Decision Making for XAT is often neglected by students while preparing for XAT and at their own peril. Some of the students don’t even realise that it is a whole section in XAT and its score will be used while giving out calls to students. Given below is a table which shows the number of questions that have been asked on Decision Making in XAT.
As you can see, there is an increasing trend in the number of questions. In 2012 and 2013, the number of questions jumped to 25 because Decision Making became a separate section in 2012.
So, what exactly is Decision Making? While there are plenty of ways it can be defined, let me try to explain it from the perspective of XAT. Broadly speaking, the questions will be of two types:
a) You will be given a situation and you will be asked to decide the best possible course of action.
b) You will be given a situation and you will be asked to identify what lead to it and / or what is the reason behind the current scenario.
These questions often involve a large amount of text followed by a set of questions. There are paragraphs followed by single questions as well but they never form more than 1/4th of the section. As a matter of fact, in 2012 all questions which were asked were in sets. However, in 2013 there were 4 questions (out of 25) which were individual questions and not in sets.
Another way of looking at Decision Making questions is to look at them as a combination of Reading Comprehension and Logical Reasoning. Reading Comprehension because you often need to read large amounts of text and comprehend relevant information, and Logical Reasoning to make actual decisions in work or business like you do in the real world. Let me add that this would not be rule based logic that is used to solve LR problems.
The nature of the questions will vary from ethics and moral issues to business processes to managerial and financial issues. It covers a gamut of hypothetical situations and it helps if you are aware of what is going on in the world around you. In XAT 2013, one set of questions was based on a situation very similar to the Anna Hazare movement.
I hope that this post will help you get started in your preparation for Decision Making. The biggest tip that I can give you for Decision Making for XAT is: “Don’t neglect it”. You have enough time to prepare for it and if you give even an hour a day, you will do well in the exam.
Online course on Decision Making for XAT 2016: http://handakafunda.com/dm-decision-making-xat-online-coaching-past-papers-free-download/
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Ravi Handa, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus, has been teaching for CAT and other Management entrance exams for the past 7 years.
He teaches an Online CAT Coaching Course for CAT Preparation