XAT 2027: 12 Questions Can Now Be Left Unanswered Without Penalty, XLRI HR Seats Rise to 240; 17 New Colleges

XLRI Jamshedpur has announced four changes for XAT 2027, the MBA entrance exam on 3 January 2027. The biggest is for exam strategy: you can now leave up to 12 questions unanswered without a penalty, up from 8.

What changed

• More room to skip. The no-penalty limit for unanswered questions rises from 8 to 12. Skipping beyond that still costs marks.
• More HR seats at XLRI. The PGDM in Human Resource Management goes from 180 to 240 seats.
• 17 more colleges. New XAT associate institutes include the Arun Jaitley National Institute of Financial Management, Faridabad, and Dayananda Sagar Business School, Bangalore.
• Free past papers. If you complete your XAT 2027 application by 11 November, you get the XAT 2025 and 2026 papers with answer keys.

What it means for your attempt

XAT takes marks for wrong answers, and also for leaving too many questions blank. With 12 free skips, you can drop more of the long or tricky questions, especially in Decision Making and Verbal Ability, without being pushed into guesses. Plan your section-wise skips in your mock tests from now on, and check XLRI’s final rules on the deduction beyond 12 before the exam.

Key dates

For the syllabus, pattern and previous papers, see the XAT page on AglaSem Admission.

Source: XAT 2027 announcements and important dates on xatonline.in, checked on 9 November 2026.