XAT 2017 Question Paper

Two statements are provided below. Decide which of the given options presents the most appropriate relationship between the two:

Statement I: The current trend indicates that food and vegetable inflation continues to be a pain point. Food inflation rose to 7.79% in June from 7.47%, and vegetable inflation rose to 14.74% from 10.85%. In the weeks ahead, the volatile food inflation will determine the course of overall inflation.

Statement II: For RBI too, the trend is a concern since under the current agreement with the government, if the inflation exceeds 2%, it'll have to explain to the government why it could not be contained (the lower limit is 2%).

Read the following excerpt and answer the question that follows:

Fragrant with steam
were the days and the nights red with many braziers
in the beloved house
of my father, my mother.

Which of the following options is the closest expression of the poet’s feeling?

Read the following statements and answer the question that follows:

1.This is Russia’s Wild West, though the mountains lie to the south of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
2.The Caucasus range has throughout history held Russians, especially fierce nationalists like Solzhenitsyn, in fear and awe.
3.Here, between the Black and Caspian seas, is a land bridge where Europe gradually vanishes amid a six-hundred-mile chain of mountains as high as eighteen thousand feet - mesmerizing in their spangled beauty, especially after the yawning and flat mileage of the steppe lands to the north.
4.Here, since the seventeenth century, Russian colonizers have tried to subdue congeries of proud peoples: Chechens, Ingush, Ossetes, Daghestanis, Abkhaz, Kartvelians, Kakhetians, Armenians, Azeris, and others.
5.Here, the Russians encountered Islam in both its moderation and implacability.

Which of the following options is the best logical order of the above statements?

Read the following statements and answer the question that follows:

1.The periodic table orders the elements in a way that helps to understand why atoms behave as they do.
2.The properties of the elements are due to electronic configuration, and their recurring pattern gives rise to periodicity.
3.In other words, what gives the elements their properties and what order lies below the surface of their seemingly random nature?
4.What makes Fluorine react violently with Caesium while its nearest neighbour neon is reluctant to react with anything?

Which of the following options is the best logical order of the above statements?

The serious study of popular films by critics is regularly credited with having rendered obsolete a once-dominant view that popular mainstream films are inherently inferior to art films. Yet the change of attitude may be somewhat __________  Although, it is now academically respectable to analyse popular films, the fact that many critics feel compelled to rationalize their own __________ action movies or mass-market fiction reveals, perhaps unwittingly, their continued __________ the old hierarchy of popular and art films.

Consider the following words:
1.unproductive
2.not appreciated
3.overstated
4.penchant for
5.dislike for
6.investment in
7.exposure to

Which of the following options is the most appropriate sequence that would meaningfully fit the blanks in the above paragraph?

Which of the following options is grammatically correct and meaningful?

Read the following stanza and answer the question that follows:

Invisible atoms coming together
Revealing themselves in visible forms
Seeds are hugged by the earth
Which renders them as gardens in bloom.
And yonder stars, are they not pearls
Floating on teeming seas?
Scattered, yet strung together in orderly constellations
Love binding them to one another
And each is perpetually seeking its like?

Which of the following options best captures the spirit of the above stanza?

Carefully read the statements below:

1.Chatterjee loves books; therefore, he reads them all the time.
2.Chatterjee loves books. Therefore, he reads them all the time.
3.Chatterjee loves books and, therefore, reads them all the time.

Which of the above statement(s) is (are) correct in grammar and meaning?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:

On Friday morning, Dieting supplement sales company Herbalife agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission a $200 million fine. The FTC said Herbalife cheated hopeful salespeople out of hundreds of millions of dollars with a high-pressure multi-level marketing scheme.

Herbalife’s stock received an immediate 15% increase following the above news. The company also announced that it would hire a second former FTC commissioner in a press release describing the terms of the settlement.

Which of the following options would imply that the 15 percent increase in stock price is fair?

Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows:

Worldwide, tomato is one of the most important crops. Because this crop can be adapted for cultivation in various environments ranging from tropical to alpine regions, its cultivation area is now expanding worldwide into not so productive regions. On the other hand, traditional cultivation areas, the most favourable for tomato cultivation with warm and dry climate, are contracting. Every year, traditional cultivation areas lose 2 million hectares (ha) of land to environmental factors such as salinity, drought, and soil erosion.

Which of the following is the correct inference based on the above passage?

Grotesque is related to Macabre in a similar way as _________

Choose the option with all the correct words and their correct accent (underlined syllable) that fits the blanks.

