XAT 2014 Question Paper Analysis

by Parasharan Chari

Aspirants would have enjoyed their New Year celebrations; XAT would have enjoyed the students! I wouldn’t be totally wrong if I say there is nothing that comes close to XAT in terms of testing the quality, perseverance, time management skills & logic of an aspirant as far as aptitude test is concerned. Respect – is the only word that comes to mind when you see a paper that redefines quality, year after year, relentlessly.

Let us start our analysis with the only harmless section of the paper – GK. The questions covered a wide spectrum – starting from the countries in the G7 to The Nobel Peace Prize winners to the Governors of the RBI to the number of officially recognised languages according to the 8^th schedule of the Indian Constitution to the car manufacturers & their country of origin etc. Owing to the variety of the topics covered in the GK section and the fact that it is not going to be considered for rolling out the GDPI calls, we can safely say that a score of 12+ can be considered a really good score.

As far as the essay is concerned, XAT went back to what it was best known for – an abstract topic which could have triggered a smile on the face of the aspirants and each one of them would have written something as unique as their fingerprints. The topic was “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be touched or seen but are only felt with the heart”. Definition of scope, structure of thought, right usage of language with relevant examples & the closure should play an important role in the grading of the essay. As the section doesn’t contribute to calls, there can’t be a cutoff per se, but as it plays an important role during the interviews wherein a candidate might be asked to justify his thought process and/or depth of understanding of the topic.

As far as aptitude is concerned, this year’s XAT can be considered a slightly more difficult paper in comparison to XAT’13. The section wise analysis can be as follows:

Verbal Ability section – had 15 questions of Reading Comprehension and 13 questions of Verbal Ability. The RCs were abstract & the dense, add to it the closeness of the options and the outcome is a relatively difficult section in comparison to last year. The parajumbles were relatively easy. The fill in the blanks – the ones that were vocabulary based or the parts of speech based – were application based and a careful look at the options will help you fetch the correct answer. An above average aspirant will be able to cruise through 3 RCs, the 2 parajumbles, the 6 fill in the blanks in 45 mins. Given the scenario where he makes around 17 to 18 attempts, a score of around 12+ can be considered a good score.

Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation demands a sub-section analysis! Data Interpretation had 3 sets and a “standard” CAT taker will not be able to solve more than 1 of it. As far as quant is concerned, XAT behaved like a typical XAT – full of concept based questions which demanded sincere solving. The “none of the above” raised it ugly head in a lot of questions which would have otherwise been “Eureka” answers for the aspirants. All in all, the difficulty level in comparison to last year has gone up slightly. Careful selection of questions would have given an above average aspirant around 15 attempts and a score of 12+ which can be classified as a good score.

As far as Decision making section is concerned, the length of a couple of sets would have turned off an average reader. But then, the remainder of the paper was manageable. There were 2 critical reasoning questions for comfort followed by a reasoning question which was negotiable. Apart from that, some basic calculations would have given the aspirants the much needed attempts as far as the probability based questions are concerned. The Rao-Reddy set was also manageable. All in all, a relatively easy DM section in comparison to last year and an above average aspirant would have managed good 16-17 attempts in this section and a score of 12+ can be considered a good score.

Going by the calculations we saw last year, a sectional balance was primary and the total score just about fell in place. I feel a sectional score of around 8-9 in verbal, around 8-9 in Decision making & 9-10 in quant will be good enough for a sectional cutoff. However for an aspirant to sit comfortable, he would have to sit with a score of around 35+ for him to reach a score of 96+ percentile so that he can cash in during the final admissions stage.

Best of luck for the ’4 days to go’ for the SNAP countdown and the 10 days to go for the CAT countdown!

About the Author:

Parasharan Chari is an alumnus of SP Jain and is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer at Endeavor Careers and is also associated with the design and development of its online testing portal www.CatGurus.com.