Recently Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) has released notification for the recruitment of Officers (Scale I, II and III) and Office Assistants in Regional Rural Banks and exams. It is an autonomous and independent body that recruits candidates for public sector banks. Every year lakhs of candidates apply for the IBPS RRB exam. This year, these exams will take place between August 2021 to October 2021 for all posts. The level of competition is quite fierce as lakhs of candidates compete for very limited vacancies. However, if one prepares in a systematic and disciplined manner and is really serious about this exam, achieving success is very much impossible.

To crack the exam, one does not require a very high level of knowledge and skills. Even an average student, if ready to work hard and is able to make a plan and stick to it religiously, can crack this exam. But yes, this exam needs a lot of hard work, regular practice, smart approach, devotion, extensive preparations, a positive attitude and self-confidence. Last but not least, start your preparation with the belief that you are going to clear the exam and that faith will keep you going till you achieve success.

Here are a few tips that can help you to ace the IBPS RRB exam and clear it with flying colors:
Examination scheme and exam pattern: First and foremost, it is important to understand the exam pattern of IBPS RRB 2021 before going through the preparation tips. Important points to focus upon are:

Exam is to be held in how many phases. If more than one phase written tests are there, which phase is qualifying in nature and marks of which phase are going to be added in the final merit list. In RRB, different pattern is there for different posts.
Whether Group Discussion and / or Interview is there in the exam. In RRB scale I, II and III, interview is there but for Office Assistants, no interview is there.
Which subjects / sections are there and what is the weightage of each subject. In RRB, different subjects / sections are there for different posts
For solving the paper, separate time is allotted for different subjects or composite time is given for all the subjects/sections. In RRB, for all the posts, composite time is there, hence, time management while writing the test is very important. You must yourself allot time for each subject and stick to it otherwise you may not find time in the end for one or two subjects and that will be fatal for you need to clear sectional cut off as well as the aggregate cut off. Even if you clear the overall cut-off but fail in any one of the subjects, you will not qualify the test. Hence, you must be able to manage your time well to pay attention to all the subjects.
You should not guess your answers blindly as negative marking is there in these exams.
Syllabus: You must know the syllabus of each subject. It will give you an idea and overview of what you need to study for this exam. The subjects covered under IBPS RRB are Reasoning, Quantitative Aptitude, English Language, Hindi Language, Computer Knowledge, and General Awareness & Financial Awareness. The standard of the IBPS RRB syllabus is of graduation level.

Previous year question papers: You should go through the previous year question papers. This will tell you about the difficulty level of the questions and also what types of questions are asked. Syllabus will tell you what to study and these papers will tell you how to approach the syllabus on the basis of types of questions asked.

Previous year Cut off: You must know both sectional and aggregate cut off of the previous year. It will help you to target score, and also it will help you to plan which section you should focus more.

Write a mock test and analyze: After following the above 4 steps, you must take one mock test of the exam you are preparing for. Don’t hesitate to write the mock test as you are yet to start your preparation. It will give you a feel of the actual examination as you will be tackling a good number of questions within the given time frame. When you analyze the test, you will get a fair idea of your strong and weak subjects. Accordingly, you can chalk out a plan and start working towards your goal.

Besides the above-mentioned steps, you should always keep in mind that this exam requires accuracy and speed. You need to solve questions accurately, and you need to very fast too. So, first focus on accuracy as we do while learning how to drive. First learn the basic concepts and then learn to apply those concepts to solve the questions. Once you master the concepts and then practice regularly using shortcut tricks and smart approach, speed will automatically come.

In the beginning write one mock test in a week and analyze it thoroughly. Then gradually increase the number of mock tests to 2 mock tests in a week. When you have only 15 days left for your exam, start writing one mock test daily and remember analysis of the taken tests is equally important. Writing the mock tests regularly conditions your mind, and it helps you to tackle the stress in the examination hall. Also, when you make mistakes in the mock test, you get a chance to correct your mistake whereas if you don’t write the mock test, you may make that mistake in the final exam and next chance you will get only after one year.

It’s true that you really need to work hard in a focused and disciplined manner but if you follow all the above steps religiously with faith in yourself, not getting selected would be impossible.