I began my serious preparation for the banking examination in jan 2019. I was preparing for cgl prior to banking, so my basics of quant were already clear but the pattern for reasoning was drastically different. I still remember I scored 8 (out of 35) marks in the reasoning section in my first prelims examination (IBPS PO 2018). I gave that exam frivolously & out of overconfidence, that if I had cleared cgl pre & mains then bank PO is not that big a deal. But when my IBPS PO score card came I was shocked to get only 36 marks & missed the cut off from a huge margin. Even my confidence shackled let alone my overconfidence.

Then out of despair I searched you tube channels on how to clear IBPS clerk 2018 as my whole year was about to get wasted and I was there with no job at all. One of the guys on youtube named ‘student farmayish’ suggested in his videos to give atleast 50 mocks to clear prelims. I immediately bought subscriptions of ibpsguide & testbook and then spent days & nights solving those mocks. And by the end of the last mocks of both test series I managed to get single digit ranking in them. With time & practice my level improved.

Ibps clerk prelims went nice & scored around 78/100, but then in mains I have no idea of how to prepare for GA section & started preparing for it in a random manner from multiple sources, without revisions, as a result i forgot most of it just days before the exam and I couldn’t attempt much.

Then, I gave NIACL AO. Cleared prelims but failed mains by 3.5 marks only (result came a day before Holi festival and the struggle for whole year began from here itself- but this failure played a major role in my upcoming exams as I learned the method of preparing GA section in this exam itself)

On 1 Apr, 2019, IBPS clerk result came & I failed in Mains by 6 marks (and it was getting really hard for me to digest this failure- with this failure I decided to be in the examination mode for the whole yr)

Then, I gave IDBI Assistant manager exam & failed to qualify merit list just by 0.75 marks (and was selected in the waiting list) (here I realised that even after attempting more than 150 questions in mains one can still fail if his or her accuracy is not good)

Then, Attempted LIC AAO exam, cleared Prelims & again faltered in Mains. Here, one of the sections called Insurance Awareness came out of blue & was of very high level for a science graduate. This time the exam cheated on me despite my foolproof preparation level. I scored around 15 marks more than mains but missed sectional cut off for Insurance by 5 marks.

Thus, so far I have learned the technique of clearing prelims with a wide margin but mains kept slipping from my hands.

After this much destruction came SBI PO 2019 exam. Scored well in prelims (78/100) & then started my preparation for mains (I can still recall how my metabolism got disturbed these days, as I was almost on the verge of becoming an insomniac. Sometimes, I found myself attempting mains mocks till 4 am in the morning)

Then came the D-day, while attempting mains I messed up with the first section (reasoning), but lifted my paper up from the very next sections. It’s result came on ‘janmashtmi’ & finally I cracked my 1st mains in banking.

Meanwhile, I also cleared FCI prelims, SBI clerk prelims (scored around 93/100), gave EPFO ASO (prelims), EPFO SSA (prelims), FCI (mains).

Then, date of SBI PO GD&PI approached. GD/GE went awesome, but PI kept giving me second thoughts on my answers given there.

Although I attempted many exams but at some point I realised that I gave my heart & soul only to SBI PO and by GOD’s grace I found my name highlighted in the final list & was allotted my first circle of preference (NEW DELHI).

Later, got selected in SBI JA final list as well, cleared EPFO ASO prelims, cleared EPFO SSA prelims, IBPS PO 2019 prelims (scored76/100) and for FCI Mains final results are still awaited.