General Awareness is the marks-winner in IBPS PO bank exams

Posted by GuduruKarthik on December 26th, 2014

IBPS PO Exams being scheduled in October, attempters are sure going through a rigorous study regime. With the intention of attaining good scores and clearing all the sections, they are putting equal efforts in all of them. Generally, bank exams Reasoning & Quantitative Aptitude considered the most difficult, while the other three sections i.e. English, Computer Knowledge and General Awareness are considered substantially easier. But General Awareness though consumes less time during the exam, it takes good number of preparation hours for IBPS PO exams. Allocating less number of study hours to it can leave you flabbergasted during these bank exams.  

General Awareness is an ocean of knowledge. Only through a right and dedicated preparation strategy, it is possible to remember such huge amount of information. General Awareness as the name suggests is the information, as a citizen one ought to know. It is a wide domain and consists of many categories like politics, laws, economics, business, sports, current affairs and national and international events. It is included in the IBPS PO exams with the intention of identifying knowledgeable candidates from among the attempters.

The expertise in General Awareness cannot be accomplished in a day. But it is a continuous process. While some awareness is gathered over the ages there are many fields which constantly change. To prepare for IBPS PO exams you have to keep yourself updated with every day news. Newspaper is the best and genuine source of knowledge, while internet and TV are latest trends for increasing the General Awareness.

The scope of General Awareness in bank exams covers General Awareness and Banking General Awareness and Finance.

Let us see how much each of these sections appear in the IBPS PO exam:

1. Banking: IBPS exam has at least 30% of its questions based on this topic. Recent RBI rules, updates make a frequent entry into the bank exam papers. You can visit the RBI website for regular updates. Banking terms like NEFT, KYC are also important.

2. Finance: Terms like Shares, mortgage, capital market investments, bonds etc.

3. Economy: All Five Year Plans, current five year plan, terms related to economy, budget

4. Books: Famous books, their authors, awards received

5. Sports: Recent tourneys, winners, their host countries in sports like Tennis, cricket, chess etc.

6. People in News: Appointments of top level authorities, retirements (in SEBI etc.)across various government departments

7. Awards & Achievements: Government awarded honors, International and National movie award winners

8. Science and Technology: Latest updates from worldwide, missiles recently launched, mobile operating systems

9. Miscellaneous: MOUs signed by countries, visits by leaders, treaties etc.

The topics covered in General Awareness are scattered among the various fields and the list is never ending. It is advised for students to be prepared with at least 6-7 months of current affairs before the bank exam.

Prepare previous years question papers. They would give a generic idea about the type of questions you can expect in the next bank exam. The questions like in other sections may not get repeated in General Awareness, but they surely give you hints about their model. Learn about General Awareness questions from previous years at this online session of BankersChoice

Go through 2-3 monthly magazines for Current Affairs and take the tests which appear in them. This will increase your confidence and acts as a practice session.