XAT (XLRI Entrance Test) Examination-2017
XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Management
VERBAL AND LOGICAL ABILITY
1. 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-mesmerising 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?
(A) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
(B) 2, 3, 1, 4, 5
(C) 2, 4, 3, 1, 5
(D) 3, 1, 2, 4, 5
(E) 4, 5, 3, 1, 12
2. 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 nieghbour neon is reluctant to react with anything?
Which of the following options is the best logical order of the above statements?
(A) 1, 2,3, 4
(B) 1, 4, 3, 2
(C) 2, 3, 1, 4
(D) 3, 4, 2, 1
(E) 4, 3, 1, 2
3. Read the following excerpt and answer t he question that follows:
Fragrant with steam were the days and the nights red in the beloved house of my father, my mother.
Which of the following options is the closest expression of the poet’s feeling?
(A) The house was located in beautiful settings probably surrounded by flowers in the mountains.
(B) The ancestral home was probably the most important hose in the community.
(C) The poet fondly recalls the pleasant climate enjoyed day and night.
(D) The poet misses the braziers and steam she had enjoyed during her childhood.
(E) Everything about the house felt special because of her parents’ love for her.
4. Read the following paragraphs and answer the question that follows:
The current trend indicate that food and vegetable inflations continue to be pain points. Food inflation rose to 7.79 percent in June from 7.47 percent, and vegetable inflation rose to 14.74 percent from 10.85 percent. In the weeks ahead, the volatile food inflation will determine the course of overall inflation.
For RBI too, the trend is a concern since under the current agreement with the government, if the inflation exceeds 11 percent it will have to explain to the government why it could not be contained (the lower limit is 2 percent)./
Which of the following options is the most appropriate?
(A) The first paragraph states a cause and the second illustrates the effect.
(B) The first paragraph provides information and the second highlights potential application of the information.
(C) The first paragraph is an assertion and the second provides an illustration of that assertion.
(D) The first paragraph highlights inflation conditions and the second hints at RBI’s inefficiency in managing the situation.
(E) The first paragraph highlight pain points and the second contains a remedy for them.
5. 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 meaningful fit the blanks in the above paragraph?
(A) 1, 5, 6
(B) 3, 2, 7
(C) 3, 4, 6
(D) 4, 5, 6
(E) 6, 3, 1
6. 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.
Any 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?
(A) Stars and seas are similar.
(B) All rivers flow into the ocean.
(C) United we stand, divided we fall.
(D) Love dissolves all religious differences.
(E) Something invisible binds disparate objects.
7. Which of the following options is grammatically correct and meaningful?
(A) I want to joint an MBA college that is not only the best in the country but also provides the best campus jobs.
(B) I want to join an MBA college that is not only the best in the country but also I can get good job.
(C) I want to join an MBA college that is not only the best in the country but also best in job.
(D) I want to join an MBA college that is not only good but also I can get good job.
(E) I want to join an MBA college that I found not only best in country but also I can get good job.
8. Read the following passage and answer the question that follow:
On Friday morning, Dieting supplement sales company Herbalife agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission a $200m 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?
(A) Cheating results in increase in the company’s stock price.
(B) When fraudulent companies are exposed, their stock price increases.
(C) When fraudulent companies are caught, their stock price initially goes down.
(D) Acknowledgement of deceit increases the stock price of companies.
(E) Compliance with court order increases the company’s stock price.
9. 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 environment 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?
(A) In recent years, per hectare production of tomato has increased worldwide.
(B) In recent years, per hectare wastage of tomato has increased worldwide.
(C) In recent years, per hectare production of tomato has decreased worldwide.
(D) In recent years, per hectare wastage of tomato has decreased worldwide.
(E) In recent years, per hectare production of tomato has remained the same worldwide.
10. 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?
