Read this only if you have few mins to spare. There's no valuable info present in this. With sudden break in my daily routine for the past few days, and results being atleast 10 days from now, I'm bored 😄
Ok, so this was my first attempt at Banking exams. Currently I'm doing my Masters. And my end sem exams ended in the first week of December so I had the month to myself, since college reopens on 2nd Jan. So I thought, instead of spending time on Netflix/Prime/Vlogs, I will prepare for this exam, since this exam had only Apti, Res and Eng and not GA(I'm bad with memorization), which would also help me in placements. Read up few answers on Quora on how the banking exams are and some strategies. I skipped "learn basics", as everyone suggested to start with, because I believed I knew the concepts, I just needed speed and practice. So I started giving mock test in the mornings and then doing its analysis for the rest of the day, each day. I knew there was no other way I was going to solve 150Q's per day. Followed this routine with some obvious lapse. So for mocks in all I gave 12 TB, 7 OB, 1 PM. I use to get around 60 in TB initially and then the marks went up. Gave OB out of curiosity. I switched to OB soon(in search for variety of test environment) as after giving the free test on OB, I found TB lacking in the quality of questions, and then some glitches started to crop up after giving some 7-8 mocks on the TB platform, which put the final nail for me. OB mercilessly put me atleast 15% behind my usual TB marks. I'd heard of OB being tougher but it hit me nonetheless. But I didn't give up on my routine though(I'm proud of it 👍 ). Learned few more tricks on the way. And after couple of more tests with OB I was back on 60's. But I knew this wasn't enough. No matter the different strategies I used to approach the exam, I wasn't going above the mark. While analysis(btw TB=OB on analysis part) I found that Questions with new terms in them had me. Either I took more time or marked them incorrectly, throwing rest of the paper off balance. So finally I had "familiar? no-skip" strategy. Helped me to some extent. Decided to stick with it no matter what. And now the exam date was near. Positioned myself to my allotted seat 30 mins prior, with a beautiful girl on my left and buffer PC on right, I was able to attempt 95 (on a side note, i forgot how many attempts I made to count my attempts after the exam was over! I was so nervous, lol). Waiting for late comers to move out their vehicle (cons of being on time) from the underground "single passage" parking lot, I wasn't happy, at the same time not dissapointed(which I was later once I found out attempts of you people 🙌 ) with my performance. I somehow felt I could have solved that 1 puzzle and Graph problems(all of which have atleast 2 easy questions in them). I felt my strategy was lacking in the sense that I skipped all graphs and puzzles for the end. I should've solved atleast the 1 liners in the graph problems on the way. Anyways, I couldn't do much about it then. Parking lot cleared up, on my bike, I left for home(Single's Life). Watched TB, BA, OB analysis of the paper on Youtube/website, played my guitar, couple of movies for the rest of day err..and night(slept at 2am I'm guessing, don't judge me, kept it clean guys 😑 ). Got up with huge eye bags and a hole in my life with no mocks to give. Quickly checked my holdings, with no bump even on the last day of the year, sold them(which I know I'm going to repent by 3.30pm) for meagre profit.
All said and done, I realised I loved my routine and liked solving the questions. And I feel I should continue doing it. With NIACL AO (again no GA, yay!) mocks in the OB account(came bundled in the pass), I'm thinking of going for them (not sure though) instead of SO Mains prep reason being 1) I'm not sure whether my attempts were enough to clear the cutoff (I may get around 83 but not more than 90 I'm positive and last year cutoff being 90). 2) I'm good with computer science and I'm confident I can pull off Mains in 15 days if by any luck I manage to clear the prelims' cutoff. Let me know what you guys are doing with your lives since yesterday.
PS: Btw, the TB/BA/OB guys said(during paper analysis sessions yesterday) that they discussed the expected questions according to recent trends in IBPS etc. Did any of you guys watched those sessions? If they were helpful, I'll watch them next time.
That's it for now.
Live, Long and Prosper 🖖🏽