List of top Questions asked in XAT

Direction: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best Answer to each question.
Throughout much of recorded human history, China has boasted the largest population in the world – and until recently, by some margin. So news that the Chinese population is now in decline, and will sometime later this year be surpassed by that of India, is big news even if long predicted. This decline in numbers will spur a trend that already concerns demographers in China: a rapidly aging society. By 2040, around a quarter of the Chinese population is predicted to be over the age of 65. In short, this is a seismic shift. It will have huge symbolic and substantive impacts on China in three main areas. This historical turning point in China’s population trend serves as a further wake-up call to move the country’s model more quickly to a post-manufacturing, post-industrial economy – an aging, shrinking population does not fit the purposes of a labour-intensive economic model. As to what it means for China’s economy, and that of the world, population decline and an aging society will certainly provide Beijing with short-term and long-term challenges. In short, it means there will be fewer workers able to feed the economy and spur further economic growth on one side of the ledger; on the other, a growing post-work population will need potentially costly support. It is perhaps no coincidence then that 2022, as well as being a pivotal year for China in terms of demographics, also saw one of the worst economic performances the country has experienced since 1976, according to data released on Jan. 17. How the Chinese government responds to the challenges presented by this dramatic demographic shift will be key. Failure to live up to the expectations of the public in its response could result in a crisis for the Chinese Communist Party, whose legitimacy is tied closely to economic growth. Any economic decline could have severe consequences for the Chinese Communist Party. It will also be judged on how well the state is able to fix its social support system. Indeed, there is already a strong case to be made that the Chinese government has moved too slowly. The onechild policy that played a significant role in the slowing growth, and now decline, in population was a government policy for more than three decades. It has been known since the 1990s that the Chinese fertility rate was too low to sustain current population numbers. Yet it was only in 2016 that Beijing acted and relaxed the policy to allow more couples to have a second, and then in 2021 a third, child. This action to spur population growth, or at least slow its decline, came too late to prevent China from soon losing its crown as the world’s largest nation. Loss of prestige is one thing though, the political impact of any economic downturn resulting from a shrinking population is quite another.
None of the following statements is implied by the arguments of the passage, EXCEPT:
Direction: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best Answer to each question. Throughout much of recorded human history, China has boasted the largest population in the world – and until recently, by some margin. So news that the Chinese population is now in decline, and will sometime later this year be surpassed by that of India, is big news even if long predicted. This decline in numbers will spur a trend that already concerns demographers in China: a rapidly aging society. By 2040, around a quarter of the Chinese population is predicted to be over the age of 65. In short, this is a seismic shift. It will have huge symbolic and substantive impacts on China in three main areas. This historical turning point in China’s population trend serves as a further wake-up call to move the country’s model more quickly to a post-manufacturing, post-industrial economy – an aging, shrinking population does not fit the purposes of a labour-intensive economic model. As to what it means for China’s economy, and that of the world, population decline and an aging society will certainly provide Beijing with short-term and long-term challenges. In short, it means there will be fewer workers able to feed the economy and spur further economic growth on one side of the ledger; on the other, a growing post-work population will need potentially costly support. It is perhaps no coincidence then that 2022, as well as being a pivotal year for China in terms of demographics, also saw one of the worst economic performances the country has experienced since 1976, according to data released on Jan. 17. How the Chinese government responds to the challenges presented by this dramatic demographic shift will be key. Failure to live up to the expectations of the public in its response could result in a crisis for the Chinese Communist Party, whose legitimacy is tied closely to economic growth. Any economic decline could have severe consequences for the Chinese Communist Party. It will also be judged on how well the state is able to fix its social support system. Indeed, there is already a strong case to be made that the Chinese government has moved too slowly. The onechild policy that played a significant role in the slowing growth, and now decline, in population was a government policy for more than three decades. It has been known since the 1990s that the Chinese fertility rate was too low to sustain current population numbers. Yet it was only in 2016 that Beijing acted and relaxed the policy to allow more couples to have a second, and then in 2021 a third, child. This action to spur population growth, or at least slow its decline, came too late to prevent China from soon losing its crown as the world’s largest nation. Loss of prestige is one thing though, the political impact of any economic downturn resulting from a shrinking population is quite another.
The author claims that, “Loss of prestige is one thing though, the political impact of any economic downturn resulting from a shrinking population is quite another.” Which one of the following statements best expresses the point being made by the author?
