XAT (Xavier Aptitude Test) 2017 got off to a fairly smooth start this morning in over 47 cities across the country. We at PaGaLGuY spoke to a few candidates , who described their exam taking experience as a pleasant one, with no discrepancies noted in their centres.
In total, the paper contained 72 questions that the students had to complete within 170 minutes.
Of course DI and DM sections (Data Interpretation and Decision Making) spoilt the show for a lot of students today. Many found it tough when compared to the other Sections.
Tirth Gupta, whose centre was in Pune, said, “Although less number of questions were asked this time, the difficulty level was higher, causing students to take about the same amount of time to finish the paper. DI/DM had tricky questions, even QA (Quantitative Aptitude) was a bit vague,” he said.
Another aspirant from Gurgaon, Shubendhu Satsangi , said, “I attempted around 50-51 questions. A lot of time was allotted for just 72 questions. I found DI quite tricky and VA (Verbal Ability) quite tough. One of the Reading Comprehension sets was a bit vague,” he said.
Those attempting XAT for the first time found the paper relatively tough. Harish Venkat, a candidate from Mumbai, said, “My first attempt was not as good as I had expected it to be. DI/DM was quite tough. Under VA, one set of Reading Comprehension was relatively vague. Quant is perhaps the only section that I feel confident about, ” said Harish.
However, for some of the students re-attempting XAT this time was relatively a better experience, except for the DI/DM section. A Chennai candidate, Varun Desu, took the exam again this year, as he had scored 93 percentile in XAT 2014. He said, “This time, I attempted about 19 questions in QA, all of which I feel confident about. In DI, I attempted 16 and in Verbal 18. One set of DI was relatively easy; it required one to do a lot of calculations but it could be solved. The second set had a lot of graphs and seeing those I didn’t feel like attempting them,” he said, adding that DM was tough on account of the answer options being very close to one another. He even found the Essay topic titled, ‘Does Globalisation and Jingoism actually coexist?’ quite straightforward to write about.
But, Gunjan Verma, whose centre was in Ahmedabad, found the essay topic challenging to write on. “The problem with essay topics is that if there is a word that you don’t know, chances are that you won’t be able to write about it. That’s what happened with me. But, otherwise my overall experience was quite good,” he said.