How to Prepare for XAT in 1 Month? – Check Effective XAT Preparation Strategy, Plans & Tips

XAT, the management entrance test conducted by the prestigious XLRI – Xavier School of Management, is scheduled for 7 January 2024. Over 70,000 students sit for this exam every year to compete for the few hundred seats in XLRI and other top colleges such as XIMB, IMI-D, IMT-G, and GIM. The exam is notoriously difficult, with most students failing to score beyond 35 out of the 75-76 marks on offer. With exactly a month left, you need to buckle up and focus all your efforts towards cracking this test. While it is hard to prepare for XAT in one month, especially if starting from scratch, it is not impossible. Students who have already invested time into their CAT prep can comfortably conclude their XAT preparations in a month. 

Read more about Top MBA Colleges Accepting XAT Scores

It is important to remember that the XAT exam pattern differs greatly from that of CAT. The decision-making section requires a lot of additional preparation. Moreover, the quant and verbal sections also have extra topics to cover. Added to that are the GK and essay-writing sections that will need separate work. This blog covers a detailed plan and schedule to help you prepare for XAT in one month. We’ll end the blog with a day-by-day calendar to ensure you cover all the relevant topics.

Let’s dive in.

Prepare for XAT in one month – Your top priorities

Our mentors have designed this priority list to help you shortlist the topics you must focus on. Starting with decision making, where most of your practice should be concentrated, followed by the additional topics in quant and verbal that you need to study.

Decision Making

The decision-making section is the most unique section in XAT – no other management test in the world has this section. While this section might look easy at the outset, it is by far the hardest to score on. The sheer subjectivity and relativity of the critical thinking skills being called into action here make scoring very difficult. In fact, the sectional cutoff for this section usually remains in single digits, yet most students fail to clear this barrier. 

Start by looking up videos on YouTube to understand the basic approaches to solving different DM sets. If possible, go through practice papers, previous years’ papers, and mock tests to identify and list the types of DM sets usually asked in XAT. Then, sit down and study how to solve each problem while accounting for their differences. Understand the reasoning behind each approach and decipher what the exam expects of you in this section. 

Make sure you solve as many sets of all the different types of DM questions as possible. Pick up all the previous years’ papers and solve all the DM sets that have ever been asked. Only then will you be confident enough to answer correctly on DDay.

Quant

Apart from revising all the quant concepts regarding arithmetic, number system, modern maths, algebra, and geometry from your CAT preparation, you also need to prepare the following topics. Every year, at least 5-6 questions come from these.

Read more about CAT Preparation

1. Statistics

• Mean
• Median
• Mode
• Standard deviation

1. Trigonometry

• Identities
• Heights
• Distances

1. Data interpretation

• Speed calculation
• Mental maths tricks
• Data approximation techniques

Since XAT does not allow calculators, solving data interpretation questions can become time-consuming. You’ll need to learn all the tricks and techniques there are to speed up your calculations.

Verbal

While the difficulty level of XAT verbal is similar to that of CAT, many new topics are added here that you might not have encountered before. 

Poem reading comprehension sets can be tricky. Not only do you need to decode the poetic interpretations, but also need to have a deep understanding of literary devices. While there are ways to improve your performance in poem RCs (involving going through the questions and choices first and using smart elimination), it is still better to learn the basics first.

Apart from poem RCs, there are vocabulary, grammar, and figure-of-speech questions that can stump you if you haven’t practised enough. Moreover, the verbal section in XAT also has critical verbal reasoning questions.

The best way to improve your verbal score is to practise from past years’ papers and give a lot of mocks.

GK and Essay

The third section of XAT, comprising 25 GK questions and one 200-word essay, does not impact your overall percentile, i.e., it does not affect your chances of getting a call. But it does affect your chances of converting the call into an admission offer. The GK scores are part of the holistic evaluation process that happens after shortlisted students are invited for interviews. In fact, the essay is only graded before the interview itself. But taking these sections lightly will put you at risk of not securing a seat. 

The GK questions largely focus on current affairs and a little static GK. Going through the year’s current affairs and news should be enough to secure good marks in this section. On the other hand, the essay section will help showcase your communication skills, articulation, and general knowledge. To build up your flow, practice writing short essays on trending topics at least twice a week. Once you have that in hand, you can tackle pretty much any topic that the exam throws at you.

Apart from these suggestions, continue to solve 2-3 mocks per week and previous years’ papers. Don’t forget to analyse each mock test to grasp the reasoning behind each right and wrong answer.

Day-to-day schedule to prepare for XAT in one month

All of those looking to breach the 95%ile mark in XAT must follow the schedule, devote 4-6 hours a day to their books, give plenty of mocks, and focus on decision-making. Beyond that, avoid these 7 most common mistakes in XAT, and you’ll be good to go.