(A) 1 only
(B) 2 only
(C) 1 and 2 only
(D) 2 and 3 only
(E) 1, 2 and 3
11. Grotesque is related to Macabre in a similar way as
(A) Classics is related to Ruins
(B) History is related to Palaeontology
(C) Marriage is related to Funeral
(D) Sorcery is related to Necromancy
(E) Science is related to Thanatology
12. Choose the option with all the (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 t take care of the house.
She _______ a Texan accent throughout the interview
(A) affect, effect, effect, effected
(B) affect, effect, affect, affected
(C) affect, affect, affect, affected
(D) effect, affect, effect, effected
(E) effect, affect, effect, affected
Directions (Qs. 13 to 15) : Analyse the passage below and answer these questions:
It’s taken me 60 years, but I had an epiphany recently. Everything, without exception, requires additional energy and order to maintain itself. I knew this in the abstract as the famous second law of thermodynamics, which states that everything is falling apart slowly. This realization is not just the lament of a person getting older. Long ago I learnt that even the most inanimate things we know of-stone, iron columns, copper pipes, gravel roads, a piece of paper-won’t last very long without attention and fixing and the loan of additional order. Existence, it seems, is chiefly maintenance.
What was surprised me recently is how unstable even the intangible is. Keeping a website or a software program afloat is like keeping a yacht afloat. It is a black hole for attention. I can understand why a mechanical device like a pump would break down after a while-moisture rusts metal, or the air oxidizes membranes, or lubricants evaporate, all of which require repair. But I wasn’t thinking that the nonmaterial word of bits would also degrade. What’s to break? Apparently everything.
Brand-new computers will ossify. Apps weaken with use. Code corrodes. Fresh software just released will immediately begin to fray. On their own-nothing you did. The more complex the gear, the more (not less) attention it will require. The natural inclination toward change is inescapable, even for the most abstract entities we know of: bits.
And then there is the assault of the changing digital landscape. When everything around you is upgrading, this puts pressure on your digital system and necessitates maintenance. You may not want to upgrade, but you must because everyone else is. It’s an upgrade arms race.
I used to upgrade my gear begrudgingly (why upgrade if it still works?) and at the last possible moment. You know how it goes: Upgrade this and suddenly you need to upgrade that, which triggers upgrades everywhere. I would put it off for years because I had the experiences of one “tiny” upgrade of a minor part disrupting my entire working life. But as our personal technology is becoming more complex, more co-dependents upon peripherals, more like a living ecosystem, delaying upgrading is even more disruptive. If you neglect ongoing minor upgrades, the change backs up so much that the eventual big upgrade reaches traumatic proportions. So I now see upgrading as type of hygiene: You do it regularly to keep your tech healthy. Continual upgrades are so critical for technological systems that they are now automatic for the major personal computer operating systems and some software apps. Behind the scenes, the machines will upgrade themselves, slowly changing their features over time. This happens gradually, so we don’t notice they are “becoming”.
We take this evolution as normal.
Technological life in the future will be a series of endless upgrades. And the rate of graduations is accelerating. Features shift, defaults disappear, menus morph. I’ll open up a software package I don’t use every day expecting certain choices, and whole menus will have disappeared.
No matter how long you have been using a tool, endless upgrades make you into a newbie-the new user often seen as clueless. In this era of “becoming,” everyone becomes a newbie. Worse, we will be newbies forever. That should keep us humble.
That bears repeating. All of us-every one of us-will be endless newbies in the future in the future simply trying to keep up. Here’s why: First most of the important technologies that will dominate life 30 years from now have not yet been invented, so naturally you’ll be a newbie to them. Second, because the new technology requires endless upgrades, you will remain in the newbie state. Third, because the cycle of obsolescence is accelerating (the average lifespan of a phone app is a mere 30 days!), you won’t have time to master anything before it is displaced, so you will remain in the newbie mode forever. Endless Newbie is the new default for everyone, no matter your age or experience.
13. Which of the following statements would the author agree with the most?
(A) The second law of thermodynamics states that things need more energy as they separate.
(B) When it comes to erosion, intangibles behave differently from tangibles.
(C) Up-gradation is no longer an option but an obligation.
(D) Up-gradation though simple is disruptive.
(E) In the next thirty years, one’s experience in up-grading will be greatly valued.
14. Which of the following quotes would the author agree with the most?
(A) Life is like riding a bicycle. In order to avoid falling, you must keep moving.
(B) The only thing constant in life is change.
(C) You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
(D) If you do not change you will be changed.
(E) What we can’t cure we must endure.
