June 14, 2014.

As the exam date approaches, here is a glance at the SBI PO 2014 exam paper
pattern and tips that will help you clear it.
Paper Pattern:
The candidates will be short-listed for jobs on the basis of their performances in
the two-phase examination. Phase I will comprise an Objective Test and a
Descriptive Exam, while in Phase-II there will be Group Discussion and Interview.
Phase I (Objective Test and Descriptive Exam):
The objective type test will include multiple choice questions containing 200
marks, divided into four sections, namely: English Language (grammar,
vocabulary, comprehension etc.), General Awareness, Marketing & Computers,
Data Analysis & Interpretation, Reasoning (high level). The exam will be over in
two hours.
The descriptive test of one hour duration will carry 50 marks to test the
candidates' English language.
Phase II: (Group Discussion and Interview):
The candidates who qualify in the objective test and descriptive exam will be
called for the interview and group discussion. The marks secured in first phase
will be converted and calculated out of 75, whereas marks secured in second
phase will be converted and calculated out of 25. Thereby, out of the total of 100
marks, a merit list will be published.
Tips and tricks to score more in the exam:
As negative marking is applicable, it's important to attempt only the
questions you are sure about.
The English language section includes questions based on unseen
passages, antonyms, synonyms, understanding vocabulary, fill in the
blanks, finding the error in a statement, jumbled up questions. Revise your
basic grammar skills by referring to grammar book such as Wren and
Martin.

 Listen to English news and practise speaking in English. Apart from

helping you prepare for group discussion and interview, this will improve
your language skills and help you notice language errors.
Glance through a thesaurus to understand and revise antonyms,
synonyms and learn more vocabulary.
General Awareness, Marketing and Computer section is the highest
scoring and can also be completed quickly if you have had thorough
preparation.
Questions from General Awareness, Marketing and Computer generally
come from banking knowledge, current affairs, computer knowledge,
operating systems, computer hardware and software and basics of
marketing.
Study from a recent general knowledge book and basic books on
computers and marketing, focus on understanding the essentials.
Data Analysis and Interpretation will test your mathematical and analytical
skills.
Common questions for the Data Analysis and Interpretation are based on
Number Systems, Fractions, Ratio and Proportion, Time and Work,
Percentage, Profit and Loss, Problems on Ages, Simple Interest and
Compound Interest, Averages, Area and Time and Distance.
Prepare for Data Analysis and Interpretation by practising calculations and
increasing your speed, also revise important Maths formulae and revise
reading charts, graphs and tables.
Reasoning section can be confusing so make sure you completely
understand the question before attempting it; the section aims at testing
your logical thinking and problem solving skills.
Most questions for Reasoning are based on Seating Arrangements,
Syllogism, Coding-Decoding, Statement and Conclusions, Directions,
Blood Relations, Analogy, Classification, Series problems, Missing
Characters, Odd Man out, Ranking Test, Data sufficiency, Assumptions
and Directions.

 The Reasoning section is also one of the most time consuming, so if you
are not able to answer a question, move on and get back to it later.
Practise various types of puzzles and analogies to prepare.
The most important tip for preparation for all the sections is to practise as
many sample papers, model papers and previous year papers as possible.
While all the candidates will attempt both the Objective Test and Descriptive Test,
the Descriptive Test answer sheets of only those candidates clearing the
Objective Test will be evaluated.

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Posted by: shanky shukla
October 22, 2014
respected sir/madam Any tricks Books for PO exam preparation I need a tricks book give
a name ...Thanks.....
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Posted by: anm dybey

March 23, 2015

any suggested book

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Posted by: anm dybey

Data interpretation is the most scoring and time consuming section in

IBPS and other competitive examinations. In quantitative aptitude
section you can see at least 2 data interpretation sets each having 5
questions. In IBPS PO there are 50 questions in Quantitative aptitude
section and the cutoff remains 18-19. So if you solve those two sets
corrected you need to solve 10 questions out of remaining 40
questions. Here are three important techniques to make Data
Interpretation calculations fast

VISUAL ESTIMATION
It is a well known fact that it is near to impossible to solve 200
questions in 120 minutes accurately. Term "Accurately" is important
here because I have seen many candidates attempting 190+ questions
and fails to qualify. The reason behind failure is low accuracy and
many times accuracy level falls below 40%. Important point to be
noted down here is by attempting 190+ with low accuracy you gets less
time for questions you are sure about and there is negative marking in
most of the competitive exams.
Now lets come to our topic. How to use visual estimation technique to
solve Data Interpretation questions. Let's take an visual example :-

Example - Red bars states wheat production state and Green bars
states rice production.
Question - In which year percentage increase Wheat production was
highest ?
As you can see there is increase of 5 tonnes in production both wheat
and rice production every year.
10% of 50 = 5
10% of 70 = 7
So answer should 2006.

FINDING AVERAGES
Many times in Data Interpretation, questions are asked to find
average of 5-6 big numbers. As all these numbers are from a same
graph, there is high probability that these number will be close to each
other. Take a look to following visual example :-

In the above example you can find average of above number in just 5
seconds :7800 ( 14 +29 + 108 + 22 + 120/5 ) = 7800 + 58.6 = 7858.6
I always try to find answers by approximation, in my mind I calculated
answer 7860. Try it yourself.

SOLVE THE FRACTIONS QUICKLY

Learn the value of fractions in percentages. Please read Time and work
chapter in my previous post in which I explained via a table.

FASTER CALCULATIONS
Only thing that you require to score well in data interpretation
questions is fast calculation. Try to find tricks and shortcuts. You can
find multiplication tricks from my previous post.

Let's take an example :- How much 468 of 21428 ?

Let me make this simple for you.
1% of 21428 = 214
2% of 21428 = 428
0.1% of 21428 = 21
For me answer should be around 2.2%
There are tonnes of such techniques which makes calculations easy.
No teacher is going to teach techniques in the class. You need to learn
them with practice.
Go to TestPanda.com for free practice tests on Data Interpretation