CAT

XAT 2019 Detailed Analysis:

There were 2 parts in the XAT 2019 – Part I and Part II. Part A had 26 questions of Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning, 21 questions of Decision Making and 27 questions of Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation. This break up was exactly the same as that of last year. The time allotted for this part was 165 minutes (with no sectional time limit). Part B had 25 questions of General awareness to be answered in 15 minutes. There was no break provided between the two parts like last year.

A tougher than last year Quant + DI, a moderate Decision-Making section, a slightly easier than last year Verbal section and the absence of Analytical Reasoning were the highlights of XAT 2019.

Part A:

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning: (26 Qs)

 This section had 26 questions with 4 RCs and 1 poem making for 15 questions and 11 questions of Verbal Ability. The RCs were from the subjects of Psychology, Women Empowerment, Art and poetry. One of the Psychology passages dealt with mood and elevation as an inspiring emotion and the second Psychology passage discussed the idea of the creative occupations being predominated by people with bipolar disorders. Both these passages were about 550+ words but were easier to comprehend. The RC on people’s flippant judgments about art being a reflection of their own inadequacies was also one that could be attempted. The difficult RC was the one on women empowerment and the sexism attached to public language. Both these RCs were about 600+ words. Something that was impossible to crack was the poem by Sylvia Plath ‘Crossing the River’.  For anyone aware of Sylvia Plath’s typical style, this poem that revolved around the theme of ‘blackness’ could only be avoided. Though the passages in XAT 2019 were slightly easier to read in comparison to XAT 2018, the questions were not straight-forward. The options were also quite tricky. Many questions asked to weaken/make irrelevant/ not agree with the author’s main point.

The 5 Vocabulary-based questions provided a respite to the test taker. Of the 3 cloze passages, 1 antonym question and 1 analogy, about 3 could be easily attempted. The 4 CR questions were easy to moderate and of the 2 Parajumbles, one was moderate.

Overall, the section could be called moderate to difficult. The good attempts can be said to be 18 questions in about 55 mins.

Decision Making: (21 Qs)

This section surprised test takers with 21 questions – all of Decision Making caselets. A test taker who hoped to clear this sectional with the 6 AR questions that have been seen in the past would have been very much disappointed. For the well-prepared student whose preparation would have involved solving DM questions of the past papers, the two familiar caselets- that of Limo cars and Rollover ice cream were a welcome respite. All the other caselets were situational decision making and had difficult questions – most likely, least likely – with really lengthy options in some cases, which had to be further put in decreasing order of relevance.

Overall, the surprise factor in this section made this a slightly challenging section than previous years’ papers. In about 50 mins, one could attempt about 18 questions.

Quantitative Ability + Data Interpretation: (27 Qs)

The section consisted of 6 questions of Data Interpretation, 2 questions of Data sufficiency and 19 questions on Quantitative Ability, which was exactly in line with last year’s break up.

Data Interpretation was split into two sets of 3 questions each. One was standard mix of a pie chart and a bar graph while other was a caselet based on time zones. The mixed graph was direct and the questions were easy, with some data missing in one sector. The caselet on time zone was time consuming.

The quant part of the section was dominated by Geometry with 2 questions from co-ordinate geometry, 2 from mensuration, 3 from triangles and 1 from circle. Algebra also had its share of 5 questions – 2 questions were based on functions and 2 on surds. There was 1 question on polynomial where the data seemed to be inconsistent. Arithmetic was on the lower side with 1 question each on ratio, percentage, profit and loss and installments. Modern maths was totally absent except for 1 simple question on progressions. There were 2 questions on data sufficiency which were doable.

A typical observation in this paper was that while a few selected questions could be solved very easily (within 1 minute), while a few of them were heavily calculative and could take around 5 minutes or even more. Overall this section can be called moderate considering the mixed bag of difficulty level.

Allocating 60 mins to this section, 18+ can be termed as Good Attempts and 12+ can be a good score.

Part B:

General Knowledge:

With 25 questions to be taken in 15 minutes, this section was a mix of current affairs and static GK. It covered subjects like business, economy, politics, geography, science and art. There were questions about the Kyoto Protocol, Article 356, Raja Ravi Verma, countries bordering the Mediterranean sea, rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal, Horlicks acquisition, events of Indian history, the channels owned by Viacom 18, India’s biggest importer etc.

For a well-read student, good attempts could be said to be 10 to 12 questions.

Sectional Synopsis of XAT 2019:

Predicted Scores for different Percentiles:

Predicted Cut-offs for XAT 2019:

Wishing all XAT 2019 aspirants all the best!

Overall, this section was Easy as far as difficulty level is concerned.

Considering that the Reasoning section was not a smooth ride, this section deserved a time allocation of 45 minutes. Good Score for this section should be around 27 marks.

Analytical & Logical Reasoning (35 Qs, 40 marks)

SNAP has a history of producing some weird variety of questions in this section which are not seen in other major entrance examinations. This year, again, they have continued with the legacy. A couple of questions on unfolding 3D shapes were interesting and tricky. The questions with Pendulum and Candles also surprised the test takers.

