NABARD 2017: Time Strategy & Last Minute Tips for Phase 1

Dear Aspirants,

The NABARD 2017 Prelims Exam is just around the corner! It’s time to fasten your seat belts and gear up for it. To help you with the same, we have provided last minute revision tips and section-wise time allocation strategy for NABARD 2017 Exam in the following article. Download it as a PDF and use it as a handy guide for your revision.

Section-wise Time Allocation Strategy

After checking and analyzing the time allocation strategy used by NABARD toppers, we arrived at the following. This, is broadly what most toppers used as their approximate time allocation.

Quantitative Aptitude – 31 minutes

Logical Reasoning – 26 minutes

English Language – 19 minutes

Computer Knowledge – 5 minutes

General Awareness – 6 minutes

Economic and Social Issues – 17 minutes

Agriculture and Rural Development – 16 minutes

NOTE: What works for some may not work for others. We recommend using the above section-wise time allocation for NABARD as a guideline and not a target. Based on your strengths & weaknesses, you can change this to suit your strategy. However, if you have a better strategy that works for you, we suggest you stick to it.

Practice NABARD 2017 Exam questions in latest pattern to determine your speed & accuracy:

Order of attempt

While it is important to attempt all the sections, it is also important to strategize your order of attempt before the exam.

There has been a slight change in the NABARD 2017 Prelims exam pattern. NABARD has increased the weightage of the Agriculture and Rural Development [ARD] and the Economic and Social Issues [ESI] sections from 25 marks to 40 marks. It has reduced the weightage of Quantitative Aptitude and Reasoning sections from 30 marks to 20 marks and 40 marks to 20 marks, respectively.

The Computer Knowledge, General Awareness, Economic and Social Issues and Agriculture and Rural Development papers together constitute 120 marks, whereas Quantitative Aptitude, English Language and Reasoning constitute 80 marks. The former is theoretical & requires lesser time to solve, and the latter is practical and requires calculation and mental ability, therefore takes more time to solve.

Therefore, we recommend you aim to score maximum marks in the theoretical papers (ARD, ESI, GK and CK) in less time (around 40 minutes) and use the remaining time (around 75-80 minutes) for the practical papers (Quant, Reasoning, English).

NABARD 2017 Prelims exam has a duration of 120 minutes. Since there’s no sectional timing, you can start with the section you’re most comfortable with. However, we suggest you consider factors like weightage, time-taken to solve and difficulty level to decide your order of attempt. The order you choose needs to help you cover all the topics within the time provided and with great accuracy.

Deciding your order of attempt could be a challenging task. Therefore, we suggest you take NABARD 2017 Mock Tests to help you with it. Take mock tests will help you determine your strong and weak areas and speed and accuracy across topics and sections in NABARD. You can use this information to decide your order of attempt before the exam.

Take a FREE trial to determine your order of attempt:

Section-wise Revision Tips

Before we start, check out the NABARD 2017 Exam Syllabus & Previous Year Cut Off Marks.

Agriculture and Rural Development [ARD]

Learn names of various schemes and sub-schemes launched by the Government for the welfare of Agriculture and rural development. Know the full-forms of these schemes, as the questions will most likely contain the abbreviated form. Focus more on the current affairs related to Agriculture and Rural Development of last 1 year. The questions are mostly direct and based on facts and figures.

For a comprehensive NABARD Agriculture & Rural Development Preparation Guide, click on the banner to your right!

Economic and Social Issues [ESI]

Questions from the Economic and Social Issues [ESI] paper too focus more on the current affairs. Therefore, even for ESI, we recommend you go through current affairs related to Economic and Social Issues of last 1 year. Also read up on schemes and sub-schemes launched by the government for the welfare of the social sector and about committees, missions, social sector programs, autonomous government agencies, etc. For a comprehensive NABARD Economic & Social Issues Preparation Guide, click on the banner to your left!

Computer Knowledge

Questions from the Computer Knowledge section are not going to be as tricky as the other sections. The questions will be pretty basic.

Important topics: Hardware & software, important computer abbreviations, keyboard shortcuts, Microsoft office, operating system, internet, fundamental technologies, networking, etc.

Click here to download the Guide for the complete preparation of Computer Awareness

General Awareness

General Awareness paper will include Static GK and Current Affairs questions, with special reference to the Banking and Finance industry. Go through the current affairs of last 1 year.

To Practice latest General Awareness Questions for NABARD 2017 Exam, click on the banner:

Reasoning

You can expect maximum marks from the Sitting Arrangement (linear, circular, with a mix of blood relations) topic in Reasoning section.

Other important topics: Mathematical inequalities, machine input output, critical reasoning, data sufficiency, comparison, syllogism, etc.

English Language

You can expect up to 15 marks from the Reading Comprehension passages in English Language of NABARD 2017 exam. The topics are generally based on Banking, Economic and Social Issues and Agriculture. Make a habit of reading newspapers every day. This will not only improve your grammar, vocabulary and reading speed, but is also good for your General Awareness section.

Other important topics: Phrase Replacement, Cloze Test, Parajumbles, Error Spotting

Quantitative Aptitude

Data Interpretation is a very important topic under Quantitative Aptitude section of NABARD 2017 exam.

Other important topics: Number series, time speed distance, ratio and proportion, average, percentage, mensuration, profit and loss, boat and stream, simple and compound interest, problem on ages, time and work, permutation and combination, probability, etc.

NOTE: Do not base your NABARD 2017 exam preparation on previous year NABARD exam analysis alone. Use the NABARD 2016 Exam analysis as a guideline to strategize your 2017 NABARD exam preparation.

NABARD 2017 Exam Preparation Material for Revision

We suggest keeping your preparation material minimum. Hoarding too many books or any other kind of preparation material will only end up confusing you.

Following are some sources you can use to revise your current affairs and also practice questions:

Newspapers: The Hindu, The Economic Times

Reports: The Economic Survey, The Union Budget, NABARD, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Press Information Bureau [PIB]

Magazines: Kurukshetra, Yojana, Frontline, Pratiyogita Darpan

Others:

Previous year question papers: Will familiarize you with difficulty level and exam pattern

Online quizzes: Practice questions in latest pattern

Mock Tests

One of the most important steps of the preparation process. Mere studying is not going to help you fine-tune your NABARD exam preparation. You need to measure your progress and receive insightful feedback to find out which areas you need to improve on. This is where NABARD 2017 Mock Tests come in.

Mock Tests give you instant feedback, in the form of analysis, on your performance. You can use this information to determine your speed and accuracy across the topics and identify your strong and weak areas, to further improvise your preparation. To take a FREE trial of NABARD 2017 Mock Test click on the banner to your left!

Here’s a complete list of resources: NABARD 2017 Study Material for Grade ‘A’ and ‘B’

General Tips

Read the questions carefully before answering and answer them only if you’re confident about it. NABARD 2017 Exam has negative marking

Absolutely avoid any kind of guess work

Do not spend too much time on a question if you don’t know its answer. Mark it for review and answer it later

Stay calm and do not pull an all-nighter before the exam

We hope the above last minute NABARD exam preparation tips help you score well and sail through your NABARD 2017 Prelims exam. Download this as a PDF and use it as a handy guide during your revision.

Further reading:

Oliveboard Live Courses & Mock Test Series