The suspension of the captain may _________ the number of spectators, who turn up for this match.
Transportation costs will directly __________ the cost of retail goods.
Grandmother’s advancing age could _________ her ability to take care of the house.
She ______ a Texan accent throughout the interview.

“I” in the passage, most likely, refers to:

A “supercilious attitude” in this passage implies:

Which of the following statements would the author agree with the most?

Which of the following quotes would the author agree with the most?

The CEO of a technology company was thinking of the following policies.

1.Life time employment
2.Promotion based on seniority
3.Hire new competent employees and fire old incompetent employees
4.Regular training and retraining

If a CEO were to consult the author of the passage, which of the above policies should the author recommend?

A business school led by an existentialist director, wanted to decide on admission policy for its executive MBA program, which requires candidates to possess minimum five years of managerial experience.

With respect to the selection process, which of the following statements will be closest to the director’s belief:

Which of the following statements would the author agree with the most?

Who among the following, as stated in the third paragraph, would the author be the most sympathetic to?

Which sentence in the passage distances man from “nature”, the most?

The core deficit of Psychopaths affects their long term success because,

Which of the following options is correct according to the author?

A student approached a faculty pleading to increase his marks because failure in one more subject will result in the student having to leave the program. The faculty said, “I am sorry. But I cannot change your grades as it would be unfair to others”.
In the given circumstance, which of the following best describes the faculty?

Which of the following options is in decreasing order of raw materials cost per kurta?

Which of the factories listed in the options below has the lowest sales margin (sales margin = profit per kurta divided by selling price per kurta)?

Abdul has received an order for 2,000 kurtas from a big retail chain. They will collect the finished pre-packaged kurtas directly from the factories, saving him the selling cost. To deliver this order, he can use multiple factories for production. Which of the following options will ensure maximum profit from this order?

Abdul has introduced a new technology in all his factories. As a result, a worker needs just 1.5 hours to produce a kurta. If raw materials cost and selling cost remain the same, which of the factories listed in the options below will yield the highest profit per kurta?

Which of the following is true?

Which of the scatterplots shows the weakest relationship?

In which of the following scatterplots, the value of one dimension can be used to predict the value of another, as accurately as possible?

Which of the following options is correct?

The sum of series, (-100) + (-95) + (-90) + …………+ 110 + 115 + 120, is:

Four two-way pipes A, B, C and D can either fill an empty tank or drain the full tank in 4, 10, 12 and 20 minutes respectively. All four pipes were opened simultaneously when the tank is empty. Under which of the following conditions the tank would be half filled after 30 minutes?

A shop, which sold same marked price shirts, announced an offer - if one buys three shirts then the fourth shirt is sold at a discounted price of ₹ 100 only. Patel took the offer. He left the shop with 20 shirts after paying ₹ 20,000. What is the marked price of a shirt?

AB is a chord of a circle. The length of AB is 24 cm. P is the midpoint of AB. Perpendiculars from P on either side of the chord meets the circle at M and N respectively. If PM < PN and PM = 8 cm. then what will be the length of PN?

If $x$ and $y$ are real numbers, the least possible value of the expression $4(x - 2)^{2} + 4(y - 3)^{2} - 2(x - 3)^{2}$ is :

If f(x) = ax + b, a and b are positive real numbers and if f(f(x)) = 9x + 8, then the value of a + b is:

Arup and Swarup leave point A at 8 AM to point B. To reach B, they have to walk the first 2 km, then travel 4 km by boat and complete the final 20 km by car. Arup and Swarup walk at a constant speed of 4 km/hr and 5 km/hr respectively. Each rows his boat for 30 minutes. Arup drives his car at a constant speed of 50 km/hr while Swarup drives at 40 km/hr. If no time is wasted in transit, when will they meet again?

Hari’s family consisted of his younger brother (Chari), younger sister (Gouri), and their father and mother. When Chari was born, the sum of the ages of Hari, his father and mother was 70 years. The sum of the ages of four family members, at the time of Gouri’s birth, was twice the sum of ages of Hari’s father and mother at the time of Hari’s birth. If Chari is 4 years older than Gouri, then find the difference in age between Hari and Chari.

