Jamshedpur: Xavier Aptitute Test (XAT), one of the most prestigious B-school entrance exams in India, was conducted by XLRI online for the first time on Sunday.
The test was conducted across five centres in the city - DBMS English School (Kadma), Al Kabir Polytechnic (Kapali), Netaji Subhas Institute Of Business Management (Pokhari), National Institute of Excellence (Golmuri) and RVS College of Engineering and Technology (Bhilaipahadi).
In all, 72,0229 students appeared from 314 centres across 49 cities in the country.
In the steel city, 1,000 students took the test that began at 10am.
However, the online experience was not as smooth as it was expected to be.
Poor Internet connection and server problems led to slow loading of pages. Candidates complained that they couldn't see whether their answers were being uploaded. Some said they had to write their essays twice as they weren't sure whether it got saved the first time.
The test had to be rescheduled in two centres in Gurgaon and Calcutta because of technical glitches.
The exam comprised two papers. The first paper constituted 74 questions in quantitative ability, verbal ability, reasoning and decision making while Paper II comprised a general knowledge section with 25 questions and an essay.
Candidates had to complete their test in 3 hours and 35 minutes. There was a negative marking of 0.25 for each wrong answer and 0.05 for every unanswered one.
Students in Jamshedpur said the paper was similar to last year's. However, questions in the quantitative analysis section were difficult while English was easy.
"I felt English was easy and the mathematics bit was tough. There was an interface problem during the online test and the system was too slow," said Freshi Shreya, a KIIT Bhubaneswar student who answered her XAT at DBMS English School, Kadma.
Jayanti Jha and Varsha Dwivedi, both students of Calcutta University, felt the same way.
"Barring some glitches, the test was conducted smoothly," a senior official from XLRI said.
The XAT is considered to be the country's second most premier MBA entrance test after the CAT (common admission test). It serves as the entrance exam for various other B-Schools in India, including SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (Mumbai), Alliance Business Academy (Bangalore), Goa Institute of Management (Goa), Welingkar (Mumbai) and XIM (Bhubaneswar). XAT marks are accepted by 109 B-schools.
