Hi all, The annual tradition with XIMB to help XAT takers continues. It’s barely weeks remaining until XAT 2010 and many puys must have a lot of questions they could seek intelligent answers to. To help you with some last minute advice o…
Hi all,
The annual tradition with XIMB to help XAT takers continues. It's barely weeks remaining until XAT 2010 and many puys must have a lot of questions they could seek intelligent answers to.
To help you with some last minute advice on cracking the XAT, we have on board several students from Xavier's Institute of Management, Bhubhaneswar (XIMB), who scored 99+ percentile in last year's XAT and will now answer your questions and suggest how to remove your roadblocks in your preparation.
You could ask them...
- how each section should be tackled
- how XAT is different from CAT or SNAP or IIFT or FMS
- what strategy should be followed in the exam
- what works in the essays section
- what to eat before the XAT exam D-day (just kidding)
What you CANNOT ask here...
- XIMB-related questions. This thread is for XAT and XAT only.
- Questions that have already been asked by others. Please go through the entire thread and its pages to see if your question has already been asked and answered. Please do not bore people by asking the same thing again and again.
So shoot away with your questions for the XAT exam and make use of XIMB's 99 percentilers presence on the forum to strengthen your preparation.
All the best to everyone! 
Cheers,
Hey Apurv,
I generally go for lesser number of qns and greater accuracy. I scrwd my cat and jmet.But i feel for XAT this approach still holds gud.
I wanted to know if that approachs fine. And how does the negative marking go? Is it like as and when more qns go wrong the negative marking/qn increases? Basically how much of emphasis you give to accuracy here rather than number of attempts?
Some basic grounding before you start pitching in with your queries:
Differences with CAT
Format of XAT 2009: 120 minutes for 104 questions, followed by a 10 minute break and then a 20 minute essay
In the recent past, the XAT has had more questions than the CAT to be solved in lesser time. While in the CAT it may be possible to get a decent shot at all questions, in XAT it is more advisable to drop tough looking questions, and find the easier ones to solve.
Essay preparation:
Essay preparation is more like group discussion preparation rather than essay writing and English preparation.
Students should read up on a variety of current affairs news and have opinions on possible topics of discussion. General knowledge about important historical events may come in handy.
Matter and writing skills are equally important.
Try to be as clean and legible as possible.
The essay can be your ticket through to your dream B school as you will be questioned on the opinion you have expressed in your essay.
The XAT 2009 essay was titled The Inherent vice of Capitalism is unequal sharing of blessings and the inherent virtue of Socialism is equal sharing of misery
Difference in sections
The QA and DI questions are in one section. The second section is English Usage (EU) and RC. The third section is Analytical Reasoning (AR) and Decision Making
AR is basically Logical Reasoning (generally not very challenging questions) whereas Decision Making involves a business scenario and you as a manager have to decide the best course of action (generally tougher questions)
EU and RC in 2009 involved knowledge of figures of speech
Difference in scoring
In each section, first 6 incorrect answers had a negative penalty of 1/4th marks attached to the question. More than 6 incorrect answers attracted a negative penalty of 1/2 for each question wrong beyond limit of 6 questions.
Last minute tips
A healthy and relaxed frame of mind is very important during the examination.
Make sure to have proper sufficient sleep.
Do not try to revise too many concepts during the final moments.
Maintain a healthy and balanced diet all the while.
It is advisable to have a visit to the venue of examination the day before. On the exam day, reach the venue well in time. If your examination centre is in a different city than the one you are currently living in, take into account the traffic and start for the centre accordingly.
Stay fresh on the days leading up to the test.
Do not solve too many questions. Do not get saturated and bored with MCQs.
Ideally paper solving is not required in the week leading up to the test. You should solve some basic questions from each section to keep the speed up, and go through your solved papers for confidence building.
Overcome your nervousness. Do not be keyed up about it. Relax.
Do not gossip about the test or discuss with friends who either build overconfidence or destroy confidence by discussing how underprepared you are.
Frame of mind on D-day is as important as all the preparation throughout the year.
All the best to all the PUYS. Let Us crack XAT 2010 :thumbsup:
Differences with CAT
Format of XAT 2009: 120 minutes for 104 questions, followed by a 10 minute break and then a 20 minute essay
In the recent past, the XAT has had more questions than the CAT to be solved in lesser time. While in the CAT it may be possible to get a decent shot at all questions, in XAT it is more advisable to drop tough looking questions, and find the easier ones to solve.
Essay preparation:
Essay preparation is more like group discussion preparation rather than essay writing and English preparation.
Students should read up on a variety of current affairs news and have opinions on possible topics of discussion. General knowledge about important historical events may come in handy.
Matter and writing skills are equally important.
