- General Awareness: SSC-CGL vs SBI-PO
- SBI Priority order: ECM approach
- Economy for SBI PO
- Economy: Theory
- Economy: Current
- Computers
- Marketing
- Misc.GK
- Data interpretation
- English
- Appendix #1: download links
- Appendix #2: List of questions from previous exams
In the earlier article, we saw the approach for SBI PO: Reasoning (High level) click me.
Now the next topic: General Awareness + computer + marketing. + truckload of free study material.
Since many of you, are simultaneously giving SSC + SBI, so first let’s check the difference between
General Awareness: SSC-CGL vs SBI-PO
SSC-CGL |
SBI-PO |
History, science, polity, geography essential. | Not asked. |
Marketing not asked | Avg.11 questions. |
Computer barely 2-3 questions | Avg.13 questions |
Economy : mostly based on theory. | Avg 14 Qs.(including current affairs). Difficulty level bit of economy Qs. higher than SSC’s. |
SBI Priority order: ECM approach
- In the SSC-CGL studyplan, we saw that priority order was “SSC” (Static > Science > Crap) click me
- Similarly for SBI PO, the priority order is “ECM” =Economy > Computer > Marketing. Following table should clear the doubt
TOPIC | 2010A* | 2010N | 2011A |
---|---|---|---|
Economy | 14 | 16 | 13 |
Computer | 13 | 14 | 13 |
Marketing | 12 | 11 | 12 |
International | 4 | 3 | 5 |
Misc.GK(persons in news, books, sports, awards etc.) | 4 | 5 | 4 |
Yearbook | 3 | 1 | 3 |
50 | 50 | 50 |
*A means associated banks. N = normal regular PO exam. As you can see, out of total 50 questions, more than 30 are coming from ECM only. And in 2010 and 2011’s exams, the sectional cutoff for General Awareness was at max 11 marks.
Even in older papers, questions revolve around more or less ^these same topics. Although Internal marks breakup may differ per year. Now let’s check approach for individual topics:
Economy for SBI PO
Internal breakup looks like this:
Economy | 2010A | 2010N | 2011A |
Theory | 4 | 7 | 5 |
Government related | 4 | 4 | 5 |
RBI related | 4 | 3 | 2 |
world economy/ International | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Subtotal: Economy | 14 | 16 | 13 |
To get better idea on “nature” of questions, go to the appendix of this article.
For exam-oriented preparation of SBI PO, I classify Economy into following two subtopics
- Theory
- Current Affairs
- Government related (GDP, fiscal policy, taxation, planning Commission etc.)
- RBI related (repo, reverse repo, priority sector, NBFC, etc. and the banking and finance concepts) + other “regulators” like SEBI, IRDA
- World Economy (EU, USA, recession reasons etc.)
From outside, and to a new player, Economy looks very boring and vast subject for competitive exams. But that’s because you’re reading the wrong material and preparing in wrong direction. Know that 1) you don’t have to mug up all numbers 2) you don’t have to tick all questions. What you’ve to prepare for Economy-MCQs is:
- Understanding the Terms (not the “verbatim” definitions but working understanding of what does Repo/Reverse repo, fiscal policy, monetary policy etc. do?)
- Understanding the cause and effect between terms (for example what will happen to inflation if repo rate is increased or decreased? if IIP is low then what is the cause behind it? If WPI is high then what is the cause behind it?)
- Salient features/functions of some organization / scheme (like RBI, NABARD, Banking Ombudsman, QFI, granting new Bank licences etc.)
- Only the important numbers. like What is the latest FDI limit in insurance, aviation, multi-brand retail, single-brand retail etc. Tax to GDP, targets of 12th Five year plan, Highest WPI, lowest IIP last year etc. (you’ll find most of them in Economic Survey.)
Economy: Theory
Without getting grip over theory, you cannot digest current affairs. So preparation must start with theory.
- NCERT Class 11
- NIOS Economy Material.
- NIOS Marketing Material.
All them them available for free, download links given in appendix of this article.
- “NIOS_Marketing” file also includes some important content on banking-finance. Refer Chap.9 “Banking services”
it’ll give you the idea on types of bank accounts, discounting bills, types of advances etc. terms. So you’d be able to handle MCQs associated with them. - NCERT Class 12 (Micro-Macro economy) would be boring and not much useful for the purpose of SBI. So you may ignore it.
- Also read the economy articles on mrunal.org/economy
Economy: Current
The “Current affairs” on economy, rests on four pillars
#1: India Yearbook
- if you’re preparing for UPSC as well, you’d have India 2013 or India 2012 Yearbook. Do selective study of economy related Chapters from it. (List of topics, chapters and page numbers already given in separate article click me)
- if you’re not preparing for UPSC, then there is absolutely no need to specifically get India yearbook for the written exam of SBI. However use the India 2011 (free PDF given in Appendix). From that, prepare the specific topics as per above link (page numbers will be different, some topics may not be there.) Note: some information may be outdated in India 2011 but the basics of finance ministry, functions of its departments, functions of RBI, SEBI etc. remains one and same).
