XAT 2026 Test Series

About XAT

XAT is conducted by XLRI Jamshedpur for admission to XLRI and the other XAMI member institutes, and is accepted by well over a hundred business schools. It is normally held on the first Sunday of January.

The test day runs two timed parts totalling 95 questions in 180 minutes. Part 1 (170 minutes) covers Verbal & Logical Ability (26 questions), Decision Making (21) and Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation (28), with free movement between those three sections. Part 2 is a separately locked 10-minute General Knowledge block of 20 questions, released only after Part 1 ends.

Two features make XAT distinctive. Decision Making is a full scored section that appears in no other major MBA entrance, and no calculator of any kind is permitted — a significant difference from CAT, which provides an on-screen one.

What a good score unlocks

• A XAT score drives admission to XLRI's flagship programmes and to the other XAMI institutes, and is accepted widely as an alternative or supplement to CAT.
• The General Knowledge score does not count toward the percentile or the shortlisting cut-off; XLRI uses it later, at the GD-PI and final-selection stage.