XAT 2027, SNAP 2026, NMAT and CMAT: Dates, Fees and What the GD-PI Rounds Look Like

All four exams in one table

If you are sitting CAT 2026 on 29 November and keeping other doors open, here is where the four other big management tests stand on 21 October 2026, from their official sites only. XAT 2027 is on Sunday 3 January 2027, 2 to 5 pm, per xatonline.in. SNAP 2026 is on 13, 19 and 26 December 2026, per snaptest.org. NMAT by GMAC runs on mba.com, which gave us no readable text this week, so its window and fee are unverified here. CMAT 2027 has no notice on the NTA CMAT site yet. After each test comes a second round, and the rounds are not the same: XLRI’s 2027 prospectus describes a “GD/PI process and WAT”, Symbiosis institutes run a Group Exercise and Personal Interaction, and the colleges that take NMAT and CMAT scores each run their own process. All of those rounds are in English, which is the part of this page our readers will use most.

Our dates block on this page is rendered from one shared file and today carries the CAT 2026 and IIM WAT-PI rows; the XAT and SNAP dates above are quoted in prose from the official sites and will join the block in a weekly update. If the block and this prose ever disagree, the official site wins and we correct the page.

XAT 2027: 3 January 2027, 2 to 5 pm

XAT is conducted by XLRI on behalf of XAMI, per the XAT 2027 Bulletin, and its score is used by XLRI and by the long list of associate institutions printed in that bulletin. Everything in this section is from xatonline.in and the two PDFs it links, the XAT 2027 Bulletin and the XLRI Admission Prospectus 2027, as read on 21 October 2026. One note on the date: the home page, the registration page and the FAQ all say January 03, 2027, 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, a Sunday, and the FAQ calls it a three-hour test. The XAT 2027 Bulletin and the XLRI prospectus give the same date, 3 January 2027. An earlier research note of ours had a different day and a longer duration; the site and its documents are the authority and this page follows them.

Fee, pattern and eligibility

Per the registration page: Rs 2,300 to register, plus Rs 200 for each XLRI programme; Rs 2,600 for Indian candidates applying to the PGDM (GM) through GMAT or GRE; Rs 5,000 for NRI, foreign, PIO and OCI candidates applying through GMAT. The home page describes the paper as 95 questions in four sections, 180 minutes in all, across more than 100 test cities: Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning 26, Decision Making 21, Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation 28, General Knowledge 20. The same table shows 170 minutes against the first three sections and 10 minutes against General Knowledge, while the FAQ says “there are only overall time limits. There are no sectional time limits” and “all sections will be accessible throughout the exam”. The two pages read differently, so plan for a three-hour paper in which you manage your own time, and read the instructions on your admit card for the final word on the General Knowledge minutes. The FAQ also confirms a scientific calculator inside the exam interface. Eligibility is a recognised bachelor’s degree of at least three years, with final-year candidates eligible if they complete their examinations by 11 June 2027. The site says that XLRI admissions “are purely based on merit and does not involve any Management or NRI Quota”, so treat any offer of a seat for money as false.

What XLRI’s round looks like

The xlri.ac.in admission pages we tried returned only page footers this week, but the XLRI Admission Prospectus 2027 on xatonline.in says three things plainly. The interview shortlist for the BM and HRM programmes “is based only on XAT Scores”. Shortlisted candidates go through a “GD/PI process and WAT”. And for final selection XLRI considers “XAT performance, academic background, relevant work experience, performance in the personal interview and/or group discussion, extracurricular activities and other relevant criteria”; it publishes no weights. Candidates who apply to several programmes “may be called for multiple interviews and/or group discussions”. The timing is not in the prospectus: in past cycles, as reported by candidates, the rounds ran in February and March in a small number of cities, and the PI covered academics, work or projects, why management and why XLRI, often with an ethics or decision-making scenario in the spirit of the Decision Making section. Our GD topics for MBA admission page has eighty topics with five points each, and the TalkDrill group discussion room lets you run one with other candidates tonight.

SNAP 2026: 13, 19 and 26 December 2026

SNAP is the Symbiosis International (Deemed University) test for its MBA programmes; the 2026 score is for the 2027-28 academic session, per snaptest.org. Three test dates, up to three attempts, best score counts, no normalisation: that is the official rule, quoted below, and it changes how you should plan the fortnight after CAT.

The paper

Per the snaptest.org test structure page, SNAP is a computer-based test of 60 questions, 60 marks, 60 minutes (PwD candidates receive 20 additional minutes per hour). Four sections: General English 10 questions, Analytical and Logical Reasoning 20, Quantitative, Data Interpretation and Data Sufficiency 20, and Ethics, Morality and Values 10, each question worth one mark with 25 per cent negative marking for a wrong answer. Sections may be attempted in any order. At one question a minute, speed, not stamina, is the skill; all three dates fall within four weeks of CAT, so a candidate who is sharp on 29 November can carry that form into December.

