Check Exam Analysis, Expected Cutoff Details, and Expert Review Here

XAT 2023 Examinations were conducted on January 8, 2023. Candidates who have appeared for the XAT 2023 exams can check here the expert analysis of the entrance exam, expected cutoff, difficulty level, and the expected percentile for admissions to the MBA programmes.

XAT 2023: XLRI Jamshedpur conducted the XAT 2023 Exams on January 8, 2023, for the admissions to their Business Management and Human Resource Management programmes, Candidates who have appeared for the XAT 2023 Exams can check below, expert opinion on the examination, difficulty level and sectional analysis and the expected cutoff for MBA Admissions.

Structure of the Exam

The test was slightly different from last year’s  with the addition of one question in Decision making and the 5-minute Mock keyboard test. The total number of questions this year was 76 and 25 in Part-I and Part-III respectively.

Part-I comprised three sections:

1. Verbal and Logical Reasoning
2. Decision-Making
3. Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation

Part-II comprised Mock Keyboard testing and Part III contained General Knowledge questions

The duration of the test was 175 minutes for the first part and 30 minutes for the second. All questions carried equal marks with negative marking of 0.25 for a wrong answer. There was a negative marking of 0.1 for un-attempted questions in Part-1, for such questions over and above eight un-attempted questions.

The section on General Knowledge, however, did not have any negative marking and the marks scored in this section would be used for evaluation only after the initial screening i.e., these will not be used for the shortlisting of candidates for the GWPI round.

The break-up of the questions across sections is as below.

For the essay, students were to choose from among three topics given to them and write the essay on any one of them. There was a word limit of 250 for the essay. Students had one additional essay to choose from compared to a total of two essays that they had last year.

The topics reproduced based on feedback from students were as below

1. Risk is an essential need of the soul. The absence of risk produces a kind of boredom that paralyzes in a different way from fear but almost as much.
2. Rapid decarbonization to fulfil India’s net-zero commitment will have business consequences.
3. Someone with half your IQ is making 10x as you because they are not smart enough to doubt themselves.

General Knowledge

The GK section in XAT 2023 had a mix of questions from various areas including Science & Technology, history, geography, sports, business, etc.

The split of the questions in this section was as below

As the section is not used for shortlisting, there will be no cut-off requirement for this section. However, those who attempted 12-13 with about 80% accuracy can consider themselves to have done well.

Section 1: Verbal and Logical Reasoning

The breakup of the Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension segments is as below:

1. A) Verbal Ability

The Verbal Ability segment had a total of 12 questions

The four Critical Reasoning questions needed some time to crack but were not undoable.

Paragraph Formation were difficult this year too.

The Punctuation questions introduced afresh this year were not much of an issue and well-read students could have figured them out without investing too much time.

1. B) Reading Comprehension

There were four RC passages, with three questions each, and one poem with two questions.

The first poem was not very difficult to read. However, with only two questions from it compared to three from the passages, it would have been tempting to go for the passages first. However, the length of the poem works in its favour, pulling students towards it. Not so tough content of the poem did work in the favour of the students.

Two of the passages were clearly tougher than the other two. The one on Freud and Marx and another on Procrastination were clearly jumping out as difficult, making it easy for students to choose the other two passages to start with.

Overall, the difficulty level of the section was similar to that of the last year.

Section 2: Decision Making

There were 22 questions in this section, compared to 22 last year. These were from eight sets. The breakup of the sets is as below.

The section saw an increment of one set. With an overall increment of only one question That means that the return overall was less compared to the additional effort on cracking the additional set.

The sets, however, were not too tough to understand. The set on fast-food delivery had data (values and numbers) also given (in the form of a case let).

Section 3: Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation

This section had a combination of QA questions and DI sets, as the name indicated. Most of the questions are from the easy and moderate levels of difficulty.

The distribution of questions across areas of QA was as below

The number of QA questions increased to 22 from 16 last year. Overall, the paper was similar to the last year in terms of difficulty while the distribution across topics saw a significant change. Topics like Clocks, Functions, Heights & Distances, Inequalities, and Quadratic Equations which were present last year were missing this year. Topics like Coordinate Geometry, Modulus, and Special Equations which were seen this year were missing last year.

An increase of six questions in QA with the overall questions in the section meant that DI was left with two sets of three questions each. While both these sets had a significant amount of data, the set with tables was easier to understand, and hence will be the set to attempt in this section.

As the difficulty level is the same with no change in the overall number of questions, the cut-offs are expected to be similar to those of last year.

XAT 2023 Cut-offs

The paper was similar in difficulty level compared to that of the last year. This can be said to be the case across all the sections.

However, with an increased time of 10 minutes, the cut-offs are expected to move up slightly compared to the last year.

Sectional cut-offs, hence, are expected to slightly move up, compared to the last year.

• Verbal and Logical Reasoning: Around 4-5 marks
• Decision Making: Around 7 marks
• Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation: Around 8-9 marks

The cutoffs for the HRM programme of XLRI are expected to be as below. The cutoffs for the BM program would be for the Male and Female categories only and are expected to be slightly above that of the HRM programme.

XAT 2023  Analysis by Ramnath Kanakadandi, National CAT Course Director, T.I.M.E