to commit to them. This helped me retain my concentration and interlink the sentences while I read at a quicker pace.

If you have given other aptitude exams by now, there will not be much of a difference. On the contrary, one is now aware of the kind of questions, writing the exam on the day that matters. This is the best one can be prepared at that moment for aptitude exams of this sort. On the day of the exam, it might feel like the preparation is short of something, like the amount of time and efforts invested is just not enough to sail through. That might be the case, but that doesn't matter. No amount of preparation can be a hard stop for aptitude exams. Revise, simulate your strategy, trust yourselves and enter the hall.

All the best!