India’s most valued public sector company, SBI had conducted the preliminary examination for the recruitment of Probationary officer (PO) post on 2nd and 3rd July 2016 in 4 slots successfully. The next slot is scheduled to be held on 6thand 7th May. The pre exam consists 100 questions comprises of 3 sections which include Reasoning Ability, Quantitative Aptitude and English Language.
This year approx 30 lakh candidates appeared for SBI PO Prelims examination. As per the notification of SBI total number of vacancies is 2,313 (including backlog vacancies). This huge gap between the number of vacancies and appeared candidates makes the competition very tough.
Analysis of Examination: The overall difficulty level of the examination was Easy to Moderate. Most of the students find that the paper was easier than the previous year.
The Banking team of Jagranjosh.com has come up with a comprehensive analysis of the question paper and the expected cut off for the examination. It is advised to the candidates who have their examination in next slot to go through below analysis make their strategy accordingly.
| Section |
Total Ques. |
Level of Difficulty |
| Reasoning Ability |
35 |
Easy to Moderate |
| Quantitative Aptitude |
35 |
Easy to Moderate |
| English Language |
30 |
Easy |
The section wise details are as follows:
Quantitative Aptitude: The difficulty level for this section was Easy to Moderate. As expected major number of questions are asked from Data Interpretation.
| Topic |
No. of Questions (35) |
Level |
| Data Interpretation (Line and Table graph) |
10 |
Easy to Moderate |
| Number Series (Based on Missing pattern) |
5 |
Easy |
| Approximation |
5 |
Easy |
| Quadratic Equation |
5 |
Easy |
| Miscellaneous (CI and SI, Time & Work, Problem on Age, Time and Distance, Profit & Loss, Ratio and Proportion) |
10 |
Easy to Moderate |
Reasoning: The difficulty level of for this section was Easy to Moderate. No problems on Syllogism asked in this section.
| Topic |
No. of Questions (35) |
Level |
| Inequalities |
5 |
Easy |
| Seating Arrangement |
5+5=10 |
Easy to Moderate |
| Puzzle (One puzzle was on comparison based) |
4+4+5=13 |
Easy to Moderate |
| Ranking |
2 |
Easy |
| Coding-Decoding |
1 |
Easy |
| Blood relation+ Direction Sense etc.) |
2+2 |
Easy |
English Language: The difficulty level of English section was Easy this year. It was a pleasant surprise for the aspirants that English section was reasonably easy. In cloze test lot of questions were based on the preposition.
| Topic |
No. of Questions (30) |
Level |
| Reading Comprehension |
10 |
Moderate |
| Cloze Test |
10 |
Easy to Moderate |
| Phrase Replacement |
10 |
Moderate |
Expected Cutoff marks: - As per our analysis and difficulty level of the examination, the following Cutoff marks are expected for the different category.
| Category |
Overall cut-off(out of 100) |
| General |
48-53 |
| OBC |
45-50 |
| SC |
38-43 |
| ST |
27-26 |
Expected Sectional Cutoff for SBI PO Prelims 2017
| Name of Section |
Maximum Marks |
Expected Cutoff |
| Reasoning Ability |
35 |
9-12 |
| English Language |
30 |
9-11 |
| Quantitative Aptitude |
35 |
10-12 |
Note: The candidates should note that the above cutoffs may vary as it depends upon various factors hence, it is not possible to predict the exact cut off marks until SBI declared it on its website. The SBI will announce cut-off marks when the process of selection is over.