40 days to IBPS PO – How to Prepare?

The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) has recently issued notification for the recruitment for the post of PO/MT for various Public Sector banks. Click here to see the notification. With about 40 days to IBPS PO, it is important that aspirants get set with the preparation of the same.

The IBPS PO Prelims is scheduled to take place on 7^th, 8^th, 14^th and 15^th October 2017. It is one of the most awaited job opportunities for all bank aspirants and thus it becomes very important for the aspirants to prepare for this exam with the best strategies. Here in this post, we will discuss few tips and tricks which will help you in forming strategies for your preparation.

Know your IBPS PO Paper:

Paper Pattern

• For every wrong answer, there will be a negative marking of 1/4^th of the mark allotted to the question.
• Candidates have to qualify in each of the three sections by securing minimum cut-off decided by IBPS.

How to prepare for IBPS PO Prelim:

Each section in the IBPS PO Prelims exam is important as there is sectional cut off. So let us discuss how to prepare for the exam section wise:

1. English Language– The trend of this section in the past years has been as follows:

• If English section is your strong area then you must start with this section itself.
• If you have good reading skills then RC is the must pick segment because, good reading skills will save your time. The questions based on RC are easy and hence will require lesser time to solve.
• Good reading skills can also help you solve cloze test quickly. They are also easy in nature and can be solved with little judgment. In cloze test, sometimes we may find two answer options confusing, in that case, we can decide after reading the whole Para once again with rest of the blanks filled, but if it continues to confuse you it is better to move on.
• Then you can move onto solving sentence correction, fill in the blanks and spot the error questions, these are also less time-consuming. Often, these questions can be solved with elimination technique. The answer choices are rarely confusing and if you have prepared well then you should be able to solve them easily.
• Para jumbles can take a lot of your time so you can choose to leave them for.

2. Reasoning – General distribution of the questions in this section is as follows:

• Learn formulas and short-cut techniques.
• Don’t waste a lot of your time on a single topic.
• Practice is the key to success in this section. This will improve your speed and accuracy.
• Work on striking a balance between picking random questions to choosing your set of questions wisely.
• Topics like series, blood relations, seating arrangement are comparatively easy to solve so you can pick them first (but then again it all depends upon your strong and weak topics).

3. Quantitative Aptitude – If we look at the past few years IBPS PO Prelims exam, the QA section looks like this

• Attempt the questions which you are confident of first.
• Make yourself well acquainted with the shortcut tricks else this section can be very time- consuming for you.
• If you are good with faster calculations you can pick DI sets first.
• Percentage, Profit and Loss and Ratio and Proportions are basic math topic which can be picked first.

Whatever the section is and whatever be your strong and weak area, in an exam like this you should keep your focus on:

• Time Management;
• Faster calculations;
• Starting with your strongest area and closing with the weakest;
• Not wasting time over useless time-consuming questions;
• Accuracy is the most important thing; you would not want to lose marks rather than earning them.

Stay tuned for more IBPS PO updates. Kickstart your bank exam preparations by having a look at our latest offerings. Click here.

Happy Preparations!!

All the best!!