Try to be as clean and legible as possible.
The essay can be your ticket through to your dream B school as you will be questioned on the opinion you have expressed in your essay.
The XAT 2009 essay was titled The Inherent vice of Capitalism is unequal sharing of blessings and the inherent virtue of Socialism is equal sharing of misery
Difference in sections
The QA and DI questions are in one section. The second section is English Usage (EU) and RC. The third section is Analytical Reasoning (AR) and Decision Making
AR is basically Logical Reasoning (generally not very challenging questions) whereas Decision Making involves a business scenario and you as a manager have to decide the best course of action (generally tougher questions)
EU and RC in 2009 involved knowledge of figures of speech
Difference in scoring
In each section, first 6 incorrect answers had a negative penalty of 1/4th marks attached to the question. More than 6 incorrect answers attracted a negative penalty of 1/2 for each question wrong beyond limit of 6 questions.
Last minute tips
A healthy and relaxed frame of mind is very important during the examination.
Make sure to have proper sufficient sleep.
Do not try to revise too many concepts during the final moments.
Maintain a healthy and balanced diet all the while.
It is advisable to have a visit to the venue of examination the day before. On the exam day, reach the venue well in time. If your examination centre is in a different city than the one you are currently living in, take into account the traffic and start for the centre accordingly.
Stay fresh on the days leading up to the test.
Do not solve too many questions. Do not get saturated and bored with MCQs.
Ideally paper solving is not required in the week leading up to the test. You should solve some basic questions from each section to keep the speed up, and go through your solved papers for confidence building.
Overcome your nervousness. Do not be keyed up about it. Relax.
Do not gossip about the test or discuss with friends who either build overconfidence or destroy confidence by discussing how underprepared you are.
Frame of mind on D-day is as important as all the preparation throughout the year.
All the best to all the PUYS. Let Us crack XAT 2010 :thumbsup:
Thank u very much abhay for ur useful post....
can u elaborate on how to prepare for the decision making section..... i attempted it last yr just trusting my instinct but found that i didn't score well in that section...
Thank u very much abhay for ur useful post....
can u elaborate on how to prepare for the decision making section..... i attempted it last yr just trusting my instinct but found that i didn't score well in that section...
There are some basic ground rules for these type of questions:
There shall always be a business sense or logic behind your answer.
Also, one should not compromise on ethics, it means that you cannot make profits by increasing corruption.
Also, keep abreast with the current happenings, many questions/caselets resembles the current situations, which might work in your favor.
And last but certainly, not the least, refer previous years' question papers for practice. PFA XAT 2009
I am a little apprehensive about the essay wrting part of the paper cos wrting(verbal, in general) and awareness are my weak areas...Can you please throw some light on how to maximaise my performance (in essay writing) in this short span of two weeks..
Hey Apurv,
I generally go for lesser number of qns and greater accuracy. I scrwd my cat and jmet.But i feel for XAT this approach still holds gud.
I wanted to know if that approachs fine. And how does the negative marking go? Is it like as and when more qns go wrong the negative marking/qn increases? Basically how much of emphasis you give to accuracy here rather than number of attempts?
Hai Ramboo,
For the scoring part, check abhays post and regarding the strategy, it should work fine for XAT; if the last year's trend continues.
Last year, of the 104 questions, people who could get 30-34 right, got 98 percentile+; so lesser questions and greater accruacy worked fine for XAT.
Whether it works this year, depends on the preparation of all your fellow aspirants
Seniors please elaborate
1)how different are the quant, DI and verbal sections differ from CAT .
2)What are all the topics one should focus in the last two weeks ahead . I thought of solving the questions from AIMCATs, would that be good or it is enough to go topicwise
3)How many attempts can be considered good and please give a mark-percentile mapping ..
Thanks
1)how different are the quant, DI and verbal sections differ from CAT .
2)What are all the topics one should focus in the last two weeks ahead . I thought of solving the questions from AIMCATs, would that be good or it is enough to go topicwise
3)How many attempts can be considered good and please give a mark-percentile mapping ..
Thanks
Seniors please elaborate
1)how different are the quant, DI and verbal sections differ from CAT .
2)What are all the topics one should focus in the last two weeks ahead . I thought of solving the questions from AIMCATs, would that be good or it is enough to go topicwise
3)How many attempts can be considered good and please give a mark-percentile mapping ..
Thanks
1. For the differences in sections and a brief overview of XAT, check out Abhays post in the first page of this thread.
2. In my personal opinion it would be better if you solve the previous XAT papers in the last few days.
3. Based on last years experience, attempting 35% of the questions in each sections and getting them all right should get you through.
