Like in a Bollywood flick, the Xavier’s Admission Test (XAT) 2012 held today, January 8, 2012 closed this season with a happy ending. Living upto its standard of questions, the XAT 2012 turned out to be a very balanced paper. This year. the exam was easier but certainly not easy! Questions were not direct; each question took its own sweet time to get cracked. Like in any conventional management aptitude test, the selection of questions to answer would have been very crucial. Though the test had multiple marking systems, the deviations were not that much. The presence of very few questions worth 1.5 marks and 2 marks made the decision easy for candidates.

Please note that the instruction about negative marking suggested that ‘one fourth of the marks allotted may be deducted’. It raises the question whether there would be differential negative marking which penalises those with poorer accuracy more (in which case there would be no negative marking for those making very few errors) or will there be uniform negative marking for all wrong questions.

Anyhow, the paper was flawless except for one bar graph question. The reference of ‘year 2010’ could not be cracked in that question.

On the whole, this is what the paper looked like,

Total Questions: 85

Total Marks: 100

Total Duration: 120 minutes

Negative marking: ‘May be’ 1/4 of the of allotted marks

Let’s move to the sections now.

Quantitative Ability (including DI): 28 questions, 35 marks

Carrying no question on higher maths, this section would have brought a big smile to the faces of many candidates. Unlike last year where 5 marker questions were inspired and drawn from IIT-JEE or Olympiad level tests, this year the quantitative section had relatively plain-jane aptitude questions. Though most questions were conventional, one could hardly find sitters. There was good variety in the questions, so there would have been something for everyone to attempt. Questions on arithmetic were simple, whereas those on geometry and mensuration were a bit time consuming. Questions based on bar graphs about Google/Facebook/Yahoo! were also tedious. Overall, attempting 19 or more questions can be considered productive and a score of 16 or more can be considered as good. The cutoff could be close to 9 marks.

Decision Making: 25 questions, 30 marks

This section has always bothered XAT aspirants because most are unfamiliar with its questions. Predicting the exact answer is also difficult. This year, the section was tougher than what it looked like. Most questions were lengthy and time consuming. On a lighter note, this section ensured that candidates did not miss reading comprehension. Questions on recruitment were comparatively easy. Overall, a good candidate would have attempted 16 or more questions securing a good score of about 11. The cutoff can however be around 6.5 marks.

English and Logical reasoning: 32 questions, 35 marks

compared to last year, this years XAT verbal was evidently way easier. The LR section was also simpler because the complexity and verbosity of questions were lesser and the options were not lengthy either. All in all, this was not a section in which the test-takers would have developed a mental block while attempting the questions. No bombastic vocabulary was required. Overall, an attempt of 22 or more questions was achievable. A good score can be 17 or more and the cutoff about 11.

Mind you, that XLRI Jamshedpur has announced that the sectional cutoff would be 80 percentile instead of 90 for each section. Though it is very difficult to estimate the score at 80 percentile in each section as candidates scoring in this range would have had vastly different question selection combinations, we have tried to derive realistic cutoff figures for XAT affiliated b-schools. These overall cutoffs look like this,

XLRI Jamshedpur, Business Management: 38

XLRI Jamshedpur, PM & IR: 34

XIM Bhubhaneswar: 32

GIM Goa: 24

XAT 2012 scores, analysis and discussions on the forums

Based out of Jaipur, Hitesh Devalia is the Director and CMO of Endeavor Careers, a leading test preparation institute in Ahmedabad and also the driving force behind www.catgurus.com, an online test preparation website.