IBPS PO Mains 2016: Exam Review & Expected Cutoffs [Easy or Tough]

The most expected IBPS PO Main Exam 2016 is over, which is part of the recruitment of officers in public sector banks.A preliminary exam was conducted earlier & only those who qualified in it were eligible to appear for this written test held on November 20.Many of those who have taken part in this exam have termed it as tough & difficult.Read on to know more about the IBPS PO main exam review in detail.

For the first time, aspirants appeared for PO main exam that had time limits on each section, that was recently introduced by IBPS (prelims results were out in Oct)

Everyone were of the view that the difficulty level of IBPS PO mains would be similar to SBI PO mains, which was true to some extent.

IBPS PO Mains Review: Reasoning & Quants were Tough

The online test consisted of 5 sections with 200 questions in total.Since each section had time limits, candidates were under a sense of pressure throughout the exam duration.

General awareness was the only section that was quickly answerable whereas 90% of the questions in IBPS PO mains ranged between moderate to difficult.

Computer knowledge paper was difficult for some shifts, we were told.This again, was unexpected wh chidisappointed many candidates as it is a easy scoring section normally.

Frustration Starts: Reasoning & Quantitative aptitude could have never been tougher than this – is the general opinion of all candidates.

The kind of pattern may not have even been thought about in dreams.

IBPS has now set a new benchmark for mains exam by omitting some common topics.It looks they purposefully set such a high level paper every year due to less vacancies & increasing competition for bank jobs.

Candidates had to spend more time on questions they were not good at, which itself created a feeling of failure.

Puzzles, Input/Output, Arguments, Direction questions were like waging a war due to its toughness.

A majority of them were able to attend only 8 – 15 questions in each of these two sections which had a total of 100.This itself speaks about the difficulty level.

Low Cutoffs Possible But…

Having looked at the performance, there is a talk about the possibility of low cutoffs because the exam was considered to be tough.

• But not all the sections were difficult.
• Most candidates have performed really well in GK & Computers.
• Some have managed to attempt nearly 22 – 30 questions in reasoning & aptitude with 100% accuracy.

So the individual cutoff for reasoning & aptitude may go low whereas the total cutoff score need not be necessarily lower.

Calculating Cutoff Scores: IBPS uses normalization method to convert your actual marks into scores and nobody knows that formula.

But the difficulty level will taken into consideration along with the no. of vacancies this year while declaring the qualifying scores.If they also choose accuracy as a factor to determine the total cutoff, low scores may not be possible.

Here is the IBPS PO Mains 2016 expected cutoffs:;

Reasoning: 7 – 9

English : 8 – 10

Quantitative Aptitude: 9 – 11

General Awareness: 12 – 15

Computer Knowledge: 9 – 12

Cutoffs on total scores: Based on the level of questions & candidates feedback, we expect the total cutoffs might be in the following ranges.

General: 65 – 70

OBC: 62 – 67

SC: 41 – 46

ST: 38 – 45

As per estimates, atleast 1.8 lakh candidates may have appeared for main exam among which IBPS needs to shortlist only 26,000 – 30,000 candidates for interviews (ratio of 1:3).

Hence the candidates who have performed well with good no. of attempts can easily get in.

How did you perform IBPS PO Main Exam? Post your attempts, category & thoughts about the results in the form below.