INTRODUCTION TO REASONING IN THE XAT

Reasoning (verbal, logical and analytical) has always had a major role to play in the XAT examination. This is evident from the fact that reasoning/thinking questions have been a constant presence in two of the three sections of the XAT.

(i) Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

(ii) Analytical Reasoning and Decision Making

The quality of questions that have appeared in these sections has normally been of a very high standard— requiring extreme clarity of thought and solving processes from the aspirants’ side. A high proportion of the total number of questions in the XAT, that can be classified under reasoning are either of the LOD 2 or LOD 3 level of difficulty. This is in keeping with the overall trend of the XAT exam—where the quality of questions is of a very high standard.

Besides, you also need to realise that the analytical reasoning and decision making section of the XAT is one of the critical elements for cracking this examination.

The major reasoning question types that have been present in the XAT have included:

In the Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning Section:

(i) Argument analysis:

This category of questions is largely seen in the first of the two sections mentioned above & has been an integral part of the Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning section.

The key skills tested are:

(a) Your ability to understand an argument;

(b) Your ability to catch the reasoning behind the argumentation presented;

(c) Your ability to spot assumptions made;

(d) Your ability to identify evidence that would either strengthen or weaken the argument;

(e) Your ability to identify logic that would support/oppose the argument being made;

(f) Your ability to spot what is consistent and what is not consistent with respect to the argument;

(g) Your ability to spot inferences and implications that arise out of the argument.

The section titled “Analytical Reasoning and Decision Making” has the following types of questions which you would encounter as you go through the questions from the past years’ XAT papers in this portion of this book:

(i) Quantitative Reasoning & Puzzles:

These questions typically revolve around your ability to understand/grasp the quantitative logic behind a situation. In a lot of ways these questions test your ability to sense the numerical logic in situations and work out the question/s asked based on the same.

(ii) Logical Reasoning questions based on Arrangements, Constraint based selections, Team formations, Puzzles, Conditions based Reasoning puzzles, etc.: These are the traditional Logical Reasoning questions, which involve direct and indirect clues about a few variables, which have to be matched with each other, (e.g. 5 people wear 5 different coloured shirts and work in 5 different companies, etc).

(iii) Quantitative decision making involving most economical/profitable decisions to be made in given scenarios:

These are questions based on caselets or real life situations. The situation is described in detail (with a lot of numbers used to describe the case situation) and typically involves a lot of number crunching. What distinguishes these caselets from other decision making caselets is that the situation described as well as the question asked would depend largely on the numerical calculations involved inside the case.

Hence, your ability to sense the various quantitative factors in the given situation and how these inter-play with each other becomes a crucial element of your solving process.

For instance, a situation might be described to you where an individual has to make a choice of different possible ways to travel to and fro from his hometown to a destination—and various modes of transportation with the time involved and costs involved are given. You then would be asked to choose the most economical or the most time saving routes of travel from amongst those provided.

(iv) Qualitative decision-making questions involving ethical/moral dilemmas and corporate and HR situations:

These are again real life situations described in a caselet form, with a real life problem vexing the protagonist of the case. You are expected to understand the moral/ethical/real life dilemma described in the situation and come up with the best possible resolution to the questions asked. In spite of these types of questions normally having a very subjective bias—it can be said that as far as the XAT is concerned, the questions they have asked and the kinds of options

they have laid out there has always been one clear answer to the question. Hence, these questions can be said to be testing your clarity of thinking.

(v) Word formation puzzles:

This question type is a typical question category that is exclusive to the XAT. In these questions, rules are provided for word formation based on certain interplay of the alphabets (like saying that in a certain language words are only 4 or 5 letters long and always start with a vowel and have at least 2 vowels in each valid word). Based on your interpretation of these rules you would need to find out what words and sentences are valid in the given language.