Exam Analysis: SBI Specialist Officer 20 Jan, 2017, Slot 2

SBI SO exam was conducted for various posts like assistant system manager, system developers etc. Exam was conducted in 2 slots- 9AM and 1PM. Here is the short analysis of slot 2 exam.

Exam is in 2 parts: Part 1 and part 2. Part 1 is of qualifying nature and merit will be based on Part 2. There is negative marking of 0.25 marks for every wrong answer. There is no time gap between part 1 and part 2. System will automatically start the part 2 exam after part 1 time will get over, you can’t switch to part 1 again.

Analysis: Some questions were super easy and some questions were touching the difficulty level. Overall exam was of moderate level. If you have prepared well, you can easily crack the exam.

Part 1: Part 1 had three sections: Reasoning, English and Quantitative Aptitude. There were total 120 questions in part 1 and duration was 90 minutes.

Reasoning: 50 questions. Overall Level of questions: Moderate.

Topics / Approximate No. of questions / Level
Syllogism / 5 / Easy to moderate
Coding-decoding / 5 / Easy to moderate
Blood relations / 3 / Easy
Seating arrangement (row,7 people) / 5 / Moderate
Direction and distance test / 4 / Moderate
Puzzles / 10 / Moderate to difficult
Inequalities / 5 / Easy
Circular Seating arrangement (8 people) / 5 / Difficult
Miscellaneous(Input-output, data sufficiency etc) / 8 / Easy to moderate
Total / 50

English: 35 questions. Overall Level of questions: Moderate.

Topics / Approximate No. of questions / Level
Reading comprehensions / 10 / Moderate
Sentence correction / 5 / Difficult
Fillers / 5 / Super easy
Cloze test / 5 / Moderate-difficult
Error spotting / 10 / Moderate-difficult
Total / 35

Quant: 35 questions. Overall Level of questions: Moderate.

Topics / Approximate No. of questions / Level
Data interpretation (tabular DI and line graph) / 10 / Calculative, moderate
Approximation and simplification / 5 / Easy
Data sufficiency / 5 / Moderate
Number series / 5 / Easy to moderate
Questions based on age, average, mixture, SI-CI, Profit & Loss, time-distance etc. / 10 / Moderate
Total / 35

Part 2: Professional Knowledge

There were 50 questions of 100 marks. Duration: 45 minutes.

Questions in this section check the command on technical subject. Majorly questions were from DBMS, data warehouse, data mining. Questions were also related to PKI certificate, IP address, operating system, RAD, OLAP etc. In this section, if you have attempted or if you attempt (in coming exams) around 35 questions with good accuracy, then this is a good attempt.

For the students who are appearing for this exam, now can get an idea of the exam and can prepare accordingly, but still, be ready for the unexpected.