Direction: The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best Answer to each question. Throughout much of recorded human history, China has boasted the largest population in the world – and until recently, by some margin. So news that the Chinese population is now in decline, and will sometime later this year be surpassed by that of India, is big news even if long predicted. This decline in numbers will spur a trend that already concerns demographers in China: a rapidly aging society. By 2040, around a quarter of the Chinese population is predicted to be over the age of 65. In short, this is a seismic shift. It will have huge symbolic and substantive impacts on China in three main areas. This historical turning point in China’s population trend serves as a further wake-up call to move the country’s model more quickly to a post-manufacturing, post-industrial economy – an aging, shrinking population does not fit the purposes of a labour-intensive economic model. As to what it means for China’s economy, and that of the world, population decline and an aging society will certainly provide Beijing with short-term and long-term challenges. In short, it means there will be fewer workers able to feed the economy and spur further economic growth on one side of the ledger; on the other, a growing post-work population will need potentially costly support. It is perhaps no coincidence then that 2022, as well as being a pivotal year for China in terms of demographics, also saw one of the worst economic performances the country has experienced since 1976, according to data released on Jan. 17. How the Chinese government responds to the challenges presented by this dramatic demographic shift will be key. Failure to live up to the expectations of the public in its response could result in a crisis for the Chinese Communist Party, whose legitimacy is tied closely to economic growth. Any economic decline could have severe consequences for the Chinese Communist Party. It will also be judged on how well the state is able to fix its social support system. Indeed, there is already a strong case to be made that the Chinese government has moved too slowly. The onechild policy that played a significant role in the slowing growth, and now decline, in population was a government policy for more than three decades. It has been known since the 1990s that the Chinese fertility rate was too low to sustain current population numbers. Yet it was only in 2016 that Beijing acted and relaxed the policy to allow more couples to have a second, and then in 2021 a third, child. This action to spur population growth, or at least slow its decline, came too late to prevent China from soon losing its crown as the world’s largest nation. Loss of prestige is one thing though, the political impact of any economic downturn resulting from a shrinking population is quite another.
The author claims that, “It is perhaps no coincidence then that 2022, as well as being a pivotal year for China in terms of demographics, also saw one of the worst economic performances the country has experienced since 1976.” Which one of the following statements best expresses the point being made by the author here?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow.
As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming increasingly important. Household names like Costco and Netflix have not provided emissions reduction targets despite saying they want to reduce their impact on climate change. Others, like the agricultural giant Cargill and the clothing company Levi Strauss, have made commitments but have struggled to cut emissions. Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which run power-hungry data centers, have slashed emissions, but even they are finding that the technology often doesn’t yet exist to carry out their “moonshot” objectives. You can look at a company’s website and see their sustainability report and it will look great, But then when you look at what is behind it, you’ll see there is not a lot of substance behind those commitments or the commitments are not comprehensive enough. To realize the necessary emission reductions, more ambitious targets urgently need to be set. Otherwise, we project emissions for S&P 500 companies will end up being triple of what they should be in 2050 . Slashing emissions is difficult. Businesses must reliably measure how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they are responsible for. Then companies have to find cleaner energy sources without hurting their operations. Where they can’t find cleaner substitutes, businesses often pay others to reduce emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. The task gets even harder when companies begin the process of reducing so-called Scope 3 emissions — pollution caused by suppliers and customers. At oil companies, for example, Scope 3 would include emissions from cars that use gasoline. Other companies that have pledged to cut emissions face different challenges, including coordinating with suppliers and partners. Consider the apparel industry. Much of its contribution to climate change comes from its supply chain. The clothes that Levi Strauss and others put their labels on are often made in factories in places like China, Pakistan and India that remain reliant on coal-fired power plants. The clothes are transported on ships and planes that burn diesel and jet fuel. If we are going to achieve a net-zero carbon economy for real, we will need everyone to act,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer. “And that means action can’t be voluntary. We need requirements and standards that everyone is expected to meet.
According to the passage, what would be closest to the idea of a “moonshot” objective?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow. As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming increasingly important. Household names like Costco and Netflix have not provided emissions reduction targets despite saying they want to reduce their impact on climate change. Others, like the agricultural giant Cargill and the clothing company Levi Strauss, have made commitments but have struggled to cut emissions. Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which run power-hungry data centers, have slashed emissions, but even they are finding that the technology often doesn’t yet exist to carry out their “moonshot” objectives. You can look at a company’s website and see their sustainability report and it will look great, But then when you look at what is behind it, you’ll see there is not a lot of substance behind those commitments or the commitments are not comprehensive enough. To realize the necessary emission reductions, more ambitious targets urgently need to be set. Otherwise, we project emissions for S&P 500 companies will end up being triple of what they should be in 2050 . Slashing emissions is difficult. Businesses must reliably measure how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they are responsible for. Then companies have to find cleaner energy sources without hurting their operations. Where they can’t find cleaner substitutes, businesses often pay others to reduce emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. The task gets even harder when companies begin the process of reducing so-called Scope 3 emissions — pollution caused by suppliers and customers. At oil companies, for example, Scope 3 would include emissions from cars that use gasoline. Other companies that have pledged to cut emissions face different challenges, including coordinating with suppliers and partners. Consider the apparel industry. Much of its contribution to climate change comes from its supply chain. The clothes that Levi Strauss and others put their labels on are often made in factories in places like China, Pakistan and India that remain reliant on coal-fired power plants. The clothes are transported on ships and planes that burn diesel and jet fuel. If we are going to achieve a net-zero carbon economy for real, we will need everyone to act,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer. “And that means action can’t be voluntary. We need requirements and standards that everyone is expected to meet.
