The IBPS Specialist Officers exam is conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection every year. Through this exam, the Specialist Officers at various positions are hired by the IBPS. Thousands of candidates appear for this exam to get a prestigious job at the most reputed banks.
The exam has three stages – Prelims, Mains and Final Interview. So, if you are looking to clear the exam, you need to know all its details. This article will discuss the tips and tricks to help you pass the IBPS So exam with flying colours.
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IBPS Specialist Officers Exam
What is IBPS SO exam?
The IBPS SO exam is held to hire candidates for different positions in private and public sector banks. The different positions include IT Officer, Law Officer, Chartered Accountants, Rajbhasha Adhikari, Agriculture Field Officer (AFO), Marketing Officer, HR/Personnel Officer, and Finance Executives.
The Prelims examination has three sections for all the posts. For the Law Officer and Rajbhasha Adhikari posts, the sections are – English Language, Logical Reasoning and General Awareness. For all of the other posts, the sections are – English Language, Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Aptitude.
The Prelims pattern for Law Officer and Rajbhasha Adhikari is as follows:
- Reasoning – 50 questions (50 marks)
- English language – 50 questions (25 marks)
- General awareness – 50 questions (50 marks)
- Total – 150 questions (125 marks)
- Duration – 2 hours
The Prelims pattern for all the other posts are as follows:
- Reasoning – 50 questions (50 marks)
- English language – 50 questions (25 marks)
- Quantitative Aptitude – 50 questions (50 marks)
- Total – 150 questions (125 marks)
- Duration – 2 hours
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How to prepare for IBPS Specialist Officers exam?
English language section
This section consists of questions on topics such as:
- Reading comprehension
- Error detection
- Para jumbles
- Tenses
- Sentence correction
- Vocabulary
- Fill in the blanks
- Cloze test
Preparation tips
- Have a solid foundation on the basics of English grammar
- Start reading newspapers, magazines and books every day to enhance your vocabulary
- Note down the commonly used phrases while reading. Keep a dictionary handy to look up something you don’t understand
- Understand the contexts clearly to solve verbal ability questions
Reasoning section
This section consists of questions on topics such as:
- Verbal reasoning
- Syllogism
- Puzzles
- Seating arrangement
- Blood relations
- Input and Output
- Data Sufficiency
- Coding/ Decoding
- Ranking and orde
- Number series
- Finding the missing figure
Preparation tips
- Have a clear understanding of the basics of each category of problems
- Divide the categories into easy, medium and hard. Start from the easiest and move accordingly
- Practice puzzles, online quizzes, brain teasers and Sudoku puzzles to enhance your logical reasoning ability
- Go through the IBPS Specialist Officers exam questions of the previous years to get a better understanding of the types of questions
General awareness section
Preparation tips
- Start reading newspapers and magazines on a regular basis
- Focus on areas such as economy, politics, sports and finance
- Be aware of all the most important events of the past six months – both national and international
Quantitative aptitude section
This section consists of questions based on the following topics:
- Data interpretation
- Number series
- Ratio and Proportion
- HCF and LCM
- Profit and Loss
- Statistics
- Work, time and wages
- Simple and compound interest
- Mensuration
- Probability
- Trigonometry
Preparation tips
- Go through the Maths textbooks of class 10th and 12th to clear basic concepts
- Learn the basic tables, formulas, and advanced shortcuts. Write them down in a notebook that will come handy later
- Look online for learning some easy tricks to perform mental calculations
- As this is considered the trickiest section, practice aptitude problems daily
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Conclusion
To clear the IBPS SO exam, you have to know your strengths and weaknesses. So, analyze your weaker areas and practice problems on those sections daily. Also, know the exam pattern and distribution of marks for each section properly.
Take mock tests frequently. You will get an idea of the amount of time you require to solve different sections.
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This is all from us in this blog, for How to prepare for IBPS Specialist Officers exam? For more updates related to the Banking Exam, Please stay tuned to Oliveboard.
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Dikshant (DJ) is an engineer turned banker. He has cleared many competitive exams before his current placement. Being an officer in the bank, DJ is super busy but makes sure that he always finds time for writing informative & exam-oriented content to help students in cracking competitive exams such as SBI, IBPS, SSC, JAIIB/ CAIIB and many more.
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