I recommend PM to every serious banking aspirant says Sarim Qais- Cleared IBPS PO 2020

Here is another success story of Sarim Qais who has cleared IBPS PO 2020 exam and he started his preparation for MBA entrance exams in July 2019. The selection process for this was delayed due COVID-19 and when it was completed by July 2020, he nearly missed the cutoff. After few days of disappointment he then decided to appear for banking exams. He has explained his entire preparation journey very nicely and has explained his overall strategy really well. Read his success story below and get an inspiration from him.

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Read Sarim Qais’s Success Story

Hi friends I am Sarim Qais and here is my success story.

I started my preparation for MBA entrance exams in July 2019. I scored 80.51 percentile in CAT, 92 percentile in SNAP, 198 marks in NMAT and 99.39 percentile in MBA CET. As per my marks, I applied only for JBIMS Msc finance course via CET as I couldn’t have got decent college via other exams. The selection process was delayed due COVID-19 and when it was completed by July 2020, I nearly missed the cutoff. I was disappointed and was unsure of the way forward as I had already quit my job. After few depressing days, I picked myself up and decided to appear for banking exams as I did not wanted to waste another year. Unfortunately, when I checked in September 2020 for the notifications of IBPS exam, the last date of application had already passed. I was dejected as I had to wait another year to appear in the exam. I started to look for another job but the market conditions were not favourable. Little did I know that God had some other plans. The forms of IBPS exams reopened in November. I applied for IBPS PO, Clerk and RRB PO. With a reignited motivation I prepared for the next 2 months and finally got the desired result in IBPS PO 2020.

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Which exams did you appear in till date?

I appeared in IBPS PO, & Clerk, IBPS RRB PO, SBI PO, SEBI GRADE A, ECGC PO and RBI GRADE B. I got selected as an IBPS PO, cleared SEBI GRADE A prelims and RBI GRADE B prelims and waiting for RBI GRADE B MAINS result. I couldn’t clear prelims of IBPS Clerk, IBPS RRB PO, SBI PO and ECGC PO.

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Section-wise Preparation Strategy

English Section Preparation Strategy

I used to practice from Arun Sharma’s book for Reading Comprehension and Parajumbles. For Grammar, I went through YouTube videos on grammar rules and did little practice from questions available on google and topic tests of PracticeMock.

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Quantitative Aptitude Section Preparation Strategy

Again for quants practice, I used to solve Arun Sharma’s book. For basics, I used to follow Lokesh Sharma’s and Rodha academy’s YouTube videos.

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Reasoning Section Preparation Strategy

For puzzles and seating arrangements, I simply followed random YouTube videos for various techniques to solve similar types of questions. Every day, I used to watch 1 or 2 videos of various teachers which also provided good amount of questions for practice. For traditional logical reasoning, I used to follow Study Smart YouTube channel along with Adda247( for only those topics which I couldn’t get in Study Smart channel). For practice of traditional logic, I used to solve RS Agarrwal’s book.

General Awareness Section Preparation Strategy

I am not an avid reader of newspapers, like many aspirants. So, I prefer compiled data over newspapers as a source of current affairs. I bought the Affairs Cloud annual subscription and read last 3 months GA from the date of exam. I know it’s not an ideal strategy for GA, but fortunately it worked for me.

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Overall Strategy & Study Schedule

I did not had a structured strategy to begin with but I do had a study schedule. I had divided my day into 3 slots of 2-2 hours and allocated each slot to English, Reasoning and Quants. Since, I was self preparing and did not take any coaching, from time to time, I used to feel demotivated and bored. So, to overcome this problem, I started preparing via YouTube videos. I used to play a video and pause it once a question was given. After attempting the question by my own, I used to look for the solution as to get an insight about any other technique that my be time saving. Also, one thing that I did extremely wrong and did not recommend any future aspirant is that I gave very few mock test. For each exam I appeared for, I gave maximum 2-3 mocks. Even for IBPS Mains exam, I gave only 2 mocks from PracticeMock. But one thing I did really well was despite of low number of mocks, I analyzed them thoroughly which helped me identify my mistakes and rectify them. I made a note of every mistake and avoided them in the pre and mains exam of IBPS PO which eventually gave me a fruitful result.

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When I gave a demo mock to understand the level of my preparation, I realized that I do have the basic understanding of the concepts but I don’t posses the speed which is required to ace the exam especially in the reasoning and quant sections. So, I decided to substitute speed with accuracy and score high in English to compensate for lesser than good attempts in the other two sections. This did wonders for me as in my IBPS PO pre exam, I attempted only 58 questions and got normalized score of 69.50. In IBPS PO Mains, I attempted for nearly about 110 marks and got 94.75 marks.

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How did PracticeMock help you?

Absolutely Yes!! PracticeMock is one of the best and reasonable mock test series that an aspirant can wish. The type of questions resonate with the ones in the actual exam and the level of question is also very high. I recommend each and every serious banking aspirant to purchase PracticeMock’s annual subscription. You will never regret it as it will be money well spend!!

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Message to the Fellow Aspirants

The only message I can give to every aspirant is to never loose motivation and hope while preparing for a competitive exam. Always read about the exam first before reading for the exam. Clearing a competitive exam do requires hard work but complementing it with smart work will make your task easier and increase your probability of selection. I know it sounds cliche, but it is the truth as I followed it and got the result. One example of smart work is not to fall for the trap of higher attempts. Understand the difficulty of the paper and attempt accordingly as accuracy matters more than attempts or speed. All the exams I cleared last year is based on this strategy. One more important thing is you can do selective study for prelims(though not advisable) but never do it for mains. The rationale behind this is that in mains you may get stuck in topics you are well versed with and the topics which you have been continuously ignoring may be scoring. So to take the advantage of attempting SELECTIVE questions avoid SELECTIVE study for mains. I was not able to attempt puzzles in reasoning section in IBPS PO mains so I attempted Critical Reasoning questions and it helped me to clear the exam. Finally, I would suggest you to always keep a positive mind during your preparation as well as during the actual exam as a positive mind is your best ally to help you overcome a tougher situation.

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This brings us to the end of Sarim Qais success story. Make sure you also keep a positive mindset while preparing for competitive examinations and practice as much as you can. To check out more success stories, visit here.