XAT 2016 to be held on January 3, 2016 in paper pen mode will be a totally revamped the exam. Announcing the significant changes XLRI the XAT 2016 conducting B-school advises that the the total number of questions has been brought down to 78 in the question paper and the time allotted has been increased by 20 minutes. The candidates would have 170 minutes to answer the questions. Besides, the level of difficulty of the questions has also been carefully designed to provide level playing field in the test.
Total questions & overall time changed
Instead of more than 100 questions, there will be only 78 questions in Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) 2016. The time limit to solve these questions will now be 170 minutes.
The format of supplementary sections of GK and Essay would remain same with some minor changes. The time allowed to answer both GK and Essay would be 35 minutes. Last year, the GK score of most candidates was on the lower side, and some candidates had complained about the time. Taking this feedback into consideration the number of questions in the GK has been reduced to 25. All the questions would be “General” in nature rather than “specific”. There would be no negative marking in this section.
Reduces LOD; More attempts expected
XLRI has announced that the level of difficulty of the questions has also been carefully designed.
In order to enable students to attempt as many questions as possible and encourage them to demonstrate all-round skills, the difficulty level of the questions has been brought down.
In the previous years, students would attempt only half of the questions reducing the range of marks scored among students. However if the examination is made very easy, many would finish the test before time.
If ten thousand students finish the question paper in time and if all of them get most of the questions right then it would be difficult for XAT associated colleges to choose from these ten thousand students. Therefore XAT-2016 has been designed in such a manner that that the top hundred students will be able to complete the test in 170 minutes.
This way, the examination would avoid 2 possible errors: low range of scores and excellent students not getting enough opportunities to showcase their ability because of too easy a question paper.
Negative marking: Penalty of 0.05 marks for unattempted questions
According to XAT 2016 conducting authority “We also tried to counteract the phenomenon of students leaving too many questions un-attempted. We appreciate the fact that “leaving the question” is also a sign of intelligence but we are also concerned that students are becoming risk averse in attempting to answer difficult questions. We believe that if one aspires to be a good manager, one should be able to take reasonable risk. That is how one creates future possibilities.”
To take care of both this issue, in XAT-2016 students have a choice of not attempting 13 questions. Beyond 13 unattempted questions, any unattempted question will carry the negative mark of 0.05 and in addition there would also be negative marking of 0.25 marks for any wrong answer. According to XAT Centre 2016 “We believe this would encourage the risk taking ability of the students while making XAT robust in differentiating a good student from the not-so-good student.”
The last date of registration and application for XLRI – XAT 2016 has been extended from November 30 to December 10, 2015.
The format of XAT would remain pen-paper based. This is to ensure that candidates of all backgrounds are at par, so that those who have pre-familiarity of operating computers, specially coming from privileged background or having worked in IT sector, do not get any advantage over others who do not have access to computers. The paper-pen mode also ensures that all candidates are tested on exactly the same set of questions, and not on different sets.
XAT 2016 will be divided between Objective MCQs and subjective Essay Writing tests. XAT 2016 test takers will have to complete the first 3 sections of the first part of the MCQ exam namely Verbal and Logical Ability; Decision Making; Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation. General Knowledge & essay writing test will not be taken into account to determine the percentile for short listing.
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Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on XAT 2016
