XLRI sticks to pen and paper entrance exam

Bucking the trend of conducting B-school entrance exams on computers, the XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur, has decided to stick to the old pen and paper format for its XAT exam.
"XAT, like every year will follow the pen and paper format in order to ensure equal opportunity to all candidates," Dr Munish Thakur, Chairperson of Admissions at XLRI, Jamshedpur, said today.
The premier management school will hold the Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT) on January 4, 2015.
Institute officials said the pen and paper format ensured that candidates familiar with computers, especially those from a privileged background or having worked in the IT sector would not get any advantage over others who did not have access to them.

The paper-pen mode also ensured that all candidates were tested on exactly the same set of questions, and not on different sets.
"XAT has always focused on multi-dimensional examination structure and fairness to assess aptitude of future business leaders," Thakur said.

Many other management entrance examinations including CAT conducted by the IIMs have now switched over to computer-based formats.
This year, XAT will be held at 47 centres across the country and in Dubai and Kathmandu.
Last year, 106 B-schools had accepted the scores of XAT examination as part of admission criteria.
XAT 2015 will be for a three hour duration of which the newly introduced 40 minute examination section would be devoted to essay writing and general awareness.