15. 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) 1 or 3
(B) 1 or 4
(C) 2 or 4
(D) 3 or 4
(E) 1, 3 and 4
Directions (Qs. 16 & 17) : Analyse the passage below and answer these questions:
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation: that’s all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery-more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, as a wise man, G. K. Chesterton, observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
I, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me-no, that’s too much to ask of anyone-if you can become aware of the miraculousness that I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson than an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because- well, because I am seemingly to simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when you realize that there are about one-half billion of my kind produced in the US each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye-there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal and an eraser.
16. “I” in the passage, most likely, refers to:
(A) the author of the passage
(B) a geometry box
(C) a study table
(D) a pencil
(E) the evolution of a book
17. A “supercilious attitude” in this passage implies:
(A) Failure to perceive the mystery of the sunset.
(B) Arrogance of treating all simple things as trivial.
(C) Lack of curiosity in seeking the mystery behind the lightning.
(D) A tendency to break down intricacies of creation into its simple parts.
(E) Prosaic attitude immune to the mysteries of the world.
Directions (Q. 18 to 20) : Analyse passage below and answer these questions :
Some psychologists and sociologists believe that psychopathy can be an asset in business and politics and that, as a result, psychopathic traits are over-represented among successful people. This would be a puzzle if it were so. If our moral feelings evolved through natural selection, then it shouldn’t be the case that one would flourish without them. And, in fact, the successful psychopath is probably the exception. Psychopaths have certain deficits. Some of these are subtle. The psychologist Abigail Marsh and her colleagues find that psychopaths are markedly insensitive to the expression of fear. Normal people recognize fear and treat it as a distress cue, but psychopaths have problems seeing it, let alone responding to it appropriately. Other deficits run deeper. The overall lack of moral sentiments-and specifically, the lack of regard for others-might turn out to be the psychopath’s downfall. We non-psychopaths are constantly assessing one another, looking for kindness and shame and the like, using this information to decide whom to trust, whom to affiliate with. The psychopath has to pretend to be one of us. But this is difficult. It’s hard to force yourself to comply with moral rules just through a rational appreciation of what you are expected to do. If you feel like strangling the cat, it’s a struggle to hold back just because you know that it is frowned upon. Without a normal allotment of shame and guilt, psychopaths succumb to bad impulses, doing terrible things out of malice, greed, and simple boredom. And sooner or later, they get caught. While psychopaths can be successful in the short term, they tend to fail in the long term and often end up in prison or worse. Let’s take a closer look at what separates psychopaths from the rest of us. There are many symptoms of psychopathy, including pathological lying and lack of remorse or guilt, but the core deficit is indifference toward the suffering of other people. Psychopaths lack compassion. To understand how compassion works for all of us non-psychopaths, it’s important to distinguish it from empathy. Now, some contemporary researchers use the terms interchangeably, but there is a big difference between caring about a person (compassion) and putting yourself in the person’s shoes (empathy).
I am too much of an adaptationist to think that a capacity as rich as empathy exists as a freak biological accident. It most likely has a function, and the most plausible candidate here is that it motivates us to care about others. Empathy exists to motivate compassion and altruism. Still, the link between empathy (in the sense of mirroring another’s feelings) and compassion (in the sense of felling and acting kindly toward another) is more nuanced than many people believe. First, although empathy can be automatic and unconscious-a crying person can affect your mood, even if you’re not aware that this is happening and would rather it didn’t-we often choose whether to empathize with another persons. So when empathy is present, it may be the product of a moral choice, not the cause of it. Empathy is also influenced by what one thinks of the other person. Second, empathy is not needed to motivate compassion. As the psychologist Steven Pinker points out, “If a child has been frightened by a barking dog and is howling in terror, my sympathetic response is not to howl in terror with her, but to comfort and protect her.” Third, just as you can have compassion without empathy, you can have empathy without compassion. You might feel the person’s pain and wish to stop feeling it-but choose to solve the problem by distancing yourself from that person instead of alleviating his or her suffering. Even otherwise good people sometimes turn away when faced with depictions of pain and suffering in faraway lands, or when passing a homeless person on a city street.
18. The core deficit of Psychopaths affects their long term success because,
(A) they cannot sustain the behaviour.
