XAT 2018 was conducted by XLRI Jamshedpur for admission to their Business Management and Human Resource Management programmes. It was conducted on January 07, 2018. XAT score is also used by many reputed institutes such as SP Jain, IMT Ghaziabad, XIM Bhuvaneshwar, and GIM Goa as a part of their admission process. XAT 2018 was conducted in the computer-based format for the first time.

Structure of Exam

XAT 2018 was similar to the last year’s paper. The total number of questions this year was 74 as against 72 last year. The paper had two parts - Part-A and Part-B. Part-A comprised three sections. The overall duration of the test was 170 minutes for the first part and 40 minutes for the second.

Part A

• Verbal and Logical Ability
• Decision Making
• Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation

Part-B

• General Knowledge
• Essay

All questions carried equal marks with negative marking of one-fourth of a mark for a wrong answer. There was a negative marking of 0.05 for unattempted questions, for such questions over and above 8.

The section on General Knowledge did not have any negative marking. General Awareness and Essay writing are used for evaluation only after the initial screening. These are not used for the shortlisting of candidates for the GDPI round.

Section 1: Verbal and Logical Ability

The Verbal and Logical Ability section was challenging. There were 4 RC passages with 500 to 600 words each.

• RC based on labour and capital (Economics) - 3
• RC based on belief and doubt (Philosophy) - 3
• RC based on history (Learning from history) - 3
• RC based on consciousness (Philosophy) - 4

There were five Critical Reasoning questions including one question each on a fallacy in the argument, basis of decision-making, redundancy of text, inference, and conclusion. There were two Para Formation questions, two vocabulary based questions and two Grammar questions. 

Section 2: Decision Making

There were 21 questions in this section, from eight sets - five sets of three questions each and three sets of two questions each.

Section 3: Quantitative Ability and Data Interpretation

The section was a mix of easy and moderate-difficult questions. There were six questions from two DI sets.

General Knowledge and Essay

The GK section in XAT had a mix of questions from various areas, including history, geography, sports, business and Indian constitution. 

The topic for the essay was: Can ethical values and sustainability coexist?

The topic needed the students to see if these two important things are mutually exclusive.