The format of XAT 2022 changed and a section that was earlier scraped has been reinstated which is the Essay Writing Section. With this, the total duration of the exam has also increased and is now 3 hours and 10 min long exam. The first section is 165 minutes long and includes 3 sections- Quantitative Ability & Data Interpretation, Verbal Ability, and Decision Making with no sectional time limit. The last 25 minutes would be for solving the General Knowledge section and writing a short essay on the given topic.
Time management is an important trait for XAT as there is no sectional time limit but there are sectional cutoffs. First of all, a candidate in nearly 10 minutes should go through all sections quickly in order to get a grasp of the level of difficulty. On the basis of his strengths, he should select a section where he would maximize his score. In general, a candidate should spend about 55-60 in the QADI section, 50-55 minutes on the Verbal ability section, and 45-50 minutes on the Decision-Making section with a variance of 5-10 minutes based on the area of interest in a section.