#2: Economic Survey 2012-13
- Economic survey is a document released by Government, just before budget.
- It gives you overall idea on how economy performed last year and what should be done for future.
- it is goldmine for current affairs related questions of Economy.
- Whatever (jholaachhap) magazines/books/material comes in the market during March-April flood period, they’re basically copypaste job from Economic survey data + Yearbook + Newspapers. So better use the original, unpolluted version.
- Besides, if you’re only preparing for SBI (meaning you don’t have India 2013/12) then you must to go through Economic Survey to fillup the “gaps”.
- Economic Survey was released today (February-27-2013). Free download links given in the appendix of this article.
- While it looks very bulky and boring, but you don’t have to prepare every-line and word from it
- I’ll soon release a specific reading plan for Economic survey. Then you prepare the survey accordingly. But first, I gotta read the whole survey myself so it’d take some time hahaha.
#3: Magazines
- By magazines, I mean competitive magazines like Pratiyogita Darpan, Civil Service times, Chronicle, Wizard etc. Any one is fine.
- Basically you’ve to do is following
- Go to local library (if you’re already buying these magazines for last 6-8-12 months, then no need to go to local library). Pratiyogita Darpan also gives free access to online magazine. But it doesn’t work well on slow speed internet, + they don’t allow you to save PDF = not very convenient.
- Concentrate on the only first 20-25 pages of every month’s issue. Here they give you brief on national, international, science-tech, economy, +person in news/book/awards misc.GK. so you note down any important information that is worthy for MCQs. (without getting into minor details.) Remaining pages are filler pages: toppers’ interviews, recycled articles on polity, IR etc. not very important for SBI. (+time is less, so you can’t afford to read the whole magazine.)
- For SBI PO, you need to concentrate on Economy, International, Misc GK from Magazines only. You may ignore the science-tech part. (if you’re not preparing for UPSC / State PSC or SSC simultaneously.)
- You can also refer the Perons-in-News (PIN) series given under Mrunal.org/Current
#4: Newspapers
- If you are already reading English newspapers that is very good.
- If you’re not reading English newspapers, then start reading them from tomorrow itself. (either @home, office, library or internet).
- Why ? because SBI also has 1) descriptive English paper, 2) Group discussion (GD) and 3) Personal Interview (PI): and for all three of them you need fodder material to cite. Newspaper-columns provide you plenty of fodder material on any topic: pros cons of FDI, women empowerment, lokpal, inflation, freedom of speech, social networking sites.…and so on.
- But the novice players live in a myth that “Just 10-15 days before GDPI, I will buy some readymade book and become “expert” in all topics”. Sorry that’s not gonna happen. If you want to perform decently in GDPI, you’ve to read English newspaper on daily basis. (same rule for CAT/MBA/IIM.)
- + Newspaper also helps you improve vocabulary.
- Even in newspaper, not everything is important for exams. So how to read newspaper from exam point of view, already explained: click me.
This pretty much concludes economy portion. Now moving to next item.
Computers
The internal breakup for Computers is given in following table
Computer subtopic | 2010A | 2010N | 2011A |
Database Management | 3 | 7 | 2 |
Hardware | 1 | 1 | 4 |
Internet/Networking | 6 | 4 | 4 |
Ms-Office | 0 | 1 | 1 |
OS/Software Basics | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Subtotal:Computer | 13 | 14 | 13 |
- If you already have some book for Computer (from Kiran, Arihant, BSC, GKP etc), that’s well and good. Read, revise it multiple times.
- If you don’t have any book on computer then no need to specifically purchase a book because….
- NIOS (National open school) runs various courses on Computer/IT/Web-design/Software programming and provides free PDF files.
- However many of those PDFs deal with advanced use of C++ commands, Foxpro, HTML or javascript codes etc. such things are useless from exam point of view.
- So, I’ve compiled the important and exam-relevant chapters from various courses of NIOS. Free download links in appendix of this article. (please note: some chapters would overlap but content and coverage is still quite good.)
- After that use any mock papers/ old papers.
Marketing
- Last topic in the ECM trinity (Economy, Computer and Marketing).
- Here you have to know the definition of certain important terms and concepts (call, lead, convert, 7p, 4p, segmentation, channels, personal selling, marketing mix etc).
- Most of the MCQs are directly asked from those terms, in some cases you’ve to combine the definition with common sense and you’re done.
