The 1st ever common written exam (CWE) for PO/MT posts was conducted by IBPS at various centres across India on Sep 18 2011.A pass in this test will enable them to apply for bank jobs in 19 public sector banks of India.Come June 17, 2012 aspirants will again sit for the CWE.
Experiences shared by others can help others avoid doing the same mistakes again.
Some candidates had sent in their review of CWE 2011, which is being reproduced in their own words for your benefit.
How did you perform?
Vignesh details his exp. as,
Filling the bio-data form itself took 25-30 mins.The answer sheets were distributed around 9:20 a.m and by 9:30 a.m. questions papers were given. After filling the bio-data form I started the exam around 9:40a.m. In 45 mins, I attended only 22 questions in reasoning since it was tricky. At the same time invigilator was checking answer sheet to make sure there is no error in filling the bio-data. Then they took thumb impression in attendance list as well as on the exam call letter.All these took around 3-5 mins. In QA, i attended only 10 questions which itself ate 30 mins and i hence moved over to the next sections GA,computer awareness & english attending 29,30 and 22 respectively in 35-40 mins time. In the last 10 mins – I returned to the QA to answer 10-12 of which was able to solve only seven as others were tricky. I was totally disappointed with these and was not able to concentrate in descriptive & left an essay.
Neha says,
The QA section was time consuming & I was unable to allocate time planned for other sections.The computer awareness questions seemed to be of high level.There were many comprehensions in english section which again took more time.GA was okay.
Manish explains his situation,
It was really unexpected.The reasoning paper was tough than SBI & SBI associate exams. I was calm after answering other sections in 45 mins and hoped to solve atleast 35 Q of reasoning in remaining time, but became nervous on seeing the questions. Finally attended only 23 Q with only 70% accuracy.
Ashish was on the same page as others,
I was really going strong after solving 100+ questions in GA, Computer & English in 01 hr 10 minutes. But the lengthy questions in QA section made me to solve only 15 questions in 1 Hr.
Test sections:
Apart from the above voices many others summarized their attempts…
Lack of time: This was a commonly heard answer from many candidates when asked about the paper.
Duration of the exam is 2 hr & 30 mins (objective) & 1 Hr for descriptive test
Lengthy questions, need to perform many calculations for arriving at correct answer etc., were top reasons.
Reasoning & QA: More than 50% were of the view that reasoning & quantitative contained high level questions which led them to spend more time on these two sections.
GK, English & Computers – Easy?: There were mixed opinions about the English language section.But majority claimed them to be easy while few complained of twisted questions!
The same can be said about general/ banking awareness & computer knowledge questions.Many had infact prepared well in these subjects by referring newspapers & previous solved papers
Lessons to learn:
From the experiences & views shared above, here is a list of things that you should concentrate on while appearing for the IBPS common written exam.
- Time is gold.Make use of it appropriately.
- Complete answering the easy & known questions/ sections first.
- Take calculative risk for doubtful answers (read minimize negative marks by guessing)
- Don’t stick onto one question for more than 10 minutes unless it requires detailed workings.
- Decide on the time to allot for each section while preparing itself & stick to it during the test.
- Finally, don’t take descriptive test lightly.If you have just started preparations – make sure to read the english newspapers for the current week atleast.(see descriptive paper pattern & expected questions)
We hope this post would have thrown some light on things to expect on the exam day.