A perfect percentile-mark mapping is not available as we are given only our XAT percentiles and not our absolute scores. Anyways scoring 35%+ should get you 98 percentile+, if the same trend as last year continues.
Hi!
What is the expected cut - off for XIMB 2010 admissions, as my cat and jmet dint go to well.. I am counting on this one.. Are there sectional cut offs? is it profile based and what would/could be the over - all cut off.. Kindly reply so that I know where I stand and what to expect. Thanks !!
Hello seniors,
Thank you so much for this initiative!i have a few queries.when i tried solving the last 2 years XAT papers,i found that both the quant and verbal section are way harder than the one in CAT.i am really pathetic at maths.i worked hard on it for CAT but it didn't work.with just about 3 weeks to go,how exactly should i go about quant?are there any particular topics which are relatively important?will practicing the DI section from mock CAT papers suffice for cracking XAT DI?also the verbal section demands much more than what was needed to crack the one in CAT.what exactly to do to maximize the score?
Hi!
What is the expected cut - off for XIMB 2010 admissions, as my cat and jmet dint go to well.. I am counting on this one.. Are there sectional cut offs? is it profile based and what would/could be the over - all cut off.. Kindly reply so that I know where I stand and what to expect. Thanks !!
No one can tell the score which a team is going to post for the opposition to chase in a match of cricket. One can only guess keeping in mind the factors like the pitch(if its a belter, you can expect a high scoring match , but if its uneven bounce, it will be a low scoring match), weather, the quality of bowling and fielding and YOUR FORM. So it all depends upon a number of factors.
Now let me draw the analogy. Since noone knows about the actual XAT 2010, it will be absurd to comment on the cutoffs. It all depends upon the level of paper, YOUR relative performance and YOUR preparation. As the trend continues, it is always near 33%-35% of the overall number of questions.
Go into XAT with full confidence and perform without any kind of pressure, that is what I will suggest.
See what you are getting in previous XAT papers, that shall give you some sort of idea.
Please refer to XIMB Solution Centre'10 for XIMB Cutoffs. This thread is only meant for XAT queries.
Hello seniors,
Thank you so much for this initiative!i have a few queries.when i tried solving the last 2 years XAT papers,i found that both the quant and verbal section are way harder than the one in CAT.i am really pathetic at maths.i worked hard on it for CAT but it didn't work.with just about 3 weeks to go,how exactly should i go about quant?are there any particular topics which are relatively important?will practicing the DI section from mock CAT papers suffice for cracking XAT DI?also the verbal section demands much more than what was needed to crack the one in CAT.what exactly to do to maximize the score?
In XAT quant and DI are in the same section, so as per that you can play as per your own strengths. Pick easy quant questions and concentrate more on DI and LR questions. Dont ignore the quant questions completely, as there might be some low hanging fruits which you can pick.
DI is I will say equally difficult/easy if not less than CAT. You will find some sitters, but there can be some dicey questions as well. XAT Quant have had history of questions from Calculus, Functions, trignometry, but this trend is on decline. So,all in all, you will have easier time in XAT as compared to CAT as far as Quant and DI section is concerned, as both the sections are combined.
Hi Seniors
This thread is definitely our life line for XAT this year! :w00t:
I took XAT last year... the experience and score are still haunting me. 
I am in quite ok touch after CAT.
Leaving out Quant and Verbal(since they depend on the preparation demons), I found DI quite lengthy..
wasting most of my time. Is there any way to deal with it? I know we cant fix a certain number of questions but is there any other method to save time from DI?
I am confident of doing well.. is there any personal advice from your side:lookround: am thankful for any help
Hi Seniors
This thread is definitely our life line for XAT this year! :w00t:
I took XAT last year... the experience and score are still haunting me.
I am in quite ok touch after CAT.
Leaving out Quant and Verbal(since they depend on the preparation demons), I found DI quite lengthy..wasting most of my time. Is there any way to deal with it? I know we cant fix a certain number of questions but is there any other method to save time from DI?
I am confident of doing well.. is there any personal advice from your side:lookround: am thankful for any help
One factor which can make a huge difference in your XAT performance is choosing the right questions. As you must already know, XAT is more about accuracy than speed.
DI is lengthy, but if you can choose the right caselets and decide to go with them, i think you should hit the jackpot. :w00t:
Good Luck
Gud job!!..
Can I also drop in here with my share of Gyaan!! 
Gud job!!..
Can I also drop in here with my share of Gyaan!!
You are more than WELCOME!
It would be great if seniors put in their own ideas for questions we MAY not ask apart from those which we do. 
Am gonna follow this thread like a puppy dog!
Hi,
Can someone provide some kind of percentile mapper of XAT 2009?
Thanks..
can someone post the link for past 5 yrs XAT papers pls....