GE-PI, by each institute

SNAP does not use the words group discussion. The official term is Group Exercise and Personal Interaction, and the FAQ says shortlisted candidates “must attend the Group Exercise and Personal Interaction process conducted separately by each institute”. In practice, as reported across past cycles, a Group Exercise is a task the group completes together (a case, a ranking, a short build-and-present activity) rather than a free debate, which rewards candidates who listen, allocate and summarise over candidates who talk most. The Personal Interaction, also as reported, is a panel conversation about your profile and your choice of programme. The weight of each part is set by the institute (SIBM Pune, SCMHRD, SIBM Bengaluru and the rest), not by SNAP; read the page of the programme you paid Rs 1,000 for.

NMAT by GMAC: what we could and could not read

NMAT is owned by GMAC and is the entry test for NMIMS and a set of other schools. Its official home is mba.com/exams/nmat. On 20 and 21 October 2026 that page, its “about” and “register” sub-pages, and nmat.org (which redirects to mba.com) returned no readable text to any fetcher we used; the site is rendered entirely by script. So this page states no NMAT dates, fee, window or attempt count. We will not copy them from a coaching site, because those pages mix years.

What we can say without numbers, from how the test has run in past cycles: NMAT is a window test rather than a single-day test, you book your own date and centre (or an online proctored slot) inside the window, and more than one attempt has been allowed with the best score counting. The window has in recent years opened in the autumn and run into the winter, which overlaps the CAT and SNAP preparation period. The receiving schools, led by NMIMS Mumbai, run their own second rounds, which in past cycles have included a case discussion and a personal interview. Treat every one of those statements as a description to verify on mba.com, not as a fact for 2026. The moment the page is readable to us, this section becomes a table.

CMAT 2027: nothing announced; the 2026 pattern

CMAT is the National Testing Agency’s test for AICTE-approved management programmes. On 21 October 2026 the official site, cmat.nta.nic.in, showed a last-updated date of 10 October 2026, the CMAT 2026 scorecard marked live, and no information bulletin, registration notice or date for CMAT 2027. There is no 2027 date to give you, and we will not invent one. What the same site does give is last cycle’s sequence, which is the best guide to the shape of the next one:

So the 2026 test sat between the admit card on 21 January and the keys on 31 January, with the result inside four weeks. The CMAT 2026 information bulletin still linked on the site is filed under October 2025, so on last cycle’s timing a 2027 bulletin could appear at any point this autumn, but that is a pattern, not an announcement; the site’s 10 October update carried nothing. Fees are not on the home page either, so we quote none. The receiving colleges run their own second rounds, and each publishes its own format; check the college page before you plan.

GD, GE, WAT and PI: how the rounds differ

Four different second rounds, one language. The table below is the practical difference between them. The IIM rows are from IIM Calcutta’s 2027-29 admission procedure where a number appears; the XLRI rounds are named in its 2027 prospectus; the formats of the Symbiosis and NMIMS rounds are the pattern reported across past cycles, labelled as such, because those institutes’ round descriptions were not readable to us this week.

The common thread for a Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil or Bengali speaker is that none of these rounds rewards vocabulary; all of them reward a sentence with a point, a reason and a full stop. In a GD the entry line that gets heard is short. In a GE the sentence that moves the group is “Let us list the options first, then rank them.” In a PI the answer the panel remembers is the one that ended. Our spoken English for the PI page works through the slips each language group makes, and the GD phrases guide gives the entry, build and summary lines for the group rounds.

One calendar for a CAT 2026 taker

Put the official dates in a line and the winter looks like this. CAT 2026 on Sunday 29 November, per the CAT 2026 advertisement. SNAP on 13, 19 and 26 December. XAT on Sunday 3 January 2027, with its result in the last week of January per the XAT 2027 Bulletin. The CAT result in the first week of January 2027, the IIMs’ own word tentative. IIM shortlists in January, then WAT-PI from February to March, the window our dates block marks as expected. NMAT and CMAT somewhere in that span, dates unread or unannounced. That is five tests and at least two kinds of second round inside about four months, which is why the preparation for the rounds has to begin before the first test, not after the last result.

The CAT result to PI day roadmap turns this into a six-week plan with daily minutes. For the rounds themselves, the TalkDrill mock interview runs a panel-style PI with timing and feedback on structure, fillers and pace, and the mock PI practice page has the self-score sheet. The official resources page keeps every link on this page with its verified or unverified status, and the all exam dates page shows the dated rows for every exam we track.