XAT 2015 to keep up reputation of being an exam for all; know the pattern analysis

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MBAUniverse.com News Desk |
October 13, 2014
The XAT 2015, to be held on January 4 2015, kept up its reputation of being an exam for all. Although the number of questions remain the same, the questions will test knowledge in quantitative, verbal and reasoning areas, general knowledge.
The detailed analysis of expected XAT 2015 exam from MBAUniverse.com prep expert team will help aspirants going for preparation

The XAT 2015 exam is divided into two parts this year also. The Part 1 is of total 2 hours and 20 minutes duration which consists of Quantitative Ability (QA), English Language Ability & Logical Reasoning and Decision Making. Part 2 of the exam consists of Essay Writing and General Awareness. Duration of this section is 40 minutes. Questions in General Awareness are expected to be from Business, Economics and Politics related to Business Environment. You have to attempt both essay as well as General Awareness section. Total duration of XAT 2015 is of 3 hours.


Section

Total Duration

Part 1

140 minutes

Quantitative Ability

No Std Break up

English and LR

  “    “

Decision Making

  “    “

Part 2

40 Minutes

Essay Writing

 

General Awareness

 

 

The detailed analysis of expected XAT 2015 exam from MBAUniverse.com prep expert team will help aspirants going for preparation


XAT 2015 Analysis of expected pattern

Verbal & Logical Reasoning  

This section is expected to be a reading intensive one and the focus would be more on reasoning and vocabulary.

The types of questions to be asked and the types of reading comprehension passages that would feature in the test will expect students to know the language and its intricacies quite thoroughly.  

Reading Comprehension

There were 15 questions based on 5 reading comprehension passages in XAT 2014 and the same trend is expected in XAT 2015. Although, unlike in previous years there were no questions on case lets in the verbal ability section, you may not rule out the same in XAT 2015.

The topics covered were:

- Politics (Green parties in mainstream politics)

- Linguistics (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or Linguistic Relativity hypothesis)

- Organizational Ecology  

The passages were short but the abstract topics they presented and the writing style acted as impediments in comprehending the same.  

Verbal Ability ( Verbal and Logical ability had 28-30 Questions)

In 2013, in the Verbal Ability set, XAT had only paragraphs and fill in the blanks. In 2014 the test re-introduced the critical reasoning questions apart from retaining the jumbled paragraph questions. Some grammar based questions also featured in the test. Moreover, some new patterns of questions testing one's knowledge of figures of speech were introduced. The turns and twists need the XAT 2015 aspirants not to leave anything to chance.

Critical Reasoning: There were 13 questions on critical reasoning that were based on small passages. Most of the questions were challenging because one had to read the passage, understand the line of reasoning and then reason out the correct answer. The options were close and at times confusing.  

Grammar Based: There were 5 sentence correction questions based on concepts like word forms, moods and conditional and tense forms.  

Jumbled Paragraph: There were 3 questions in this set, both taken from the book Hegel, Nietzsche and Philosophy by Will Dudley.  

So be prepared to go for versatile preparation.

Section B – Data Interpretation and Quantitative Ability ( 31 Questions in Last Year XAT)

This section comprised 26 questions based on Quantitative Ability, 2 on Data Sufficiency and 10 on Data Interpretation in XAT 2013, the number was reduced to 31 in 2014 and in 2015 XAT is expected to follow the same pattern.  This section was tough, except for a few problems, which were lengthy but comparatively easy to solve.  

Quantitative Ability questions

The question based on five points, whose abscissa and ordinates were changing was a really difficult one. The problem based on a function 'f' was apparently difficult but it required just a basic knowledge of Trigonometry. Problem based on Permutation and Combination (5 passengers and 7 stations) was simple and one should have attempted it. Problem from Geometry tested only the basic understanding of the subject. In a nutshell, one can say that most of the questions in the Problem solving section were conceptual. The selection of easier questions would have helped to maximize the scores.  

Section C – Decision Making

This section was easy and questions were based on Linear/ Matrix Arrangement and Logic Puzzles.  

Decision Making (25 Questions in Last year XAT)

There may be two or more  caselets in XAT 2015. In XAT 2014, the case lets were easy to read and understand, but attempting the questions correctly required a lot of analysis. The options were also very close that added to the difficulty. One of the questions required passing knowledge of mathematics. In this section, a decent attempt would be 15 to 17 questions with a possible score of 11+ marks.  

General Knowledge

GK is a recent add on part in XAT. This part although does not constitute in calculation of percentile at the first stage of shortlisting, top B schools like XLRI uses it in final shortlisting.

The GK section has 20 questions on various topics like business, economy, social and political issues, current affairs, appointments, books & authors etc. This sections is supposed to be solved in 10 minutes.

ESSAY

The topics for the essay in XAT 2013 was "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries" and in XAT 2014 it was ‘Beautiful things are not to be touched but are felt’. The student had 30 minutes to write a  well worded essay. On the similar note there will be an essay topic in XAT 2015.

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Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more tips on XAT 2015 preparation