Best of luck for exam result.

The paper took almost everyone by surprise, If tweets are anything to go by then 90% of those appeared for XAT are not happy with their performance in the exam. All of them thought, essay topic was a cake walk, verbal was the easiest and Quant had lot of higher level mathematics and reasoning had no reasoning for it being so difficult. Most of them resorted to age old tactic of guess work in such desperate situation.

Marking scheme too was a deviation from previous years. For the first five incorrect answers in each section, 0.2 of the allotted would be deducted and for the subsequent incorrect answers in the section 0.25 mark would be deducted. And with that they made sure that all the strategies and work arounds that you had planned for XAT 2010 were out of the window.

Answer keys for XAT 2010 are already out and are hosted on testfunda and pagalguy both. As always, all the institutes are also out with their analysis of the exam and how, one could have attempted the paper. How was your XAT 2010 experience?

XLRI Selection Process

XLRI selection process is plain vanilla on the outside, constituted of Written test, i.e. XAT 2010 and Interviews. Both Written and GD PI have equal weightages. During PI stage, there will be three panelists and two must approve you for you to make it to the final merit list, which of course is based on overall marks you score. I have already covered the XAT exam here.

Previous year cut offs

Following are the previous year overall cut offs,

2008 : BM - 98.5 percentile PM & IR - 97.5 percentile
2009 : BM - 98.03 percentile PM & IR - 95 percentile

and these are section wise cut offs. Cannot guarantee the correctness of following though,

PM & IR -  92.69 percentile in VA, 84.58 percentile in QA, 80.13 percentile in RA
BM - 90.03 percentile in VA, 94.9 percentile in QA, 90.21 percentile in RA.

As far as placements is concerned, last two prospectus, GBO 2009 and GBO 2012, both indicate a package of 9.6L as the highest and 6.8L as average package. Interestingly, Principal’s message in both prospectus’ say that the further pages talk about admission process for 2009. Clearly, they forget to proof read the prospects before putting it up on the website. Having said that, I don’t think placement figures can escape proof reading. You are free to draw your own conclusion, jury is out.

Last date of form submission is 31st December, 2009. You can download the application form and other stuff from this link.

Marking

XAT 2010 is the only entrance exam which employs progressive negative marking. So, guess work is a strictly avoidable. Accuracy is much more important in XAT then any other exam conducted in this country. You don’t want to loose half a mark for every wrong answer by indulging yourself in guess work.

Pattern

XAT 2008 had 120 questions to be attempted in 120 minutes and XAT 2009 had 104 questions in all. The paper was followed by a 10 minute break and then an essay for which 20 minutes were given. One important thing with XAT in last two exams has been that, there are three sections only, Quant & DI as one section, Analytical Reasoning and verbal ability. Since, Quant and DI are one section, you can easily make sure that you focus on either of the two as per your strength and convenience. Just make sure that, you don’t miss out on the sitters that may be there in either of the two. Higher mathematics is covered in XAT, but you can skip it.

XAT Essay

XAT has always had an essay . Though, there is not much time left to hone up either your writing skills or Current affair awareness, you can still make sure that you update yourself with what was hot in the year gone by. This is year end, So most of the blogs, websites, news channels will be doing the year that was and 2010 predictions or 2010 trends kind of shows. They can be a good source of revision. FYI, XAT 2009 essay topic was  “The Inherent vice of Capitalism is unequal sharing of blessings and the inherent virtue of Socialism is equal sharing of misery.”