Endeavor Careers Posted on January 4, 2020

XAT 2020 Exam Analysis

The last major exam of the year for the B-school exam aspirants of 2019, XAT 2020 ended the year with the great flourish expected of it. Overall, the exam had no surprises and, in comparison to its past years, was a notch easier with a less abstract VA+LR and shorter caselets in DM. Comparatively, QA was slightly lengthier and calculative.

XAT 2020 had 2 Parts, A and B. Part A with 75 questions and Part B with 25 questions. The 75 questions of Part A carried 1 mark each with .25 negative marking for incorrect questions and were distributed across three sectionals: VA LR -26 questions, DM -21 questions and QA DI – 28 questions. There was a .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 2020 Exam Analysis:

XAT 2020 Part A:

Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning: (26 Questions)

The entire section saw a huge presence of Critical Reasoning with 6 CR questions – 3 inference, 2 -intent of the author and paragraph and several other inference and weaken questions in the 4 RCs. The 4 RCs were shorter in length with roughly 350-450 words and were based on topics like non-natural methods of pleasure making for easy satisfaction in mankind creating need for more, refugee and geography – being outdated concepts (labile sense of self), capitalism and pointless jobs to keep people busy, and production of knowledge for consumption and for use in further production. The first three were easy to moderate, the last one was a difficult concept and dense. There were 2 questions based on Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice poem – one question on which option was not the title. The 2 Parajumbles were easy. The two Grammar questions were moderate – one was error detection and the other was sentence correction. There were 2 Text Completion questions, one was moderate but the one on map as a metaphor for brain was confusing.

Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning	Number of Questions/Difficult Level
Grammar	2 (Easy to Moderate)
Text Completion	2 (Easy to Moderate)
Parajumbles	2 (Easy to Moderate)
Poetry	2 (Moderate)
Critical Reasoning	6 (Easy to Moderate)
Reading Comprehension	4 with 3 questions each (Moderate to Difficult)

An attempt of 18-19 questions with 85% accuracy can be said to fetch a good score of 14.5 which can be considered 98.5 percentile.

Decision Making: (21 Questions)

This section did not have any AR questions like last year. All 21 questions were purely Decision Making caselets, distributed as 7 sets with 3 questions each. All caselets were short in length with not many facts being stated, giving an easy feel to the sectional. Some sets, however, had very tricky options. The caselet on government and private construction company -Grow and Prosper could be said to be the most difficult one. The easy caselets were that of the interns, the business of natural spring water, the outlet of bakery and eggless product and the case of the king who wanted peace between the mountain region and the plains of his kingdom. The last three cases had one difficult question each. These difficult questions were the ones that asked to list options in decreasing order- there were 4 such questions in the sectional. The caselet of Small Store dealing with computer peripherals was moderate. The case of online store sales- satin and cotton pillow covers was very tricky.

Decision Making	Number of Questions/Difficulty Level
Interns caselet	3 (Easy to Moderate)
Natural spring water	3 (Easy to Moderate)
Government and private construction companies	3 (Moderate to Difficult)
Outlet of bakery and eggless products	3 (Easy to Moderate)
Mountain and plain regions of a kingdom	3 (Easy to Moderate)
Small Store -computer peripherals dealer	3 (Easy to Moderate)
Online sales- pillow cases	3 (Moderate to Tricky)

An attempt of 16 questions with 85% accuracy can be said to fetch a good score of 13 which can be considered 98.5 percentile.

Quantitative Ability + Data Interpretation (28 Questions)

QA and DI had 28 questions. The QA questions of this section were slightly lengthy and calculative but the DI sets were simple and straightforward compensating for the time-consuming quant part.

Geometry and mensuration had a higher weightage with 7 questions. Clearly, this section seems to have evolved over the years to mature to this level.

Quantitative Ability	Number of Questions/Difficulty Level
Percentage	1 (Easy)
Ratio & Proportion	1 (Moderate)
Time & Work	1 (Easy)
Time Speed Distance	1 (Difficult)
Defined Functions	1 (Easy)
Geometry	3 (2Easy, 1Difficult)
Mensuration	4 (1Easy, 2Moderate, 1 Difficult)
Set Theory	2 (Easy)
Probability	1 (Easy)
Progression	1 (Easy)
Numbers	2 (Easy)
Partnership	1 (Easy)
Misc	3 (2 Easy, 1 Moderate)
Data interpretation (GDP)	3 (Moderate)
Data interpretation (Revenue)	3 (Easy)

An attempt of 21 questions with 85% accuracy can be said to fetch a good score of 16.5 which can be considered 98.5 percentile.

XAT 2020 Part B: General Awareness:

With 25 questions on a diverse mix of topics like books, rivers, famous personalities, history, and science, the section was easy to moderate. There were a number of questions on India. More questions were based on static GK rather than dynamic.

Sectional Synopsis of XAT 2020:

Section	Difficulty	Ideal Time	Good Attempts	Good Score
QA + DI	Easy to Moderate	60 Minutes	21+	16.5+
VA + LR	Moderate to Tough	55 Minutes	18-19+	14.5+
DM	Moderate	50 Minutes	16+	13+
Overall	Moderate to Tough	165 Minutes	56+	44+

Predicted Scores for different Percentiles:

Section	Score @ 90%ile (Appx.)	Score @ 80%ile (Appx.)	Score @ 70%ile (Appx.)
Quant	11.5+	9.8+	8.6+
VA+LR	12.3+	10.5+	9.2+
DM	10.6+	9+	7.9+
Overall	31.5+	25.2+	22.1+

Predicted Cut-offs for XAT 2020

Section	XLRI – HRM	XLRI-BM	XIMB/IMT-G
Quant	70%ile (8.6+)	90%ile (11.5+)	70%ile (8.6+)
VA+LR	85%ile (11.3+)	80%ile (10.5+)	70%ile (9.2+)
DM	75%ile (8.3+)	80%ile (9+)	70%ile (7.9+)
Overall	94%ile (34.5+)	96%ile (37+)	90%ile (31.5+)