Before we go ahead, I am assuming that some of you landed here just to get the book, you are just being lazy. You could have googled for it and got the PDF as one of the top results.
A very common question in an aspirant’s mind, specially in December, is “How to prepare for Decision Making”. While there is no correct answer for it, a very common wrong answer is, “Get the book 101 Ethical Dilemmas by Martin Cohen.” You probe a little further and you would find out that it is something which a senior or a friend or a faculty at his coaching institute told him. I do not have the statistics but most of the people who pass on this advice haven’t done one of the two things:
a) Read the book 101 Ethical Dilemmas
b) Read the questions in the Decision Making section in XAT
Quite a few of them haven’t done either of them and just like to “pass on the gyaan”. Now some of you might be thinking that I am doing the exact same thing and who made me an authority on this. Well, to be honest I first thought about “Decision Making” as a subject last year when one of my close friends Avinash Maurya decided to make an online course on it. I had read the book before that once, probably in 2009, but I read it again last year. I decided to make an online course on Decision Making on my own this year and so I re-read the book. This time, I was a lot more diligent and made notes. I also marked some of the dilemmas as “important” and discussed some of the ideas that I had with friends. After that, I solved all Decision Making questions from 2008 to 2013 and here is the gist of my learning:
The book is brilliant and gives plenty of ideas for stimulating conversation. It raises quite a few important philosophical questions and brings an amazing amount of clarity of thought. Be that as it may, it is absolutely useless for scoring more marks in XAT.
Some of the questions in previous year papers might look similar to the dilemmas in the book. Some of them might even look like that they are simply lifted from the book but even then it will not help you in clearing the exam. And to top it all – it is approximately 400 pages. I would strongly suggest that you invest your time and energy elsewhere. Previous Year Papers will be a good place to start.
Ravi Handa teaches online courses for CAT / XAT and other Management entrance exams.
XAT 2016 Decision Making
:http://handakafunda.com/dm-decision-making-xat-online-coaching-past-papers-free-download/
XAT 2016 General Knowledge
:http://handakafunda.com/gk-general-knowledge-xat-iift-snap/
CAT 2015 Online Coaching Course :http://handakafunda.com/online-cat-coaching/