XAT, conducted by XLRI Jamshedpur, is an over 50 year old All India level Admission Test that selects students for management education. The long experience and the expertise of the institute in this area has enabled XLRI to extend this test to other Management Institutes. Apart from XLRI, there are 42 other Management Institutes who are selecting students from XAT 2008 and this makes it probably the second most preferred entrance exam, after CAT, for MBA aspirants. The leading institutes accepting XAT scores include SP Jain, Mumbai and Goa Institute of Management, Goa apart from institutes such as XIMB and XISS.

Q: What prep strategies do you recommend for this exam?
The students preparing for XAT must concentrate on both accuracy as well as speed because the number of questions is more than in CAT whereas the usual time to attempt the paper, at 2 hours, is less than the time one has in CAT. While the cut-offs are typically as low as CAT in percentage terms, a higher number of questions still necessitates one to be able to go through the paper with a relatively higher speed. On the other hand, the relatively tough level of questions demands a slight cautious approach to ensure a higher accuracy.

Q: What is the usual structure of the exam?
Interestingly XAT typically has 3 sections and usually follows differential marking and differential negative marking across sections. The 3 sections in XAT 2007 for example had a 33% negative marking for the first five wrong answers in a section and a 50% negative marking for any wrong answers beyond that.

Q: What is the biggest difference between XAT and CAT?
Apart from the 3 sections that are to be attempted in 120 minutes, XAT also has an essay section wherein a student gets 20 minutes to write on a topic given in the paper. The topics can range from something of great contemporary relevance such as "Economic Growth without environmental damage – a mirage or a reality" to slightly more abstract ones such as "A painter when asked about his best piece of work replied – My next one". It can be inferred that the Essays look at a combination of English writing skills and the ability to think laterally within a very short period of time. The Essay writing at the end makes it imperative for students to practice on grammar as well as cohesive English reasoning. The essay invariably also comes up as a point of discussion during the personal interview of candidates who clear the written stage. Students must practice writing everyday as per the standards of writing rubrics. For reference students can take clues from the official IELTS and TOEFL website for the writing standards and samples.

Q: What about the various sections in XAT?
The 3 sections in XAT are English, Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation, and Reasoning & Decision Making ability.

In the English Section, while the vocabulary questions are more usage based than memory or knowledge based, the grammar questions require a solid understanding of the language fundamentals. Critical reasoning questions and para-jumbles usually test the verbal reasoning skills in this section. The RC passages require one to make quick choices in terms of the passages to be attempted and those to be left out.

Traditionally, the Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation section in XAT is relatively tough with very few 'sitters'. While the questions in Quantitative Ability span algebra, arithmetic and geometry with a focus on the first one, the Data Interpretation questions require good number crunching skills. Students need to incorporate more practice in this area in their preparation schedules so as to maximize their score.

While the Decision-making questions are a recent introduction and imitate B-School case-studies, the Reasoning Ability questions usually are a mix of moderate to tough questions, given the demanding time-limits. At an overall level, this section is time-consuming and therefore, question selection becomes a very important tool here.