In a True/False quiz, 4 marks are awarded for each correct answer and 1 mark is deducted for each wrong answer. Amit, Benn and Chitra answered the same 10 questions, and their answers are given below in the same sequential order.
AMIT     T T F F T T F T T F
BENN    T T T F F T F T T F
CHITRA T T T T F F T F T T
If Amit and Benn both score 35 marks each then Chitra’s score will be:

In a class of 60, along with English as a common subject, students can opt to major in Mathematics, Physics, Biology or a combination of any two. 6 students major in both Mathematics and Physics, 15 major in both Physics and Biology, but no one majors in both Mathematics and Biology. In an English test, the average mark scored by students majoring in Mathematics is 45 and that of students majoring in Biology is 60. However, the combined average mark in English, of students of these two majors, is 50. What is the maximum possible number of students who major ONLY in Physics?

If 5° $\leq$ x° $\leq$ 15°, then the value of sin 30° + cos x° - sin x° will be :

The Volume of a pyramid with a square base is 200 cubic cm. The height of the pyramid is 13cm. What will be the length of the slant edges (i.e. the distance between the apex and any other vertex), rounded to the nearest integer?

A dice is rolled twice. What is the probability that the number in the second roll will be higher than that in the first?

An institute has 5 departments and each department has 50 students. If students are picked up randomly from all 5 departments to form a committee, what should be the minimum number of students in the committee so that at least one department should have representation of minimum 5 students?

If $N = (11^{p + 7})(7^{q - 2})(5^{r + 1})(3^{s})$ is a perfect cube, where $p, q, r$ and $s$ are positive integers, then the smallest value of $p + q + r + s$ is :

AB, CD and EF are three parallel lines, in that order. Let d1 and d2 be the distances from CD to AB and EF respectively. d1 and d2 are integers, where d1 : d2 = 2 : 1. P is a point on AB, Q and S are points on CD and R is a point on EF. If the area of the quadrilateral PQRS is 30 square units, what is the value of QR when value of SR is the least?

ABCD is a rectangle. P, Q and R are the midpoint of BC, CD and DA. The point S lies on the line QR in such a way that SR: QS = 1:3. The ratio of the area of triangle APS to area of rectangle ABCD is

Read the two statements below:

S1: The worst bowler did not bowl the minimum number of overs.
S2: The best bowler is a specialist bowler.

Which of the above statements or their combinations can help arrive at the minimum number of overs bowled by a non-specialist bowler?

Read the two statements below:

S1. The economy rates of the specialist bowlers are lower than that of the non-specialist bowlers.
S2. The cumulative runs conceded by the three non-specialist bowlers were 1 more than those conceded by the three specialist bowlers.

Which of the above statements or their combinations can help arrive at the economy rate of the worst bowler?

In which of the following countries is Tamil an official language?

The International Court of Justice is located in:

Which of the following countries is not a member of SAARC?

Which of the following institutions are related to the Bretton Woods Agreement?

In India, February 28 th is celebrated as:

Barak 8 is:

Which of the following is the oldest mountain range?

The words “Satyameva Jayate”, inscribed on Indain currency are taken from :

Who directed the Oscar winning film “Gandhi”?

Which of the following options is a MISMATCH?

Which of the following companies is listed in the Fortune Global 500 Companies, in 2016?

Which of the following brands is NOT currently owned by an Indian company?

Some of the famous battles are listed below:
1.The Battle of Cajamarca
2.The Battle of Huai-Hai
3.The Battle of Plassey
4.The Battle of Stalingrad
5.The Battle of Waterloo
6.The Battle of Yorktown

Which of the following is the correct chronological order of the above battles?

Which of the followings is a WRONG combination?

Which of the followings is a WRONG combination?

Which of the following banks is recently in the news because its employees opened additional relationship accounts without its customer’s permission?

Which of the followings is in the outemost reaches of the solar system?

Which Cult Television series celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2016?

Bogota, Lima and Quito are the captials of :

The Yazidis are:

Where is Hadrian’s Wall located?

Which of the following animals’ conservation status was changed from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by WWF recently?

In which of the following countries, both the Tropic of Capricorn and Equator pass through?

Which of the following novelists has won the Booker Prize?

Rodrigo Duterte is associated with which of the following nations?

Who/what is the main cause for the situation becoming unmanageable?

The downward spiral continued for the restaurant as the management persisted in defending their actions and argued with those who criticised them. By the following week, the original post had generated over 18,000 negative comments.

Which of the following is the best way forward for the restaurant at this juncture?

One evening Shreya trying to pay the pizza delivery was surprised to find a few five hundred rupee notes missing from her purse that she was sure were there earlier. She wants to ascertain if someone has stolen the money. On reflecting, the following facts crossed her mind:

1.In the last one year, Shreya had noticed cash missing on three occasions.
2.Shreya’s husband also shared that a few notes were missing from his wallet, though he was not sure if they were stolen.
3.Her eldest son had been pestering Shreya for more pocket money for the last three weeks; in the last few days, he had stopped doing so.
4.In the last one year, Vimla had received six mails from her family asking for money.
5.Her eldest son’s expenditure had gone up in the last few days.