Based on the passage, which of the following is NOT an example of environmental activism?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow. As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming increasingly important. Household names like Costco and Netflix have not provided emissions reduction targets despite saying they want to reduce their impact on climate change. Others, like the agricultural giant Cargill and the clothing company Levi Strauss, have made commitments but have struggled to cut emissions. Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which run power-hungry data centers, have slashed emissions, but even they are finding that the technology often doesn’t yet exist to carry out their “moonshot” objectives. You can look at a company’s website and see their sustainability report and it will look great, But then when you look at what is behind it, you’ll see there is not a lot of substance behind those commitments or the commitments are not comprehensive enough. To realize the necessary emission reductions, more ambitious targets urgently need to be set. Otherwise, we project emissions for S&P 500 companies will end up being triple of what they should be in 2050 . Slashing emissions is difficult. Businesses must reliably measure how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they are responsible for. Then companies have to find cleaner energy sources without hurting their operations. Where they can’t find cleaner substitutes, businesses often pay others to reduce emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. The task gets even harder when companies begin the process of reducing so-called Scope 3 emissions — pollution caused by suppliers and customers. At oil companies, for example, Scope 3 would include emissions from cars that use gasoline. Other companies that have pledged to cut emissions face different challenges, including coordinating with suppliers and partners. Consider the apparel industry. Much of its contribution to climate change comes from its supply chain. The clothes that Levi Strauss and others put their labels on are often made in factories in places like China, Pakistan and India that remain reliant on coal-fired power plants. The clothes are transported on ships and planes that burn diesel and jet fuel. If we are going to achieve a net-zero carbon economy for real, we will need everyone to act,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer. “And that means action can’t be voluntary. We need requirements and standards that everyone is expected to meet.
Which of the following statement(s) is NOT in consonance with the author’s views, as expressed in the passage?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow. Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. ("This world"! As if there were any other.) The world, our world is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real Art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an over cooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job.
According to the passage, which of the following is NOT an act of interpretation?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow. Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. ("This world"! As if there were any other.) The world, our world is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real Art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an over cooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job.
Which of the following BEST explains as to why art is interpreted?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow.
Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you’re simply saying “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” you’re not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. Most agree that this peculiar irrationality stems from our relationship to time—in particular, from a tendency that economists call “hyperbolic discounting.” A two-stage experiment provides a classic illustration: In the first stage, people are offered the choice between a hundred dollars today or a hundred and ten dollars tomorrow; in the second stage, they choose between a hundred dollars a month from now or a hundred and ten dollars a month and a day from now. In substance, the two choices are identical: wait an extra day, get an extra ten bucks. Yet, in the first stage many people choose to take the smaller sum immediately, whereas in the second they prefer to wait one more day and get the extra ten bucks. In other words, hyperbolic discounters are able to make the rational choice when they’re thinking about the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. The lesson of this experiment is not that people are shortsighted or shallow but that their preferences aren’t consistent over time. We want to watch the Bergman masterpiece, to give ourselves enough time to write the report properly, to set aside money for retirement. But our desires shift as the long run becomes the short run.
According to the passage, in regard to time, which of the following statements gives the BEST reason for procrastination?
Direction: Read the following passage and Answer the THREE questions that follow.
Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off. In other words, if you’re simply saying “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” you’re not really procrastinating. Knowingly delaying because you think that’s the most efficient use of your time doesn’t count, either. The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy. Most agree that this peculiar irrationality stems from our relationship to time—in particular, from a tendency that economists call “hyperbolic discounting.” A two-stage experiment provides a classic illustration: In the first stage, people are offered the choice between a hundred dollars today or a hundred and ten dollars tomorrow; in the second stage, they choose between a hundred dollars a month from now or a hundred and ten dollars a month and a day from now. In substance, the two choices are identical: wait an extra day, get an extra ten bucks. Yet, in the first stage many people choose to take the smaller sum immediately, whereas in the second they prefer to wait one more day and get the extra ten bucks. In other words, hyperbolic discounters are able to make the rational choice when they’re thinking about the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals. The lesson of this experiment is not that people are shortsighted or shallow but that their preferences aren’t consistent over time. We want to watch the Bergman masterpiece, to give ourselves enough time to write the report properly, to set aside money for retirement. But our desires shift as the long run becomes the short run.
Which of the following statements can be BEST inferred from the passage about procrastination?
Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. ("This world"! As if there were any other.) The world, our world is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real Art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an over cooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job.
What does the author mean by, ‘In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability…?’