- I’ve included the NIOS_Marketing material at the bottom of article. While it is a good read, but it doesn’t cover all the important marketing terms for the exam, so it has to be supplemented by some book.
- For marketing, there are plenty of books in the market: Arihant, Kiran, BSC. If you already have one, well and good, use it.
- If you don’t have any, I would suggest go for Arihant’s Book on Marketing
- Read all the theory and solve all the mock questions.
Misc.GK
Internal breakup looks like this
subtopic | 2010A | 2010N | 2011A |
book-author | 2 | 0 | 0 |
PIN | 1 | 4 | 3 |
Sports | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Subtotal: Misc.GK | 4 | 5 | 4 |
Just go through this list for 2012-13
Take ^it as your “foundation” for your Misc.GK. Then use whatever magazines/ competitionmaster.com to fill-up more data as per your time and mood.
Now Last two topics: International affairs + Yearbook
|
Use the pillar #3 (magazines +/- competitionmaster.com) and #4 (newspaper) for this. No need to cover it in detail, just pay attention to organizations, their full forms, places where summits were held, any keyterms/ leaders associated etc. Most of the MCQs are not very deep or difficult. So cost:benefit =quite good. |
|
Economic Survey + magazines. Just need to know basic. |
So far covered: Reasoning (High level) + General Awareness (+Marketing + computer)
Article on remaining topics (DI + English) will be published soon. (but not before the studyplan for Economy survey).
In the mean time, here is brief overview
Data interpretation
- NCERT class 11 Statistics Chapter #3, 4 and 5. Click me for free download
- Technique to do Long division and ugly percentages quickly: click me to learn
- Trachtenberg system for quick multiplication (especially for 5 and 9). Lot of articles on internet. Start with wiki
- DI doesn’t have much theory (except a few things in pie chart, averages etc.) so practice is what matters.
- For practice, If you’ve old papers or some mock paperset, use it. Otherwise, go for Kiran Prakashan’s Practice Workbook for SBI PO
- Kiran’s Practice Workbook also has mock papersets On all topics of SBI :DI,GA,computer,marketing,Englist objective, English Descriptive too) + previous 14 solved papers of previous SBI exams= tonnes of practice.
English
- Grammar book. If you don’t have one, use SP Bakshi (Arihant).
- For descriptive, same Kiran Prakashan’s Practice Workbook for SBI PO, for getting writing practice for the descriptive papers.
Anyways, ^this is just overview, detailed article on English + DI later.
Appendix #1: download link for SBI PO Free Study material
Just go to following link, click on file names and downloads will start.
https://files.secureserver.net/0fRMgNldNnW6J1
Above link contains zip files for
- NCERT Economy class 11
- NIOS Economy basics
- Economic Survey 2012-13
- India 2011 Yearbook
- NIOS Computer material for SBI PO
- NIOS Marketing material for SBI PO
Please note: some files are in .7z format because .zip format was not compressing them enough. For example zip of Economic survey was around 19MB bu 7z file is only 13 MB. So use this free program called 7-Zip to open such .7z files: Click me to download 7-Zip by the way 7zip can also open normal .zip and .RAR files.
To enjoy the PDF files inside, use Foxit PDF reader. It is free, allows many features like copying text, highlighting lines etc. Click me to download Foxit PDF reader.
Appendix #2: List of questions from previous exams
List of questions from last three exams, to give you an idea on what type of information you should be looking / skipping while studying.
