XAT 2027 relaxes the unanswered-question rule: limit without penalty rises from 8 to 12
XLRI has increased the number of questions you may leave unanswered without a penalty in XAT 2027, from 8 to 12.
XLRI Jamshedpur has announced a change to the XAT 2027 marking scheme. The unanswered-question limit without penalty has been increased from 8 questions to 12 questions.
In XAT, leaving too many questions unattempted attracts a negative marking penalty beyond a set threshold. Raising that threshold from 8 to 12 gives you greater flexibility to plan your attempts and manage your time in the examination, and it reduces the pressure to guess on questions you are genuinely unsure about.
What this means for your preparation: you can now skip up to 12 questions across the paper without the unattempted-question penalty. Rework your mock test strategy around the new limit rather than the old one, and recalculate your target attempt count for each section.
XLRI announced this alongside three other XAT 2027 changes: a larger PGDM-HRM intake at XLRI Jamshedpur, 17 new XAT associate institutes, and free XAT 2025 and 2026 question papers with answer keys for aspirants who complete their application by 11 November 2026. Confirm the exact marking scheme in the official XAT instructions before exam day.