Success Story of Vishal Sharma – Cleared IBPS PO 2018

Vishal, a PhD Scholar, shares how his decision of moving from abroad to India turned out to be one of his best decisions after he cleared IBPS PO in his very first attempt. The Success story of Vishal Sharma sets an example for those who believe that you may not always end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you are meant to be.

Success story of Vishal Sharma

Introduction: Hello, I am Vishal, an inflationary cosmologist-turned-ML Engineer-serendipitously-turned banking aspirant. I am 28 and hail from Delhi. I completed my Bachelors in Electronics and Communication in 2012 and thereafter, decided to follow my passion for physics and completed my PhD in Inflationary Cosmology in 2017. I came back to India  due to extenuating family circumstances and found a job in a startup.

Exams I have cleared:

  1. Scored 330/340 in GRE (Quant: 167, Verbal: 163 )
  2. Scored 110 in TOEFL(reading: 28, listening: 27, speaking: 26, writing: 29)
  3. Cleared IBPS PO in the first attempt (CRP PO VIII).

Preparation Strategy for Individual Sections:

Quant: Initially I exclusively relied upon Vivek sir’s guidance and the superb level of questions that were discussed in the Oliveboard Live Classes and in live practice sessions. I supplemented that with topic tests provided by Oliveboard and also found CAT level questions of the same topic in Sarvesh Verma’s book(Quantum CAT).

Verbal: Having scored well in GRE a few years back, I had a strong base in this section, so Miti Ma’am helped me brush up those concepts with some challenging questions as well as explaining the tough conceptual traps beautifully.

Reasoning: This was my weakest section and I barely scraped by in the Prelims but changed my strategy while preparing for the Mains. I focused exclusively on the miscellaneous questions as well as analytical reasoning and made it a stronghold for me (basically everything except puzzles and seating arrangement in the mains exam).

GK: I love reading in general, so I redirected that passion towards sifting quickly through newspaper and supplemented that by using AffairsCloud PDF capsule.

Interview: I am fascinated by the concepts of Economics and Finance and I found it exhilarating to prepare for the interview phase. Probably the most fun I had during the entire preparation process was when we made a whatsapp group, and then conducted mock interviews among ourselves through zoom and/or hangouts/Skype, which helped A TON.

Details about my journey and how OB helped me:

While working as a Machine Learning Engineer in a startup, I started preparing for banking. That coincided with Oliveboard’s Free course for IBPS PO preparation that started on 4th September, 2018. During the first few days, I was partly disinterested and partly lost and intimidated by the syllabus in front of me. I didn’t even know how to manage time as I was attending classes either from metro or Uber. I couldn’t follow along for the first week or so but somehow persisted. Both the quant and verbal faculty were extremely motivating and the awesome structure/schedule made by Oliveboard helped me catch up and practice along side the live classes.

I used OB’s topic tests to supplement what was taught in the class which helped me calm my nerves and ease into the meticulously prepared schedule. Live practice sessions were really helpful and perhaps the best part of the whole class, as gradually my performance improved and then I started to consistently perform well which boosted my confidence.

Tips To Aspirants:

The only advice I have for future aspirants is, be strategic as well as relentless in the pursuit of your goal. Trust the experienced faculty and build concepts while being attentive in the live classes, then increase your question bank by having a hunger to solve more and more questions as you go deeper into your preparations.

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

Read more success stories.

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