XLRI campus, Jamshedpur
Only a Xavier School of Management (XLRI) can actually turn around and admit that “yes, there were a few errors in the XAT exam held last Sunday January 6, 2013.”
Today Prof Ballabh Vishwa, Head of Admissions at XLRI told PaGaLGuY that there were a couple of errors in the GK exam and all the exam takers will be treated specially and given benefit. “We feel sorry that the editing errors happened and we do not want exam takers to suffer from them so we will take care that no one is left out when the marking is done. Aspirants will not feel let down,” Prof Ballabh said.
To begin with, Prof Ballabh said that in the main paper, there was no error but one comment — is it a repeat? This should not have happened.
In the General Knowledge section, there was an error in the Gagan Narang question. “We will give every test taker one mark for this question, irrespective of how it was answered,” added Prof Ballabh.
The Admissions Head said that this year, the level of difficulty in the paper rose gradually. “We started with easy questions in each section and then went on to difficult ones. This was unlike earlier when difficult and easy questions were put in together. This design was adopted to be more fair to the students,” he disclosed.
Also, the questions in the caselets were taken from a variety of topics including social sciences, technology etc this was to make the paper more comprehensible to a wider variety of test-takers.
With regards to the profile of the test takers, Prof Ballabh informed that while 70% engineers appeared, 30% were those from different background with a big chunk from BCom/ BBA and other graduate disciplines.
There were almost 30% women who took the exam which made XLRI officials extremely happy since it meant better diversity. “We believe in taking students through merit so when we get a profile as diverse as that we are naturally happy,” the professor added.
Prof Ballabh concluded: “We care for the students and do not want them to bear the brunt of our errors. They will get justice. Even if it is a minor error.”
It is not always that an institution or a b-school actually turns around and admits that there were errors in an entrance exam. Of course, it is not that complaints are also always genuine but it takes courage to actually come out and apologise to aspirants, for who MBA is nothing short of a dream.
Incidentally, GK and the Essay will not be considered for percentile calculation and will be taken into account at a later stage in the admission process.