“Hard-work can always beat intelligence” says Abhinandan | IBPS PO – 51

How I Came to know About PO exams?

As soon as my graduation was completed, I did not join Companies in which I was selected in Campus Recruitment Process, rather I decided to give Government and Bank exams.  My father and few of my friends then for the first time told about Probationary Officer Exams which I’ve never heard of being from the science and technical background.

I was at Bhopal for my SSB selection and when I came back (obviously after being rejected), I decided to start preparation for IBPS PO exam and I had approximately 40 days before pre exam of PO 2018.

Preparation Strategy-

Preliminary Exam:- Since time is allotted for each section, we can’t take any section lightly and I believe 10 mocks at least need to be given and analyzed while daily quizzes at Bankersadda should be attempted without fail.

Quantitative Aptitude:-
It is important to understand that your preparation strategy should be dependent on your caliber and educational background and by this I mean, a person from a non-mathematical background needs more time to understand basic concepts and tricks rather than an engineering student. Memorize squares till 30, cubes till 20 and tables till 30. Learn small tricks for easy calculations.

My experience says that a non-mathematical background person needs to join  coaching or online classes of quantitative Aptitude for a better understanding of basic concepts and to learn shortcuts and tricks of calculations, while a “good” student with mathematics background can try without it (Remember only a “good” student).

Whatsoever is the case, practice is must and students do fail to understand that while practicing self-analyzing and improving speed and technique is necessary. Maximum time should be allotted to quant section..

English Language:- 

Similarly to Quant, English should be prepared differently according to language medium in which student’s schooling was done. A person who has not studied from English medium will need help to understand grammar rules which are sometimes confusing to grasp for some students, while a “good” student from English medium need not go for classes. Every day at least 15 new words and their synonyms must be learned.

It is funny how some of my fellow candidates used to read “The Hindu” for hours daily, if your aim is just Bank exams then only the Editorial page is important and that too to improve your reading skills specifically reading speed while understanding the gist of it. Students from English medium need not have to go through The Hindu at all.

Reasoning Ability:- 

For this section, preparation should be done topic wise at the start and then focus should be done on weak topics. This is the section to score good marks and no topic should be skipped. Once you achieve a good hang on everything in this section, you can just start practicing it for 1-hour maximum daily. Remember, Puzzle is easy once you start practicing it daily, students do leave it thinking they can fetch marks in other topics. In my pre-examination out of 30, I got puzzle of 20 marks.

Mains Examination:

Quantitative Aptitude:- With all the things said above, it is important to know that difference between prelims and Mains Difficulty level of quantitative aptitude is vast. Even if you get say 22/30 marks in prelims, it is not necessary that you would cross 10/60 in mains. DI should be the main focus with everything else taken along. I believe here it is more important to identify the questions you can solve within the time limit. Shortcut is of no use here rather basic concepts and understanding of question helps to solve this section in a better way.

Just because of the difficulty level of Mains examination for the last few years has touched heights, it is very important to give Adda247 Test series just for the sake of high difficulty level of questions and yes everything else added to it.

English Language and Reasoning:- Same style of preparation which was done in prelims can be adopted for mains with test series being more important and yes, emphasize on puzzle and comprehension.

General Awareness:-  This is one of the subject which can fetch you good marks with not so much of efforts if done smartly. I hope I knew it before but well here is my strategy seeing the question paper and its pattern.

Current Affairs should be prepared daily for the last 4 months at least. Read every day GK update of Adda247. My strategy would be “Revise yesterday’s GK update, Read today’s Gk update highlighting the main keywords” for the whole week. Then revise whole week’s GK updates with keywords. At the end of the month revise everything with keywords. In a month, you would have revised everything at least 4 times, with only 15 mins maximum spent daily. I believe static can be skipped because the efforts being put do not have enough returns as seen in the last few exams.

Just before exams, Adda releases Gk capsule for IBPS or SBI which is enough to qualify with good marks covering Current Affairs, Banking Awareness, Static (which can be skipped) and Banking Terms, Heads, HQ, etc. If you want to work towards excellence, given that you have excelled in all other sections than only you can go through similar capsules from other banking online portals.

Descriptive Writing:- If you have good writing skills then you can practice with 2 essays and 2 letters daily for about 10 days before exams but if you feel you are not good at it, just start practicing it daily with 1 essay and letter each from the next day of pre-exams.

How did I prepare?

Being an Engineer and English medium student eased out all my efforts. I just saw daily videos and solved quizzes of Adda247 for 1 month for pre-exam preparation. I did put my much of the efforts for quants and gave 2 mocks on last 2 days before the exam which helped me getting 73/100 in pre-exam.

I didn’t even know the level of difficulty of mains as I didn’t seek the guidance of any PO aspirant so 15 days before when I gave the Mock test I was devastated as I fared very badly in it. So last 15 days, I did study for 12-14 hours minimum which helped me in getting 108.25 in mains.

I won’t shy away in accepting that luck was on my side, I hope you won’t take this careless approach, this was one in a thousand case of being a lucky one.

I wish I would have known the above strategies before giving the exam. According to my estimation, if a student is not shying away from hard work of about 2-5 months before prelims and till interview and approaches this exam with the consistency of daily study hours can get 130 marks while if he/she fares on the tougher luck on the day of the exam, the least he would score would be 110 marks in mains.

A good student is who learns from his mistake each time, but a smart student is one who learns from mistakes done by others.

You’ve become an achiever from an aspirant, its time you pass on your knowledge and help other aspirants by guiding them with how your journey was? What helped you? What you believe in? How Adda247 and bankersadda helped you??