The section was still dominated by conventional AR/LR questions. A set of seven questions of arrangement was time consuming and reasonably risky for most of test takers. Four independent questions based on arrangements, three questions on coding-decoding, one question each on calendar, blood relation, set theory, analogy were also there. There were five questions of the variety of missing numbers and series. 2-3 of these questions were tricky and may have wasted time of test takers.

Considering presence of a seven question set which was difficult to break and 4 to 5 more questions of unfolding 3D shapes and missing number/series, the overall difficulty level of this section can be termed moderate to difficult. 35 minutes was ideal time allocation for this section in which a good score should be around 20 marks.

General English (Verbal Ability, Verbal Reasoning and Reading Comprehension) (35 Qs, 40 marks)

In General English section of SNAP 2018, the level of difficulty went down prominently from last year. The questions were mostly straightforward and pretty much doable. The section consisted of a total of 35 questions out of which 25 questions were from Verbal Ability and Verbal Reasoning and there were 10 questions based on Reading Comprehension.

Verbal Ability and Verbal Reasoning: – The questions primarily tested vocabulary and grammar. 10-11 Vocabulary based questions from a wide variety of topics like synonyms, antonyms, spellings and odd man out would comfortably fall under the category of easy to moderate. There were about 12-13 questions based on grammar. Replicating the trend of last year, SNAP this year again tested the aspirants on topics like active-passive voice, word usage and parts of speech. With three filling the blanks questions based on conjunction, preposition and conditional tense, there were two match the following questions on word usages according to parts of speech. The conventional question type of sentence correction and error detection had a fair presence in this section with 3-4 questions. The Verbal reasoning questions were limited to one rearrangement of jumbled sentence and two analogies.

Reading Comprehension: The RC questions were distributed evenly between two passages. The passage on Google’s location tracking system was moderate in length and easy enough to understand. Most of the questions from this passage were direct ones, except for one question on title. However, the second passage on Trade Liberalization was quite lengthy (850-1000 words), so reading that would have taken a long time. Students with an average understanding of verbal as a section would have skipped the passage as it was lengthy and had 2 inference based questions.

With no real expectations of which question type will be categorized as TITA (Type in the answer), aspirants were given a mixed question bank for special questions ranging from unscrambling the scrambled sentence, to past participle form of a word, from identifying the correct spelling to plural form of a word.

Overall, Verbal section was fairly manageable with a mix of Easy to Moderate questions. It could certainly be a morale booster for a well prepared student.

Allocating 30 mins to this section, around 26 can be termed as Good Attempts and 22 can be considered a good score.

Current Affairs (25 Qs, 30 marks)

SNAP creators by living up to their promise of testing the aspirants on current affairs based on last two year weren’t able to surprise the test takers much. However, asking questions as latest as the 2018 assembly elections they surely raised the happiness index of test takers. There was a good spread of questions from the different types like Sports, Politics, Business, Who’s who (Business as well as Government), Awards and Technology related news.

With a total of six questions from business, five on politics and government, four on Who’s who, three on awards and recognition and a question on sports, aspirants were given a comfort zone to perform.

TITA (Special Questions) in this section were based on India’s rank in Happiness Index, No. of total seats in Chhattisgarh assembly Elections 2018, No. of people winning noble prize in Economics in 2018 and No. of cities in Indonesia where Asian Games are held.

A test taker who has been following news regularly should surely have an edge over others.

An ideal allocation can be 10 mins for this particular section and 16-17 attempts with 13 marks can be considered as a good score.

Expected Cut off:

SIBM-P: 72+

SCMHRD: 70+

SIBM-B, SIIB: 54+

The highlight of the remaining portion, once again, were two sets of Input-Output type. The logic behind each of the sets was very difficult to crack and would act as a speed breaker if not left aside quickly. One set of tabular data arrangement was also there. Apart from these, there were 12 independent Qs from varieties like Blood Relations, Series, Number based puzzles, Venn Diagram, BODMAS, coding-decoding, etc.

Approximately 28-30 genuine attempts with a 90+% accuracy should be sufficient for a Good Score.

Verbal Ability (32 Questions, 22 minutes):

The section was dominated by Vocabulary based questions. There were 2 Questions of Synonyms/Antonyms, 3 Fill-in-the-Blanks, 4 cloze tests based Qs and 6 Analogies, all of which demanded a decent command over vocabulary.

The rest of the section had 4 Questions of Para jumbles, 3 Questions of Spotting the errors, 2 Preposition based Fill-in-the-blanks and 2 Reading Comprehension of 4 Questions each. Both the RCs were 350 to 400 words each with a possible turn-around time of 8 to 10 minutes. A smart student should keep RC solving for the end as it was time-consuming.

Approximately 25-27 genuine attempts with 85+% accuracy should be sufficient for a Good Score.

Test conduction

As far as the conduction is concerned, Pearson has been doing a brilliant job since the last few years. The verification process before the Test is very smooth, provided you carry the right documents. The interface is quite good and responsive, however, one has to take note that there is no question pallet in the test and one has to use “next” and “previous” buttons in order to navigate through a section. Also avoid clicking on the “Close Review” tab, which will end your ongoing section, although after a couple of warnings.

