How to prepare for IBPS PO/Clerk 2017
Last Updated: Dec 6, 2025
How to Prepare for IBPS PO/Clerk 2017
Hello, friends!
The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) is set to conduct exams for the posts of PO and Clerk in the upcoming months of November and December. This presents a golden opportunity for candidates aspiring to build a career in the banking sector, offering a chance to secure prestigious positions in public sector banks across India.
In this post, our focus will be on reasoning section in the preliminary examination.
Pattern of Exam –
| Serial No. | Subjects | No. of Questions | Marks |
| 1 | Quantitative Aptitude | 35 | 35 |
| 2 | Reasoning Ability | 35 | 35 |
| 3 | English | 30 | 30 |
| Total | 100 | 100 | |
Total time given for attempting all the questions is 60 minutes.
Each question will be of 1 mark and for every wrong answer, there will a deduction of 0.25 marks from your score.
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Syllabus
The topics which you have to cover for the preparation for the reasoning ability are given below
- Machine Input Output
- Coding-Decoding
- Puzzles
- Direction and Distance
- Order and ranking
- Syllogism
- Blood relations
- Seating arrangement
- Inequalities
- Statement And Assumptions
- Statement and course of action
- Cause And Effect
- Statement And Argument
Strategy for Solving Questions
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- Out of 35 questions, there will be 5 questions each from Inequality, Syllogism, Coding-Decoding, Seating Arrangement and Puzzles. 6-8 questions will be from Logical Reasoning i.e. Statement- Course of Action, Assumptions, Conclusion and remaining 2-3 questions will be from Blood Relation and Direction Sense. Try to solve these 35 questions in 22 minutes so that you can have sufficient time for other subjects also.
- Pick the questions of syllogism and inequality first. They are easy to solve and these 10 questions can be done in 5-7 minutes.
- Solve coding-decoding afterwards, these questions can be solved in 5 minutes. Now you have solved 15 questions in average 10-12 minutes. So you have safely crossed the sectional cutoff of this section.
- Now move to questions related to Blood Relation and Direction Sense. There will be 2-3 questions from these two topics.
- Then move towards logical reasoning section i.e. Statement- Course of Action, Assumptions, Conclusion, where you will be getting 7-8 questions. Try to solve them in 4-5 minutes.
- Now you have 3-4 minutes left which you have to utilise on seating arrangement. Try to solve 2-3 questions out of 5 of them.
So in this section in 22 minutes you have solved around 27-28 questions which will pace up your composite cutoff.
Useful reference books
For the Verbal Reasoning section, students can refer to “Verbal Reasoning (Commonsense Reasoning)” by K. Kundan, BSC Publications. To practice puzzles, the book “Magical Book on Puzzles” by K. Kundan, BSC Publications is highly recommended. For Logical Reasoning, candidates should focus on Level 1 and Level 2 questions from “How to Prepare for Logical Reasoning” by Arun Sharma, which provides step-by-step practice to strengthen reasoning skills effectively.
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