SBI Clerk 2016: Prelims Exam Review & Expected Cutoffs [Detailed Analysis]

The much talked about, SBI clerk prelims exam was conducted in the month of May & June 2016.It is held as part of the SBI recruitment of 17000 junior associates & junior agricultural associates in clerical cadre.Since clerk jobs are filled statewise, the exams were attended by thousands of candidates in various centres across India.How was the exam? Here you will know about the SBI clerk prelims exam review & expected cutoffs along with safe attempts.

17,000 vacancies were notified for SBI clerk recruitment & the 1st phase of selection process – preliminary exams are to happen on May 22, 28, 29 & June 4, 5.

SBI Clerk Exam 2016 Review

Since the total duration of prelims test is just 1 hour, the online tests were conducted in 4 different time slots.

The overall feedback received from candidates was – “SBI clerk prelims was easy” but some others felt it time consuming.So we can take the exams as easy to moderate.

Latest update: SBI clerk prelims exam results have been announced.The main examination shall be conducted on June 25 & 26

Although the paper was touted to be easy, few questions did pull down in each section, which has been listed in detailed review.

Reasoning: The most easiest of questions were asked making it a cakewalk for candidates who had appeared for previous bank exams.The highlight of this paper is, there were no syllogisms.

• Sitting arrangement (circular) – 5
• Blood Relation – 2
• Inequality – 5
• Puzzles – 5
• Coding-Decoding 2
• Alphanumeric series 5
• Direction sense

Safe number of attempts: If you have attempted 25+ questions correctly, you are in safe zone.

Numerical Ability: The numerical problems were also not too hard but due to few tricky questions, few individuals spent a lot of time to solve them. 

• Number series – 5
• Simplification  – 10
• Data Interpretation – 5
• Others (Profit/ Loss, Averages, Boats & Stream, Simple/ Compound interest, Time & Work, Ratio & Proportion, Average, Percentage, Partnership, etc) – 15 to 20

Safe number of attempts: 18+

English Language: All questions were quite easy to answer.Some candidates felt it as time consuming because they had difficulties in understanding the stories.But choosing the options were not difficult, though.

• Reading Comprehension (based on a story) – 10
• Cloze Test (based on story) – 5
• Parajumbles (story) – 5
• Correct spellings – 5
• Error spotting – 5

Safe number of attempts: 22+

Overall speaking, if you had answered more than 65 – 70  questions correctly, it can be considered as good number of attempts.

SBI Clerk Expected Cutoffs

Although the prelims marks will not be considered for final selection, candidates are required to score the minimum cutoffs in each section & on total marks.

There are two points that you should remember while talking about these sbi clerk 2016 cutoffs.

1) With the exams to be held on 2 more weekends, the pattern shall remain more or less similar.Even if it gets little tough, the scores would be normalized to make sure the difficulty level across all slots are averaged.

2) As this SBI recruitment is for two different posts (junior associate & junior agricultural associate) – cutoffs will also be calculated post-wise & state-wise.

So here are the expected SBI clerk prelims exam cutoff marks (sectional) for all categories

• English: 7 – 9
• Reasoning: 10 – 12
• Numerical ability: 6 – 8

Coming to cutoffs on total marks, it could range between these figures across states:

• General/ UR: 46 – 52
• OBC: 41 – 47
• SC: 35 – 40
• ST: 26 – 32

Exam Over? Its time to calculate your cutoffs & wait for the results as 3 – 4 lakh candidates could qualify for SBI mains.