Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) is conducting the Preliminary state examination of 2020 Specialist Officer Recruitment. The online test is being conducted on December 26 and 27, 2020 in two shifts. Both shifts of the exam held today are over now. The first shift was held from 10.00 AM to 12.00 PM in the morning, while the second shift was held from 02.00 PM to 04.00 PM in the afternoon. Reportedly, there were no significant deviations in the exam pattern while the level of difficulty of the exam was moderate.
IBPS SO 2020 (Prelims) Exam Pattern
The Specialist Officer 2020 recruitment exam was held for the first day today. As per the official notification of the recruitment exam, question paper comprises of 150 questions, equally distributed across the sections of English, Reasoning and General Awareness (related to banking) for the posts of Law Officer and Rajbhasha Adhikari.
The pattern of the exam is a little different for the posts of IT Officer, HR/Personnel Officer, Marketing Officer, and Agriculture Field Officer. 150 questions are equally distributed across the sections of English, Reasoning and Quantitative Aptitude.
In each of the sections, correct answers carry 1 mark. However, in the section on English, each correct answer carry 1/2 marks. Wrong answers are liable for deduction of 1/4 marks in all sections.
IBPS SO 2020 (Prelims) Exam Analysis of Shift 1
The overall level of difficulty of the exam in the first shift was reportedly easy. However, the level of difficulty of the particular section on English was the easiest. The level of difficulty of the section on Reasoning contained a mixed variety of questions that were of easy to moderate difficulty level.
There was no major deviation from the standard format of questionnaire. Simple easy difficulty level of questions were asked from the sections of error spotting, word exchange and others. Around 10 questions were asked from the error spotting topics.
05 questions were based on Cloze test in English while around 18 to 20 questions were asked from the Reading Comprehension section.
Coding-decoding based questions, syllogism, data sufficiency, direction etc. formed the majority of the questions in the Reasoning part. The questions in Sitting Arrangement and Puzzles, Data Sufficiency and Assumption based questions were of moderate difficulty level.
In Quantitative Aptitude, majority of the questions were asked from Data Interpretation. However, the questions were of easy to moderate difficulty level. The questions from Simplification topics were of easy difficulty level.
IBPS SO 2020 (Prelims) Exam Analysis of Shift 2
Compared to the first shift exam, the IBPS SO 2020 Prelims exam in the second shift was relatively difficult. Reportedly, the overall level of difficulty of the exam was between moderate to tough. However, similar to the first shift, in the second shift exam, the level of difficulty of the English section was between easy to moderate.
In the English section, easy to moderate difficulty level questions were asked from Comprehension. There were around 20 questions from this topic. The easiest questions were asked from the topics of word exchange, error spotting, and fill in the blanks. Questions were also asked from sentence rearrangement and para jumble, which were of the easy to moderate difficulty level.
The section on reasoning was comparatively tougher than the first shift exam. Majority of the questions were from Puzzles & Seating Arrangement based topics. 11 questions were asked from Linear Arrangement. 3 simple questions were asked from Blood Relations while only 1 question was asked from Direction sense. Other topics included Coding-Decoding, Syllogism, Inequality etc.
The section on Quantitative aptitude was neither very easy nor very tough. Candidates reported that around 15 questions were asked from Data Interpretation. The easiest questions were from Simplification based topics as in the first shift exam.
