Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) conducted another session of the Specialist Officer (SO) Recruitment 2021 examination today, Dece,ber 26, 2021. The recruitment exam was conducted for a duration of 120 minutes, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Candidates who appeared for this session were competing for a total of 1,828 vacancies. Those who qualify the preliminary stage will be eligible for the second stage i.e., mains exam. So, indeed, the competition was tough but the paper was moderate in terms of difficulty level.
In today’s IBPS SO 2021 preliminary exam, candidates were tested in terms English Language, Quantitative Aptitude (QA) and Reasoning Ability (RA). Those who applied for Law Officer and Rajbhasha Adhikari posts had to appear for the General Awareness with Special Reference to Banking Industry section instead of QA.
To begin with, the General Awareness section was primarily based on current affairs and happenings in December 2021. So, those candidates who paid sincerely read the English newspaper in the last few days before exam could easily solve this section. Other questions were pertaining of CPI, Relation between Tata and Air India, etc. In total, a candidate could easily solve 20 questions.
Similar to IBPS SO 2021 Shift 1, the RA section in Shift 2 was of moderate level with some tricky and time-consuming questions, testing a candidate’s ability to think and crack the answer. Questions were asked from the following topics –
# Puzzles
# Data Sufficiency
# Logical Reasoning
# Blood Relation
# Input-Output
# Order Ranking
# Syllogism
In case of the QA section, there was a uniform mix of easy, moderate and tough questions. While some had straightforward solutions, others had almost one-page solutions, consuming too much time. Following topics were covered in QA section –
# Data Interpretation – Pie Chart, Line Graph and Caselet
# Missing Number Series
# Approximation
# Linear Inequality
# Profit & Loss
# Percentage
# Ratio
The English Language section covered the expected topics from the syllabus. So, this section was the easiest to solve, compared to RA and SA. Only the comprehension-based questions were time-consuming as the candidate had to read the passage 1-2 times carefully before solving them. Overall, a candidate could easily solve around 25-30 questions in the paper. Topics covered in this section include –
# Reading Comprehension
# Sentence improvement
# Cloze Test
# Single Fillers
# Synonyms
# Word Swap
# Sentence Rearrangement
Overall, the paper was neither easy nor a tough nut to crack. Interestingly, it covered almost the same topics which were featured in Shift 1. Moreover, on the basis of analysis of IBPS SO Shift 2 paper, it is safe to assume that candidates were able to solve at least 80-90 questions out of the total 125 MCQs.
