XAT 2017: Last week prep tips on sectional approach

1. Verbal Section

This section has 50% Reading Comprehension-based questions and 50% of verbal ability. The reading comprehensions are generally in the range of 200-300 words (each passage) and not dense, Hence it will all boil down to options and how a candidate steers through them. Last year, verbal ability had critical reasoning, vocabulary and grammar-based questions and of moderate or higher difficulty.

Spending about 50 mins on this section should be sufficient to score the targetted cutoff.

2. Quantative and Data Interpretation

Quant and Data Interpretation (DI) section has been the easiest section amongst aptitude sections and it has been the easiest for three years in a row. Quant is generally consists of 18 to 20 questions while DI and Data Sufficiency (DS) constitutes 8 to 10 questions. DI is generally calculative, DS is generally moderate and Quant is the easier one. Hence, starting with Quant and negotiating to the others should be the ideal approach.

An hour for this section should get you to reach the cutoff.

3. Decision Making and Logical Reasoning

Decision Making and Logical Reasoning (LR) is a time consuming section. The decision making part revolves around ethical decision-making or situational decision-making, both of which are time consuming but easily solvable. The LR part is also similar. Hence an aspirant should work on his strengths and choose where to start from.

An hour should be allocated to this section and dealt with patience. This is a scoring section.

4. General Knowledge & Essay Writing

GK section is such that anyone who is aware of the year's happenings will end up getting close to a dozen questions right. Just because the score of this section doesnt constitute to the percentiles, a lot of aspirants take this section lightly. This score however comes in handy for XLRI or XIMB calls.

Essay writing is generally on an argumentative topic and deserves a mature outlook on the issue. Again, because this isn't an active component for selection procedures for any other college apart from XLRI, candidates take it lightly. However, this is not advisable.

Overall XAT 2017 exam strategy:

The paper is not easy and hence calls for perseverance. It is advisable that aspirants take time in solving questions rather than trying to hurry up with questions. The questions are also relatively time consuming but are solvable, and hence deserve that little patience.

Also, the cutoff for XAT is quite manageable if time management is done properly.

XLRI conducts the test on behalf of XAMI. XAT scores are used for admission by more than 150 B-Schools across India.