Overall,

Test takers should reach the test center at least 30 minutes before the allocated time with all documents asked for and should be mentally ready for a Speed Test which has no Negative Marking.

All the Best to the Test Takers..!!

The sectional, in depth analysis is as follows:

Reading Comprehension (16 Qs of 1 mark each)

The RC Sectional made a stark departure from the last few years’ standard 4×4 RCs. This time with 5 RCs of  800 to 1000 words, the RCs not only challenged students with their length but also with their number and distribution of questions. 4 RCs had 3 questions each and  1 RC had 4 questions.

The questions were fairly direct and could be answered by skimming and scanning. The RCs on GDP and Utility of liberal arts graduates in the Second Machine age were easy as they had all direct questions. Two RCs-  one, on the Importance of Information and two, on Public Intellectuals had semi-inference question and could be answered easily by understanding the main idea from the first paragraphs. The last RC was on metamorphosis of culture, the questions were tricky because the options were close, but clear understanding of the first paragraph could make things easier. However, with return on investment on time (the realization is not more than 1 question per min) not being great, this  RC was not worth spending time on.

With 22 mins, making a comfortable 10 attempts with a net realization of 7 marks can be considered a good score.

Verbal Ability (20 Qs of 0.75 mark each)

The Verbal Ability sectional was on the same lines as last year, but with more question variety. The emphasis on language technicality continued. Both Grammar and Vocab questions offered diversity and the conventional Para-jumble made a return, much to the relief of the test takers! Of the 3 questions on arranging the jumbled letters to form a meaningful word that matched with one of the options, two were easy and moderate, one was really difficult. ‘Pernickety’ is certainly not a much used word. One of the two analogy questions was difficult. There were 3 questions of Sentence Completion, one of which was tricky. Grammar was back to its good old days of error detection and sentence correction. Of the 4 Grammar questions, only 1 was difficult. The two Para-jumble questions could be easily tackled by a trained student. Etymology-based questions continued their run for the third year, sending home the message loud and clear of IIFT’s interest in language origins and expectations from test takers. A very difficult set of words, the only easy one being ‘voracious’. The 2 match the following questions, one of which was Vocab-based and the other, Grammar-based, also used some difficult words.

Students with formal training in Vocabulary and strong Grammar training will have found a good number of questions for themselves. With 12-15 mins spent on this sectional and attempts of 12-13 questions, a student can hope to score about 7 marks.

Quantitative Ability (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

The section was more or less similar to last year with an exception of having 7 Qs of Geometry and Mensuration. Most of the problems were time consuming and demanded a test taker to demonstrate own Qs selection ability to find relatively easier Qs. Two questions of Logarithm and Time and Work were also part of this section with 3 to 4 Qs coming from Algebra.

We can classify this sections as Moderate to Tough. Ideal attempts in 25-27 minutes can be 12 and good score can be 8.

Data Interpretation (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

Once again the Data Interpretation section was the most challenging. IIFT has continued with its tradition of producing highly calculative Data Interpretation sets which tested calculation skills of all the test takers. Almost no set can be called an easy one. Test taker were forced to spend time in at least two sets to get the sectional cut off of this section.

Overall, we can classify this sections as difficult. Ideal attempts in 22 minutes can be 8 and good score can be 5.

Logical Reasoning (20 Qs of 1 mark each)

The section was divided into 3 sets of 4 questions, 2 sets of 2 questions, 1 set of 3 questions and a single question set. The paper evaluated areas like arrangements of 6 X 3 format, Data structure, Venn diagram and number puzzle. There was a clear emphasis visible on arrangement based puzzles ranging from circular arrangement, tabular arrangement to a grid-based matrix arrangement. Except for 1 set of 4 questions on friends and hotels and a single question on number puzzle, all the other sets were either time consuming or moderate to difficult. The set on Venn diagram was lengthy and just 2 question following it made it a time-consuming proposition, while the sets based on matrix and circular arrangement can be considered moderate to difficult. One set that was based on friends staying in rooms of different colour, required some assumptions to be made in order to solve the set. This certainly wasn’t a scoring section in the paper. Overall, 10-11 can be called good attempts and approximately 7 marks can be considered a good score in this section within 25 minutes.

General Knowledge (18 Qs of 0.5 mark each)

Continuing the last year’s trend, GK section this year too had 18 questions with 9 marks. Two of the three conceptual questions (i.e. Shell Company & Regressive taxation) were relatively easy. The rest 15 questions were factual, from areas viz. Sports, International Organizations, International Affairs, Business Trivia, Currency etc. True to the IIFT trend, there were 3 match-the-column questions and one pictorial question on Logo identification. In all, the GK section this year was easier compared to last few years. A well-prepared student should be able to attempt around 10 questions and 3 marks can be considered a good score in GK section.

Overall Analysis

Probable Cut off for IIFT Delhi and Kolkata: 30 Marks

Answer key for IIFT-18 can be found here.