The analysis of the SBI Clerk 2023 Prelim exam held on the 5th of January 2024 (Shift 3) has been presented below. The exam had a sectional time limit, no navigability between any section, and each section time bound for 20 minutes.
Snapshot of the Exam:
Test Area | No. of questions | Duration |
Numerical Ability | 35 | Questions 20 Mins |
Reasoning Ability | 35 | Questions 20 Mins |
English Language | 30 | Questions 20 Mins |
Total no. of Questions | 100 Qs | 60 Mins |
No of choices per question – 5
Negative marking: 0.25 of the marks assigned to each question.
As per feedback received from our students who appeared for this exam, the exam can be rated as easy to moderate.
The section-wise analysis of the above-mentioned session, as reported by our students, is given below:
Numerical Ability:
This section can be rated as ‘Easy to Moderate’.
The questions based on Data Interpretation were easy to solve. There were five questions on Number Series (Wrong Number) which can be rated as easy to moderate. There were fifteen questions on Simplifications, of which ten to twelve were easy and the rest were moderate.
Individual questions from topics of Ages, Ratio, Percentages, Profit and Loss, Partnership, Time and Work, Mixtures and Alligations, Boats and Streams were ten in number. These were a combination of easy and moderate ones.
A student could, therefore, have solved around 23 - 24 questions in 20 minutes if he chose judiciously.
Topic | No. of Questions |
Data Interpretation (Bar Graph) | 5 |
Simplifications | 15 |
Number Series (Wrong Number) | 5 |
Individual Quant Questions | 10 |
Reasoning:
This section has been given an 'Easy' tag.
There were fifteen questions on Puzzles (Linear Arrangement (Two parallel rows – five persons in each row), Distribution (seven persons, seven days), and Box Arrangement (8 boxes) which were easy to solve. There were three questions each on Direction Sense and Deductions (Syllogisms). There were five questions on the Set of words and four on Coding-Decoding. These questions were easy to solve.
About 27 to 28 questions could be solved in 20 minutes. As reported by our students, the topic-wise split is as given below.
Topic | No of Qs | Difficulty Level |
Set of Words | 5 | Easy |
Blood Relations | 2 | Easy |
Direction Sense | 3 | Easy |
Coding-Decoding | 4 | Easy |
Deductions (Syllogisms) | 3 | Easy to Moderate |
Miscellaneous (Meaningful word, Pair of Letters, Number Arrangement) | 3 | Easy |
Puzzles (Linear Arrangement (Two parallel rows – five persons in each row) | 5 | Easy |
Distribution (seven persons, Seven days) | 5 | Easy |
Box Arrangement (8 boxes) | 5 | Easy |
English Language:
This section has been tagged as 'Easy’ by our students.
- The lone Reading Comprehension passage was conventional in its presentation and comprised of nine to ten questions.
- There were five questions each on the ‘Cloze Test’, ‘Error Identification’, and ‘Fill in the Blanks. The cloze test was based on ‘Water Research’ and was easy. The questions on Error Identification and Fill in the Blanks were easy whereas the questions based on Para Forming can be rated as easy to moderate.
- There were 2 to 3 questions on ‘Phrase Replacement’. These were easy to solve.
Thus, about 24 - 25 questions could be solved in 20 minutes in the English section. The break-up of the questions is as follows:
Topic | No of Questions |
Reading Comprehension | 9 - 10 |
Cloze Test | 5 - 6 |
Para Forming Questions | 3 |
Error Identification | 5 |
Fill in the Blanks (Single Blank) | 5 |
Phrase Replacement | 2 - 3 |
Overall, the paper can be rated as easy.
Good Attempts:
Test Area | Good Attempts |
Numerical Ability | 23 - 24 |
Reasoning Ability | 27 - 28 |
English Language | 24 - 25 |
Overall | 74 - 77 |