XAT Critical Reasoning MCQs with Solutions: Practice XAT Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Which of the statements below is least fallacious?

Read the following statements and answer the question that follows.
A. Back then, they were owned by companies and installed on their premises. 
B. Rooms and servers began to replace computer mainframes in the 1990’s. 
C. These were supplemented by processors from Intel, which by the mid-2000s translated its dominance of PC semiconductors into a near monopoly of the server market. 
D. They mostly ran on chips made by IBM and HP, the big tech of the day. 
E. Things started to change once again around a decade ago, when Amazon began selling some of its spare server capacity. 
Which of the following combinations is the MOST logically ordered?

Read the following paragraph:
"Music probably does something interesting," explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. "It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it." Unlike brain-games, playing an instrument is a rich and complex experience. This is because it's integrating information from senses like vision, hearing, and touch, along with fine movements. This can result in long-lasting changes in the brain. This can also be applicable in the business world.
Go through the following statements:
1. Playing a musical instrument is a unique experience involving vision, hearing and touch.
2. Instrumental musicians are far more creative than vocalists.
3. Playing brain games does not integrate various senses and movements as much as playing a musical instrument.
4. Integrating the five senses is critical in the business world.
Which of the above statements can definitely be interpreted based on the passage above?

Employees complaining about mundane tasks are often ignored. There is a listlessness that settles around them. A bored employee may continue to produce good results, but that can also be because the tasks are repetitive, and the outcomes are expected.
Which of the following options can be BEST inferred from the passage?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
That’s how life plays out for all of us. We lose some. Like sportspersons, we too pack our gear and go to work. But unlike them, the gaze of the world is not upon us. Most of us do our business in anonymity, very few of us are emotionally wired to the outcomes of our day jobs. We don’t come back feeling like winners. Or losers. As sports fans we can summon empathy for those who stretch their bodies and minds to the limit in the pursuit of athletic excellence and provide such joys in the process. 
But we will never experience the highs that are their reward. And we will never know the depth of their lows, which are their burden. Still, no one will know better than Rohit and Dravid that its already a new day. There might never be a World Cup win for them. But there are loved ones to go to. Life awaits still. 
Which of the following statements BEST summarizes the above passage?

Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows:
Indian religious and ethical space is different from that of the western countries. The Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata etc. enrich Indian religious and social space. Details of the treatment of human values and Dharmas have a long tradition. They are often compared, contrasted and debated by the characters in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In the process, it has given birth to a tradition of dharma, which has been transferred from generation to generation. Ethical discourse was not a one-time affair. From time to time, religious leaders from various regions of India nourished and strengthened the Indian ethical arena. Tiruvalluvar (second century B.C.), Kabir from Uttar Pradesh (fifteenth century A.D.), Nanak from Punjab (fifteenth century A.D), Alvars and Nayanmars of Tamil Nadu (eighth century A.D.), Basaveswara of Karnataka (Twelfth century A.D.), Sri Chaitanya (Sixteenth century) were prominent.
Which of the following assumptions will make the above paragraph redundant?

Observe the cartoon below carefully and answer the question that follows. (Cartoon by Tom Toro, originally published in The New Yorker on November 18, 2024. Used for educational purpose.)

Which of the following options BEST explains the underlying message depicted in the cartoon?

Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows.
Fear is the greatest motivator of all time. Conflict born of fear is behind our every action, driving us forward like the cogs of a clock. Fear is desire’s dark dress, its doppelgänger. “Love and dread are brothers,” says Julian of Norwich. As desire is wanting and fear is not-wanting, they become inexorably linked; just as desire can be destructive (the desire for power), fear can be constructive (fear of hurting another); fear of poverty becomes desire for wealth. 
Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the paragraph?

Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
How do we choose one discovery over any other? The physician Lewis Thomas made a choice. He bluntly asserts: “The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance.” 
The science writer Timothy Ferris agrees: “Our ignorance, of course, has always been with us, and always will be. What is new is our awareness of it, our awakening to its fathomless dimensions, and it is this, more than anything else, that marks the coming of age of our species.” It is an odd, unsettling thought that the culmination of our greatest century of discovery should be the confirmation of our ignorance. How did such a thing come about? 
Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the above passage?

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
Which of the following options can be BEST concluded from the passage?

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 \$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?

Read the following paragraph and answer the question that follows.
You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. 
Based on the above information, which of the following statements MUST be true?

Go through the statements below and answer the question that follows.
A. Maybe you have survived major trauma and have a hard time feeling safe. 
B. You’ll probably discover that your fear and struggles make sense on account of what you’ve lived through. 
C. Instead of beating yourself up for reacting in ways you don’t understand, you can develop compassion for yourself and what you’ve been through. 
D. Perhaps you have experienced a sudden death, and you are often anxious about the health of your loved ones. 
E. You may also find out that you have more strength than you knew, the same strength that has sustained you this far…. 
Which of the following combinations is the MOST logically ordered?

Read the following paragraphs and answer the question that follows.
Paragraph 1: Here are some handy rules of thumb. Anyone who calls themselves a thought leader is to be avoided. A man who does not wear socks cannot be trusted. And a company that holds an employee-appreciation day does not appreciate its employees. 
Paragraph 2: It is not just that the message sent by acknowledging staff for one out of 260-odd working days is a bit of a giveaway (there isn’t a love-your-spouse day ... for the same reason). It is also that the ideas are usually so tragically unappreciative. You have worked hard all year so you get a slice of cold pizza or a rock stamped with the words “You rock”? 
Which of the following BEST describes the relationship of the first paragraph with the second paragraph?

The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers.
Which of the following statements CANNOT be concluded from the excerpt?