Success Story of Kingsuk Maity – Cleared LIC AAO

Read Success Story of Kingsuk Maity, a hard working boy from a village in West Bengal, who went against all odds & hurdles in his life and cleared LIC AAO this year after a series of failures. 

Here is his inspiring story:

Hello folks, my name is Kingsuk Maity and I am from a very humble village of West Bengal. In my village, everyone considers bagging even a Group-D post in the government sector to be ‘superior’ than getting a job in any leading MNCs. As I was brought up in this kind of environment where government jobs were cherished so much, I was very keen to join the government sector after passing B.Tech from a government college. 

I first thought of appearing for civil services but for this, you need a good amount of investment in terms of time, money and effort. Honestly, I didn’t have any of these so I thought of appearing in banking and insurance exams, which relatively had a faster cycle of recruitment.

Here is the list of examinations in which I failed (rather I gained experience):

1- SBI PO 2018 (My first exam and I am not at all ashamed to say that I only scored 38 in the  prelims. Due to lack of proper preparation, I could not clear even the initial stage)

Then I completed all the chapters of all the subjects but didn’t attempt a single mock test.

After clearing all my basic concepts, I attempted the following exams:

2- NIACL ASSISTANT PRELIMS 2018 (Scored 90 but the cut-off was 91 in my state)

3- RRB ASSISTANT 2018 (Failed in the prelims by 2 marks and didn’t appear in RRB PO as there was zero vacancy)

4- RBI GRADE B 2018 (Failed in prelims)

5- SEBI GRADE A 2018 (Failed in prelims by 2.25 marks)

6- IBPS CLERK 2018 (Failed in  prelims by 5 marks)

7- NIACL AO 2018 (Failed in prelims by 12 marks and started feeling a bit demotivated)

8- IBPS PO 2018 (Luckily I reached till the interview without giving a single mock test in mains and yes clearing mains this time was a pure stroke of luck)

Finally, on 1st April 2019 when I saw the IBPS PO 2018 final result I felt completely devastated and finally found the BIGGEST flaw in my preparation – I did not give enough importance to the mock tests and was over-confident about clearing such competitive exams by merely clearing my basics.

Shortly after, LIC AAO 2019 notification got released and I decided to crack this exam with proper planning & good amount of practice. I decided to give at least two full length mocks daily. There is a difference between STANDARD and IRRELEVANT tough mocks. I bought mocks from two different platforms and Oliveboard was one of them. The level or standard of questions provided by Oliveboard is just awesome; in the sense that they are very exam relevant. You have to think for a while before directly jumping into the calculation and this will help you to approach the questions in the exam in a proper structured way.

Here are my few preparation tips:

1- ENGLISH – Belonging  from a rural Bengali medium background attempting this section was like a nightmare to me. In my initial stages of preparation, I was getting 5 to 10 in this section out of 30. The reason behind this being, I was blindly following some less-proven strategy – Reading the complete grammar book, Memorizing all the words of Word Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis etc. This was like doing B.Tech degree with a high CGPA without knowing the real-world application!

So what worked for me – I started reading 6 articles daily from ‘Qrius’ app and within a few days I felt the changes. I may not know the exact grammatical rules or mechanisms working behind a sentence but I could easily say what’s wrong in a sentence and what needed to be replaced to make it error-free. I could guess the meaning of any unknown words, idioms, phrases etc. Nowadays IBPS doesn’t ask for direct meaning but the closest possible antonyms or synonyms of the words and for acquiring this skill you need to have a proper grip over this section.

2- GENERAL AWARENESS – Gone are the days when students used to mug up ONE – LINER GA CAPSULES, TABLETS, SYRUPS etc. of last 2 months and cleared exams. IBPS has become smarter now as they are shifting from their convenient ways and for that, you need high dose ANTIBIOTIC. Read current affairs daily (if not daily then at least weekly) from any standard sources. But for all of this, you need not read Hindu necessarily like UPSC guys but read current affairs in detail from various sources. This section can be a game changer.

3- QUANTS – Honestly I was very good in this subject but there are lakhs of students who are also good like me so this ‘GOOD’ wasn’t enough. So I started watching YouTube videos from some well-known channels as well as started applying the concepts on solving problems. REMEMBER that – CENTURY OLD TRICKS IN QUANT DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE, you must have a strong concept on EACH and EVERY topic of quant. (DO NOT LEAVE A SINGLE CHAPTER). Practice a lot of questions (a lot mean seriously ‘A LOT’, only 35 questions of mocks aren’t enough)

4- REASONING – Nothing special to mention about. Watch YouTube videos and practice as much as you can.

5- INSURANCE AWARENESS – I followed a gist material of Insurance Institute of India. Platforms like Oliveboard also provides good amount of free materials for preparing this section. You can also refer to those. It will hardly take 5 to 6 days to learn the basics of insurance.

6- ANALYSIS OF MOCKS – Attempting mocks plays a vital role but more important is ‘analysing’ those mocks. Everywhere you can see it is suggested to analyse mocks properly but hardly anywhere it is given how to do it. What I used to do during my initial phase of preparation – After submitting the test I used to solve all the questions. That’s all…… But that is not analysing.

Three cases we’ve to consider-

CASE 1 – Almost 90% of people attempted the question got the answer right….but you’ve taken 3 minutes 48 seconds to solve the question while the average time taken by other people is 58 seconds.

CASE 2 – Almost 90% of people have solved the question but you have no clue how to solve

CASE 3 – 98% of people have skipped a question and you are also one of them.

SOLUTION to CASE 1 and 2

1- Jot down all the topics you are lagging behind.

2- Search the topics one by one on YouTube.

3- Watch tutorials from any ‘STANDARD’ channel.

4- Practice at least 50 questions instantly after watching the videos on each chapter. Do it with consistency.

 SOLUTION to CASE 3 –

1- ‘Skipping questions’ is an important skill that you’ve to acquire. Practice is the only ‘way’ for this. But if you’re skipping cause of not having enough practice that is not acceptable.

 INTERVIEW – Initially I was scared of this stage. The reason was not WHAT I should answer but HOW I should answer. Even a few months ago I used to stick in every sentence while speaking in English as I never conversed (formally) with anyone in this language before. I started practising in front of a mirror applying different style of speaking and recorded the rehearsals. But these SCRIPTED things are not enough; you have to talk with the strangers to overcome your fear of speaking. I did some crazy things –

1- Enrolled myself in few of the online job portals – No, not to get any job; I knew that I will receive at least 5-6 calls daily by which I can converse with the unknown people.

2- Used to call customer care etc.

Tips to Aspirants: Never be over-confident and always prepare yourself for the best.

I hope my journey will help other aspirants in their preparation.All the Best Guys!

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