XAT 2022 Exam Analysis

Endeavor Careers Posted on January 3, 2022

XAT 2022 was conducted on 2nd January. Essay writing was brought back to the paper after a gap of 3 years. There was a combined time limit of 25 minutes for part 2 of the test which included regular 25 Questions of General Awareness and 2 essay writing topics, of which 1 was to be chosen. The word limit for essay writing was 250 words.

Here is the XAT 2022 Exam Analysis you are looking for!

XAT 2022 had 2 Parts. Part 1 with 75 questions and Part 2 with 27questions (including 2 essay writing topics). The 75 questions of Part 1 carried 1 mark each with 0.25 negative marking for incorrect questions and were distributed across three sectionals: VA LR -26 questions, Decision Making -21 questions and QA DI – 28 questions. There was a 0.10 negative marking for all unattempted questions above a total of 8. GK questions carried 1 mark each with no negative marking for incorrect or unattempted questions.

Section-wise XAT 2022 Exam Analysis:

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning:

This sectional had 26 questions like last year’s VALR. The 26 questions comprised 4 Reading Comprehension passages of 300 – 400 words with 3 questions each, 3 questions of Grammar, 2 Sentence Completion questions, 2 Parajumbles, 4 Critical Reasoning questions, and interestingly 2 poems.

Vikram Seth was back this year, with his poem ‘Mistaken’ carrying two questions. The poem ‘Immigrant’ by Tabhish Khair carried one question. All three were moderate. Grammar questions were of the Error Detection type. One required the test takers to identify the correct sentences, another the incorrect sentences, and the third required detecting wrong use of prepositions. The question of incorrect sentences was quite tricky, and the other two were easy. The parajumbles had five sentences, and one was difficult with two distinct ideas.

Three of the CR questions were ‘best concluded’, and one was ‘cannot be inferred’. One of the Sentence Completion was very easy, but the second which had blanks for the adjectives starting with ‘unplanned’ was quite tricky. RCs again were a departure from the ‘abstract’ RCs of yesteryear XAT. The RCs on Stupidity, and Hedonic and Eudaimonic ways of life were easier than the RCs on Publicness, and Lying versus Bullshitting were moderate to difficult.

Question Type	Number of Questions	Difficulty -level
Grammar: Error Detection	3	2 Easy, 1 Difficult
Sentence Completion	2	1 Easy, 1 Difficult
Parajumbles	2	1 Moderate, 1 Moderately Difficult
Critical Reasoning	4	3 Moderate, 1 Difficult
Poem based Comprehension	3	2 Moderate, 1 Difficult
RC 1: Stupidity -an inability to look for solutions differently	3	Moderate
RC 2: Not just Hedonic and Eudaimonic ways of living, but a psychological one too	3	Moderate
RC 3: The importance of Publicness to progress	3	Moderate to Difficult
RC 4: Lying versus bullshitting	3	Difficult

The sectional can be termed moderate.

About 16 attempts with 80% accuracy in 50-55 minutes can be considered a good score.

Decision Making:

This sectional had 21 questions distributed across 7 caselets with 3 questions each. Interestingly, most caselets this year were situational caselets, with only one business caselet. Though in terms of passage length, the caselets were like those of 2021, the three ‘arrange in decreasing order’ questions were challenging and time consuming. Overall, the closeness and trickiness of options made the sectional moderate difficult.

Question Type	Number of Questions	Difficulty -level
Business Caselet: Dileep Dosan and the hospital food court	3	Easy to Moderate
Situational Caselet: Dr Raghubir and his emission non-compliant SUV	3	Moderate
Situational Caselet: Future Leaders private school and the issue of school fees payment	3	Easy to Moderate
Situational Caselet: Sundaresan and the grading of Corporate Responsibility assignments	3	Moderately Difficult
Ethical Caselet: Korkai, Budugu and the case of a bridge to develop the island	3	Moderate
Situational Caselet: FURSCA of PSU and the case of residence allotment	3	Moderate
Situational Caselet: A2Z Research and the issue of faculty recruitment and confirmation	3	Easy to Moderate

The sectional can be termed moderate.

About 14-15 attempts with 80% accuracy in 50 minutes can be considered a good score.

Quantitative Ability + Data Interpretation:

QA + DI section had 28 questions. The QA questions were majorly very straightforward and had no lengthy calculations. On the other hand, most of the questions from data interpretation were time consuming and difficult. The number of data interpretation questions saw a drastic increase compared to the earlier editions of XAT. There were 4 sets of DI each containing 3 questions. The other standout feature of this section was unusually high number of questions from Number Systems.

Following is the detailed break up of QA+DI section:

Quantitative Ability	Number of Questions	Difficulty Level
Profit and Loss	1	Easy
Numbers	6	3 Easy, 1Moderate, 2 Difficult
Time & Work	1	Easy
Probability	1	Moderate
Functions	1	Easy
Geometry	2	Easy
Progressions	2	Easy
Clocks	1	Moderate
Data Sufficiency	1	Easy
Data Interpretation – Frequency Bar Graph	3	Time consuming, Moderate to Difficult
Data Interpretation – Correct / Incorrect answer table	3	Time consuming, Difficult
Data Interpretation – Share Price (candle stick chart)	3	Easy to Moderate
Data Interpretation –Stacked Line graph	3	2 Easy, 1 difficult

An attempt of 16 questions with 85-90% accuracy can be said to fetch a good score of 12.5 which can be considered 98 percentiles.

Part 2:

General Awareness:

With 25 questions on a diverse mix of topics like business and finance, space exploration, science, history, sports, geography, books, literature, politics, current affairs etc. the section was moderate. There was also a question on XLRI alumni who has been recently appointed as Deputy National Security Advisor.

Essay-Writing:

Two topics were provided, of which the second seemed to resonate easily with students. The word limit was 250. The space provided for essay input did not allow for paragraph breaks.

Essay 1: Capitalism and democracy follow different paths. Unequally distributed property rights on the one hand and political rights on the other, hierarchical decision making by managers and capital owners versus debate, compromise and decision making within democratic politics. Therefore, they cannot co-exist.

Essay 2: In management, we do not need people who never experienced a setback. Such people are highly averse to taking risks. Because B-schools majorly focus on stellar academic achievements during admission, the selected students turn out to be average managers.

Sectional Synopsis of XAT 2022:

Section	Difficulty	Ideal Time	Good Attempts	Good Score
QA + DI	Moderate	60 Minutes	16+	12.5+
VALR	Moderate	55 Minutes	16+	12.5+
DM	Moderate	50 Minutes	14+	10+
Overall	Moderate	165 Minutes	46+	35+

Predicted Scores for different Percentiles:

Section	Score @ 96%ile	Score @ 90%ile	Score @ 80%ile
Quant	10.5+	9+	6.5+
VA+LR	11.5+	10+	7+
DM	9+	7.5	5+
Overall	30.5+	24.5+	17+

*These are approximate scores basis faculty and student feedback

Predicted Cut-offs for XAT 2022

Section	XLRI – BM	XLRI – HRM
Quant	90%ile	75%ile
VA+LR	80%ile	80%ile
DM	80%ile	75%ile
Overall	96%ile	94%ile