Education and Career Forum

Sir/ Mam,

Kindly suggest me the best way to prepare for the Bank PO.
My mail - id is [email protected]


Thanks & regards
Bhawana Sharma

The best way to prepare for Bank PO examination is self study.I'm suggesting you some books and i think you will easily crack the bank PO examination.

BOOK :General Aptitude by R.S.AGRWAL.

Here I'm giving you the criteria and pattern of PO examination :

Criteria details : your age should be between 18 to 28 years in the time of filling up the form and you must have 60% in your 12th examination.
Pattern :

Section 1 : There will be 5 types of questions.

a) Reasoning
b) General English
c) Quantitative Aptitude
d) General Awareness
e) Basic Computer Knowledge

Section 2 : This section will contain Descriptive type question.

Bank PO jobs are in good demand these days. This is because of the job comfort and salaries and other benefits that are being provided by bank jobs.

The selection procedure for Bank PO Exams will be by
-Written test
-Interview

The written test will consists of questions from the following categories
-Reasoning
-Quantitative aptitude
-General awareness
-General English
-Computer awareness

I suggest you to be strong enough in general awareness and computer awareness. Because these two are the sections which a candidate can answer in quick time and can answer almost all the questions if you are having enough preparation.

As far as Reasoning is concerned, many of the complicated questions will come under Reasoning. So, vast practice should be required to answer these questions. The most important aspect which will benefit you to score high in this section is logical thinking. The more logically you think to answer these questions, the less time you take to solve these questions.

For quantitative aptitude, good practice is required. Practice all the models of different topics. Practice as many number of model papers as possible.

If it is possible for you, join in some coaching institute for some period of time and then prepare yourself with that coaching.

Your practice should be in such a way that you can answer more number of questions in less time which will become competitive advantage for you.

If you are preparing for PO exam, the first thing you need to know is the pattern of the exam. A written test for a PO exam consists of 2 parts, objective part and a descriptive part . The objective part consists of four sections namely, English language test, quantitative ability, Reasoning and General Awareness/ Marketing aptitude.

The exact pattern for a specific bank can be found in the ‘acquaint yourself booklet’ which you get when you apply to an exam.

But for now I’ll discuss on how to attempt a standard bank PO exam which has 225 questions in total with 135 minutes time i.e., 2 hrs and 15 minutes.

225 questions in 135 minutes comes out to be 36 seconds per question. It may seem daunting but it’s not the end of the world since we aren’t attempting every question. If you can attempt 175-185 questions (> 190 is excellent) with 90 percent accuracy, you’ve done a good job.
So as soon as you are told to start answering, I would recommend starting with the General awareness/ Marketing aptitude section and there won’t be much to think or solve in it. Just see the question and mark the answer. Attempt as many questions as you can in this section (only if you’re sure of the answer) but you should be able to complete the section in 25 minutes (20 minutes would be excellent).

The next section to go for would be English and I generally the first 9-10 questions in it will be that of comprehensive passage. So I would recommend leaving that part of the questions as the rest of the section is pretty Basic English which is very easy. Again you should be able to complete this section in 20-25 minutes.

So we’ve done with 2 sections in 40-50 minutes and left with another 135 questions which should be done in 85-95 minutes.
Depending upon your strength, go for either Reasoning or Quant but remember to solve the easiest questions first (this will be the deciding factor). Any thing that requires serious calculation in Quant or serious thinking in Reasoning should be left behind at first and come back to it if time permits at the end. For example questions on circular arrangement in Reasoning and compound interest calculations in Quant could be avoided.

From the feedback given by many test takers, what I found is that the DI part in Quant will be an important part in the test which is also very easiest part. Most of the question in it could be solved without even using your pen. So work hard on DI.

Coming to the time for these 2 sections, 50 questions in Quant (or all that you could solve) should be completed in 40 minutes which leaves out 45-55 minutes to solve 75 questions in Reasoning. Don’t neglect the non-verbal part in Reasoning as there would be atleast 15 questions from it.

All said and done, you should have atleast 5 minutes at the last which you could either use to solve the Reading comprehension in English or the arrangement questions in Reasoning.

These are main topic for useful for all the bank exams.

1.General English
2.Test of Reasoning
3.Quantitative Aptitude
4.General Awareness
5.Descriptive
6.Data Interpretation
7.Solved Question Papers
8.Computer & Marketing With Mock test & Model Papers.

with these topic you can prepare bank exam, self study is better. but you can join a good coaching also. you should solved previous question papers, read news paper, current affirs, economical portion. in bank exam speed is must to solved paper. so you should more practies to all given above topic.

you can download old paper from below link: Click Here

Some impotant books

Test of Reasoning/Reasoning Ability books by R.S.Agarwal

Quantitative Aptitude books by R.S.Agarwal

Upkar`s SBI Clerical Exam

Ramesh`s Bank Clerical Exam

Upkar`s SBI PO Examination (Solved Papers)

Ramesh`s Bank PO. Previous year Solved Papers

English book by T.S Jain