SBI PO Preliminary Exam - Don't Repeat Mistakes of Others

Today I am going to share few silly mistakes by candidates in SBI PO Preliminary. You can learn from these mistakes by avoiding them.


First of all there was no surprise factor in the exam. It was same as model papers shared during past few weeks here. Only surprise for me was 5 questions in Quadratic equations. I expected more questions arithmetic chapters. 


1) Skip difficult questions

In every slot, there is one relatively difficult puzzle (Persons-departments), this puzzle can take at least 15 minutes. I strongly recommend you to skip this puzzle. 

The student who is good at finding 60 easy questions will crack the exam.

2) English language section is The King Maker

For many students, result will be a good surprise. Those students who are bad at Quantitative Aptitude or Reasoning , attempt English first. They attempted 27-30. It was a good decision. 

I strongly recommend all of you to attempt English section first.

An average student can easily attempt 55-56 questions if he/she attempt English first.

3) Time management is crucial

  I saw many good students were screwed by bad time management. The biggest mistake many good students did - They burnt 20 minutes on two Reasoning puzzles, even after spending 20 minutes, they aren't sure about the answers. 

Then why are you attempting Reasoning puzzles first ?

4) Don't skip Marks rich questions

I know that it's very difficult to attempt 100 questions within 60 minutes. You can do just 55-60 questions in this time frame. 

Never skip these questions

  1. Series
  2. Inequalities
  3. Fill in the blanks
  4. Sentence correction
  5. Quadratic equations
  6. Arithmetic
  7. Simplifications

What to skip 

  1. Reasoning puzzle (Person-department)
  2. Para jumbles in English
  3. Data interpretation set in which there are complicated calculations

5) Ideal attempt

Cutoff should remain 45-46. So, attempt of 50-55 is good with 90-100% accuracy.

Accuracy is the key to success in this exam.

6) My Final Tip
I shared 9 free model paper for Prelim exam. Difficulty level and pattern of exam is almost same as model papers. Only thing that is different is - Quadratic equations. This chapter is missing from model papers. Model paper 10 will be released within 2 days and I will make sure that difficulty level of this model paper will be same as real exam.

I recommend all of you to download these model papers.


Give your opinion in the comments. I know that many of you might criticize me for posting a vague expected cutoff. This cutoff is based on number of students appearing, difficulty level of exam and data collected from Testpanda.com test series. Sample size is 2346. There can be error of 5%.  


Previous Post Next Post