(B) they are less likely to succeed as HR managers than as finance managers.
(C) the cannot hide their lack of compassion for long.
(D) empathy is essential for long term success.
(E) natural selection enables moral feelings.
19. Which of the following options is correct according to the author ?
(A) Compassion exists for a reason.
(B) Empathy is a chance event.
(C) Empathy is the cause of moral choice.
(D) Caring for others is psychopathy.
(E) Long term success in business is a freak accident.
20. 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?
(A) The faculty is a psychopath.
(B) The faculty was compassionate.
(C) The faculty was both empathetic and compassionate but unfair.
(D) The faculty displayed empathy but not compassion.
(E) The faculty displayed compassion but not empathy.
Directions (Qs. 21 to 24) : Analyse the passage below and answer these questions :
Every age has its pet contradictions. A few decades back, we used to accept Marx and Freud together, and then wonder, like the chameleon on the turkey carpet, why life was so confusing. Today there is similar trouble over the question whether there is, or is not, something called Human Nature. One the one hand, there has been an explosion of animal behaviour studies, and comparisons between animals and men have become immensely popular. People use evidence from animals to decide whether man is naturally aggressive, or naturally territorial; even whether he has an aggressive or territorial instinct. Moreover, we are still much influenced by Freudian psychology, which depends on the notion of instinct. On the other hand, many still hold what may be called the Blank Paper view, that man is a creature entirely without instincts. So do Existentialist philosophers. If man has no instincts, all comparison with animals must be irrelevant. (Both these simple party lines have been somewhat eroded over time, but both are still extremely influential.)
According to the Blank Paper view, man is entirely the product of his culture. He starts off infinitely plastic, and is formed completely plastic, and is formed completely by the society in which he grows up. There is then no end to the possible variations among cultures; what we take to be human instincts are just the deep-dug prejudices of our own society. Forming families, fearing the dark, and jumping at the sight of a spider are just results of our conditioning. Existentialism at first appears a very different standpoint, because the Existentialist asserts man’s freedom and will not let him call himself a product of anything. But Existentialism too denies that man has a nature; if he had, his freedom would not be complete. Thus Sartre insisted that “there is no human nature……. Man first of all exists, encounters himself. surges up in the world, and defines himself afterwards. If man as the Existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes himself.” For Existentialism there is only the human condition, which is what happens to man and not what he is born like. If we are afraid of the dark, it is because we choose to be cowards; if we care more for our own children than for other people’s , it is because we choose to be partial ! We must never talk about human nature or human instincts. This implicit moral notion is still very influential, not at all confined to those who use the metaphysic of essence and existence. So I shall sometimes speak of it, not as Existentialist, but as Libertarian-meaning that those holding it do not just (like all of us) think liberty important, but think it supremely important and believe that our having a nature would infringe it.
Philosophers have not yet made much u se of informed comparison with other species as a help in the understanding of man. One reason they have not is undoubtedly the fear of fatalism. Another is the appalling way terms such as instinct and human nature have been misused in the past. A third is the absurdity of some ethological propaganda.
21. A business school led by a 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.
(A) Tenth standard marks should be given highest weightage.
(B) Twelfth standard marks engineering college should be given highest weightage.
(C) Marks scored in the engineering college should be given highest weightage.
(D) Marks scored by the candidate in all previous examinations be given equal weightage.
(E) Recent work experience and contribution to the organization should be given highest weightage.
22. Which of the following statements would the author agree with the most ?
(A) Existentialism can be extended to Libertariansim.
(B) Existentialism and Libertarianism are the same.
(C) Existentialism encompasses Libertarianism.
(D) Animal behaviour should not be compared with human behaviour.
(E) Liberty and existentialism are unrelated.
23. Who among the following, as stated in the third paragraph, would the author be the most sympathetic to?
(A) PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) activists
(B) Save the tiger activists
(C) Architect
(D) Physicists
(E) Zoologists
24. Which sentence in the passage distances man from “nature”, the most?
(A) The sixth sentence of the first paragraph.
(B) The first sentence of the second paragraph.
(C) The sentence third from the last in the passage.
(D) The sentence second from the last in the passage.
(E) The last sentence of the passage.
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