Which of the following combinations of the above statements would DECREASE the likelihood that Vimla has stolen the money?

Padma discovered some money missing from her purse. She suspects that Vimla has stolen it. She wants to prevent the stealing from happening again and is contemplating the following actions:

1.She should let it pass, since to err is human.
2.She should confront Vimla and tell her that she knows the truth and the act is unpardonable regardless of her past service and she is thinking of terminating her services.
3.She should tell Vimla that she is aware someone has stolen money from the house but is not sure who it is.
4.She should share with Vimla that neighbours think Vimla has stolen the money she doesn’t, but is interested in finding out the truth.
5.She should directly ask Vimla if she stole the money, promising her no punishment if she confesses.

Arrange the following combinations of the above actions in the DECREASING order of appropriateness.

Analyse the following caselet and answer the question that follows:

Genius Consulting is a boutique consulting firm started by Shirish, Balram, Rahman and Xavier, four friends from a premier business school. They committed themselves to abide by two principles: a) not to indulge in anything unethical and b) share earnings equally.

Genius Consulting could not get a significant project till the following year, when they managed a big one after Rahman’s father referred their firm to his top management. Convinced of the team’s talent following an impressive presentation, the top management awarded them the project even though six other referred teams made presentations.

The day following the presentations, they met to decide the way forward for the organization. Which of the following choices would be the most appropriate for Genius Consulting?

Which option would ENSURE the best control of quality of construction for the Biswas’?

Which of the following additional information, IF TRUE, would improve the chances of the third option being preferred?

The Kerala Government recently announced a policy: In case of major quality infringement, the builder will pay a penalty of 50% of the price of the house in addition to the price of the house, to the client within a year of notice.
Rank in ASCENDING order the options that would ensure “control of quality”.

Which of the following options is the best way to select the “Snakes & Ladder” team?

Which of the following options is the best way of selecting the Shooting team?

Which of the following options is the correct statement for picking up the cricket team?

Which of the following actions would best satisfy all the stakeholders within the campus?

Which of the following would be the best option to increase revenue, decrease carbon footprint and still satisfy all the stakeholders in the campus?

Which of the following options would be most suitable for the growth of the business?

Girirajan started analyzing his quarterly customer data to assess growth opportunities. He discovered that 20% of his customers are Kannadigas and many of them were requesting for a few Karnataka dishes. He was not sure if it was a good idea to serve Karnataka food. He wanted to experiment before taking the final call. Which of the following options will be worth experimenting in the next fortnight?

Giriraja experimented with Karnataka food for a fortnight. He collected sales data for Karnataka food along with the trend of overall sales for the last seven days. Which of the following datasets, IF TRUE, will give Girirajan greater confidence to continue serving Karnataka food? (Figures below represent Karnataka food sales as percentage of total sales.)

Find the maximum number of plates of puri-sabji Shyam can sell in the first hour of business?

Shyam’s puri-sabji became famous. Now he gets 5 orders per 10 minutes and has invested in an additional oven. As he is working alone on both the ovens simultaneously, now in any one oven it takes him 45 minutes to cook one handi of sabji,15 minutes for 2 plates of puri and 15 minites to reheat the sabji. He can bring only one handi from home. What will be his maximum daily profit?

Shyam’s stall was becoming popular by the day. Now he gets 5 customers every 10 minutes. After buying a second oven, he employed a helping hand, Aman at ₹ 100 for two hours. Aman can cook one handi of sabji in 20 minutes or can prepare 3 plates of puri in 10 minutes. Reheat time for sabji is 10 minutes. None of them can work on both the ovens simultaneously.
Which of the following options will help Shyam maximize his daily profit, if he does NOT bring sabji from home?

Analyse the following caselete and answer the question that follows:

As a newly started organization in the IT sector, Saksha IT is a fast growing 400 employee organization. Its head, Saksha Kumar believes in building an organization driven by humility. Which of the following policies would best help him achieve that?

Analyse the following caselete and answer the question that follows:

Principal Maheshwari of BINK School of Management is facing a problem that calls for quick action. She received an anonymous mail one day, possibly from one of the students, complaining about outdated syllabi, medicore teachers and poor choice of courses on offer.
Which of the following is the best course of action available to the Principal?