With IBPS Clerk Prelims just a handful of days away, you must be in working hard & smart in terms of your preparation.

Talking about the exam, there will be 100 questions (20 from English Language, Numerical Ability and Reasoning Ability each) in front of you to be solved in 60 minutes with a sectional timing of 20 minutes each.

The key to cracking prelims exam is a proper time management and selecting which questions to solve. It’s obvious that you don’t have to solve all the questions but analyze nearly all the questions and then pick and solve the easier ones.

This will help you to maximize your score and clearing the cut-offs.

A Strategy to stay on the top of the game

Time is precious in this prelims exam. You need to maintain a fine balance of speed and accuracy so as not to waste time on one hand and not to attract too many negative marks on the other hand.

Keeping this in mind, we have come up with a strategy to help you maximize your score. Please bear in mind that this is a generic strategy and you can amend the topics as per your strengths and weaknesses. Take mock tests now to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Once done, try mock tests to see well this strategy works for you.

Reasoning

No. of questions and suggested time: As per our mock tests’ data, at least 25-30 questions should be solved in 20 minutes.

1st Round: Start with non-puzzle based questions like coding-decoding, syllogisms, questions related to direction sense, blood relations etc.

2nd Round: Move towards the critical reasoning questions and solve simple puzzles (may relate to blood relations, circular/linear seating arrangement, floor-based puzzle) and questions related to input-output.

3rd Round: Solve difficult puzzles/seating line arrangement (double line puzzles)

Numerical Ability

No. of questions and suggested time: As per our mock tests’ data, at least 25-30 questions should be solved in 20 minutes.

1st Round: Start with number series, approximation, simplification, equations comparison, and easy data interpretation sets.

Tip: If you get stuck with one number series question and unable to solve it within 30 seconds, skip it.

2nd Round: Solve word problems and easy data interpretation sets.

3rd Round: Move on to difficult data interpretation sets.

ENGLISH

No. of questions and suggested time: As per our mock tests’ data, at least 20-25 questions should be answered in 20 minutes.

1st Round: Prioritize Non-RC based questions like antonym/synonym and vocab based questions. You can also attempt vocab based RC questions.

Note: In synonym/antonym questions, try getting the sense of the word by reading the preceding/succeeding line.

2nd Round: Attempt grammar based questions like Error detection, Sentence correction, Phrase correction etc. in this round

3rd Round: Go for non-vocab RC based questions and para jumbles and para connectors.

Please bear in mind that to implement this strategy you need to have done a lot of practice beforehand. This practice will make you really adept in deciding while scrolling past questions whether to attempt/skip the questions.

Also, keep working on your weak areas so as to improve your score.

Wishing you all the best for your preparation!