Q. Economy: Theory
Topping texts: meaning | 2010A |
FCRA | 2010A |
NPA | 2010A |
Terms associated with spanking | 2010A |
Special Drawing rights | 2010N |
NBFC full form | 2010N |
Preferred foreign currency | 2010N |
Disinvestment meaning | 2010N |
Supply-side bottlenecks in inflation | 2010N |
Indexes for measuring inflation | 2010N |
NBFC example | 2010N |
Measuring food inflation | 2011A |
Full form of FINO | 2011A |
items on which subsidy is given | 2011A |
LAF full form | 2011A |
SLR meaning | 2011A |
Q. Economy: Government related
challenges to Indian economy | 2010A |
Tendulkar poverty line | 2010A |
11th five year plan targets | 2010A |
industrial policy | 2010A |
highlights of budget | 2010N |
3G auction Ministry | 2010N |
fiscal consolidation | 2010N |
pricing of fertilisers | 2010N |
inflation and petroleum | 2011A |
Bhagyam oilfields | 2011A |
land acquisition | 2011A |
Bamboo as liberated item | 2011A |
GDP set by planning commission | 2011A |
Q. Economy: RBI related
electronic cheque | 2010A |
local area banks | 2010A |
financial inclusion target | 2010A |
priority sector lending certificate | 2010A |
RBI capital account convertibility | 2010N |
QIB | 2010N |
physical settlement of derivatives | 2010N |
base lending rate increase | 2011A |
review of bad debts in priority sector | 2011A |
Q. Economy: World Economy
World Bank report on rural development | 2010A |
Indo US financial partnership | 2010A |
yuan policy | 2010N |
European Union deficit reduction | 2010N |
BPPIC company | 2011A |
Q. Computer: Database/Programming related
compiler or converter | 2010A |
database | 2010A |
DBMS | 2010A |
database administrator | 2010N |
field text | 2010N |
information system | 2010N |
design control | 2010N |
data mining | 2010N |
storing data in many places | 2010N |
processing cycle | 2010N |
system unit function | 2011A |
system software function | 2011A |
Q. Computer: Hardware related
WebCam | 2010A |
network adapter | 2010N |
chip system | 2011A |
notebook | 2011A |
circuit board | 2011A |
billionth of a second | 2011A |
Q. Computer: Internet Related
HTTP | 2010A |
server | 2010A |
firewall | 2010A |
TCP/IP | 2010A |
HTML | 2010A |
LAN | 2010A |
Internet | 2010N |
server | 2010N |
client/server | 2010N |
IP address | 2010N |
chat group | 2011A |
antispam | 2011A |
hyperlink | 2011A |
FTP | 2011A |
Q. Computer MS Office/softwares
presentation slights | 2010N |
Microsoft messenger function | 2011A |
Q. Computer OS, Software, Basic
JPG,PNG | 2010A |
start menu | 2010A |
fragmentation | 2010A |
batch files | 2010N |
embedded operating system | 2011A |
Java applets | 2011A |
Q. Marketing
aim of marketing | 2010A |
aggressive marketing | 2010A |
efficient marketing requirements | 2010A |
modern marketing style | 2010A |
call | 2010A |
lead generation | 2010A |
conversion | 2010A |
salesperson performance | 2010A |
marketing research | 2010A |
value-added services | 2010A |
customisation | 2010A |
e-marketing | 2010A |
7P | 2010N |
home loan canvassing | 2010N |
CRM | 2010N |
growth strategy | 2010N |
SME | 2010N |
blue Ocean strategy | 2010N |
Bancassurance | 2010N |
monopoly company and marketing | 2010N |
Cross selling: functions of | 2010N |
Cross selling: does not help in | 2010N |
SME loan target group | 2010N |
online marketing | 2011A |
customisation | 2011A |
market-driven strategy: challange | 2011A |
effective selling skills | 2011A |
generation of Leeds | 2011A |
market plant function | 2011A |
marketing channel | 2011A |
social marketing | 2011A |
service marketing | 2011A |
Market driven strategy includes | 2011A |
innovation | 2011A |
canvassing of personal loans | 2011A |
Q. Yearbook
government initiatives for agriculture | 2010A |
NREGA’s new name | 2010A |
cryogenic engine | 2010A |
rural infrastructure scheme | 2010N |
satellite launch | 2011A |
River cleanup project | 2011A |
scheme of rural ministry | 2011A |
Q. Misc.GK, Sports, books, PIN
EU President | 2010A |
Asia cup hockey (female) champion | 2010A |
book: the discovery of India | 2010A |
name of book written by VS Naipaul | 2010A |
CK Naidu | 2010N |
IBN Indian of the year | 2010N |
Miss world 2009 | 2010N |
Davis cup winner nation | 2010N |
Chairman of 13th Finance commission | 2010N |
Coach of Indian cricket team | 2011A |
Kanistha Dhankhar | 2011A |
K Balachar | 2011A |
Goodluck Jonathan | 2011A |
SBI PO KE DI PORTION KA LEVEL KAHA SE MLEGA PLZ REPLY
Sir! please help me with sbi po exam study material.
Hello sir,
Could you please help me with current affairs and banking stuff for SBI PO 2015? In all my past banking exams, I could hardly attempt more than 18 despite studying from those popular best selling magazines. Also sir, please list some of the probable topics for this year’s letter and essay in the descriptive section. Thank you!
What is the level of general insurance company exam a.m.? There is only 6 post should I enroll it and what’s the level of aptitude in this exam?
hello Sir,
SBI PO notification is out, please suggest prepation strategy sir, i checked your site, its 2013 pattern, now pattern has changed, please update.
sir can i simultaneously prepare for ssc cgl 2016 n sbi po,n crack boh of them,please help me out sir,as the ssc cgl exam has been postponed…please reply
sir you are doing such a nice work . you have given such a precious information .it helps a lot to me and other aspirants also. keep up this good work
how to prepare for sbi po exam in 3 months
Sir! please help me with sbi po exam study material.