IBPS PO Mains 2018 Exam Strategy | Preparation Hacks |

Table of Contents

Dear Students, as per the tentative schedule of IBPS 2018, the mains examination for the recruitment of IBPS PO will be conducted on 18th of November. If one gets through this phase of the examination, she will get to appear for the final phase of this examination i.e. Personal Interview. Mains examination, being the second and final step of objective type examinations, demands extra study hours, efforts and travail. With hardly one week remaining for this examination to be held, you must have yourself realized the dire need of keeping your casual attitude at bay and sinking your teeth into the preparations. Before you start off with your revision, plan everything in a way that you are able to do with the syllabus and revision on time. Here are the most important preparation tips one must have a look at before she sets off revising for this exam.

The Mains Examination (Online Objective Test) for 200 marks, would be of three hours duration and will consist of 4 sections followed by a descriptive paper (duration: 30 minutes) of 25 marks as follows:

Sr. No.	Name of Tests (NOT BY SEQUENCE)	No. of Questions	Maximum Marks	Medium of Exam	Time allotted for each Test
1.	Reasoning & Computer Aptitude	45	60	English & Hindi	60 minutes
2.	General/ Economy/ Banking Awareness	40	40	English & Hindi	35 minutes
3.	English Language	35	40	English	40 minutes
4.	Data Analysis & Interpretation	35	60	English & Hindi	45 minutes
	TOTAL	155	200		3 hours
5.	English Language (Letter Writing & Essay)	2	25	English	30 minutes

Reasoning Ability and Computer Aptitude Section Strategy

The trick to attempt the maximum number of questions in the Reasoning Section in minimum time is to attempt the difficult puzzles in the end.
Start with the questions that are not in the form of puzzles, you can choose to start with the questions based on inequalities, direction and distance, syllogism, coding-decoding, alphanumeric series, and other random topics.
Then try to start with puzzles that appear easy to solve and proceed with moderate and difficult puzzles in a similar way.
Computer Aptitude is a subject that many students are already good at. Although not many questions are asked from computers, as an aspirant yearning to score maximum in the exam, you should revise this subject too.
For Computer Aptitude, you need to be familiar with the basics of computers and proper definitions. You can refer to the computer capsule available on Bankersadda and Adda247 App for quick revision.

English Language Section Strategy

The trick to scoring in the English section can vary from one person to another depending on his/her strengths and weaknesses.
If you are good at vocab and reading then attempt the reading comprehension first and proceed with Cloze Test and other miscellaneous topics like Error Detection, Para Jumbles, Phrase Replacement, Double Fillers, etc.
But if you are good at grammar, attempt Reading Comprehension in the end.
Reading comprehension too should be attempted in a way that you attempt questions based on vocab and phrases first and then the questions that need a deeper penetration through the paragraphs.
The important topics for cloze test are subject-verb agreement, preposition, and verbs. These topics may help you do some other questions too that will be based on grammar. So make sure that you have these topics on your fingertips when you are to attempt the examination.

General/ Banking/ Economy Awareness Section Strategy

So much is happening every day that unless you keep yourself abreast of these changes you cannot adjust yourself to them or tackle the GA section of any exam smoothly and easily.
To save your precious time, we provide you with an alternative that is Adda247’s “Daily GK Update” (Available in both Hindi and English languages) that contains only the news that is important from the point of view of competitive examinations. It contains all the news that is likely to be asked in the IBPS PO Mains Examinations.
Avoid the habit of ignoring the everyday news, telling yourself that you will do it in the end when the examinations are close, you only end up lying crushed under a pile of news.
You can go through the Monthly Capsules provided by Bankersadda for both Current Affairs as well as Banking Awareness.

Data Analysis & Interpretation Section Strategy

The trick to scoring marks in Quantitative Aptitude Section is to attempt the questions on Quadratic Equations, Simplification and Approximation first and then going for Number Series.
After having attempted all these questions efficiently, go for Data Interpretation.
The remaining few questions will be based on miscellaneous topics like CI & SI, Time and Work, Pipes, and Cisterns, Partnership, etc.

Descriptive Test

The descriptive test will be in English and will be conducted online.
All candidates are supposed to obtain a minimum score in each section of the objective test separately to get shortlisted for the Descriptive test evaluation/Interview.
The descriptive test would be conducted after the objective test. This Test is of 30 minutes duration and of 25 marks.
The Descriptive Test (of English Language) will test your writing skills, understanding, analyzing and summarising skills. Candidates are tested for English Language Writing Skills (Letter Writing and Essay Writing).
One has to put forward the best and the necessary points about the topic that has been asked in a limited number of words.
So, try not to mention the points that are useless from the point of a competitive examination as you will only be wasting your words.