Given higher pay packages thanks to the Sixth pay commission and the perceived risk in the private sector due to recession, the number of candidates appearing in the Banking recruitment exams has reached record numbers. What was once popular among graduate students from rural and small towns has now spread to cities and includes Engineers too. In fact, I have taught students who are working with IT companies as programmers but are preparing for Bank PO exams.

 

Let’s understand the exam first?

 

Firstly, it is an extremely competitive exam. The last SBI PO exam had about 15 lakh aspirants for 1700 jobs. Do the math. That makes it more competitive than CAT or even IIT JEE. So, intensive preparation is a must. Many institutes are offering short-term 3-4 month courses, which are ridiculous, given the level of competition.

 

Secondly, it is an exam that is based primarily on speed. Strong concepts, high accuracy and speed are the keys to cracking this exam. The SBI PO exam has 200 Qs to be solved in 120 min, i.e. 36 seconds per Q on an average. The IBPS PO exam has 250 Qs in 150 min, again 36 Sec per Q.

 

So work on speed calculations every day. 30 min a day solving 20-30 problems can seriously strengthen your ability to calculate fast and accurate. You can use good books on speed maths, especially Vedic maths.

 

The questions are not too difficult; they are essentially high school stuff. However the methods used in High school just won’t do. You have to understand that the same problem can be solved in many methods and you should pick the fastest method. Here a good teacher would help explain the many ways of solving the same problem and how to pick the right method

 

Thirdly you need a strategy to ensure optimal utilization of the allotted time. For example let’s look at the IBPS PO exam

 

 

Preparing for the exam

• Your preparation for an online exam doesn’t change much as even in an online exam, you will solve the question on your rough sheets
• Practice reading from a computer screen. It takes some time to get adjusted
• Take as many online tests and online mock Tests to get used to the process
• Try to go for an Online Mocks which have a similar interface to IBPS online mock interface.
• Use the rough sheet only when absolutely required. Don’t copy the full Q onto the rough sheet. Learn to practice doing calculations in the head

During the exam

• Don’t touch the keyboard at all during the exam.
• The online exam allows you to view one Question at a time. You can move serially forward using button called ‘Save and Next’ or ‘Mark for review and next’
• Alternately you can also go to any specific question by number. For example you can go from Q 2 to Q51 (next Section) at any time using the question number menu on the right.
• You can clear the marked choice after marking a choice. In other words you can change answer choices after marking a particular choice.
• At any point in time, you can see the number of questions attempted, Qs un- attempted, Qs marked for review. This will help you track your progress.

The author is the CMO at VistaMind. VistaMind is a competitive exams preperation centre that was founded by some of India’s best CAT and MBA entrance Trainers. They have over 10 years of experience in setting up and/or running successfully the centres of a Leading Coaching Institute in India in cities including Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Mysore. As faculty and mentors, they have personally taught, guided and mentored more than 1,35,000 students and sent over 5000 students to the IIMs alone in the past decade.