Most pages that claim to give the "official syllabus" for IBPS RRB Officer Scale-I are giving a list someone compiled from past papers. IBPS itself publishes much less. This page separates three things: what the CRP RRBs XV notification of 1 September 2026 says, what the Prelims information handout of 9 November 2026 shows, and a working topic list that is ours. Read the labels, because only the first two are official.
What the notification says
Clause D of the notification, "Online Examination Structure", names the tests and their size. It does not list topics under any test.
| Stage | Test | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prelims | Reasoning | 40 | 40 | 25 minutes |
| Prelims | Quantitative Aptitude | 40 | 40 | 20 minutes |
| Mains | Reasoning | 40 | 50 | 30 minutes |
| Mains | Computer Knowledge | 40 | 20 | 15 minutes |
| Mains | General Awareness | 40 | 40 | 15 minutes |
| Mains | English Language or Hindi Language | 40 | 40 | 30 minutes |
| Mains | Quantitative Aptitude | 40 | 50 | 30 minutes |
Three details in the notification shape what you study:
- For Officer Scale-I the Prelims test is called Quantitative Aptitude. For Office Assistants the matching test is called Numerical Ability. The notification does not explain the difference, but the two posts have separate papers.
- The Main Examination for Scale-I has General Awareness. The single-level papers for Scale-II and Scale-III have Financial Awareness in that slot, and "Quantitative Aptitude and Data Interpretation" in place of Quantitative Aptitude. Do not study from a Scale-II scheme by mistake.
- The notification says other detailed information about the online examination is given in the information handout, which is released with the call letter.
The full scheme with marking and timing is on the exam pattern page.
What the Prelims handout shows
The information handout for the Scale-I preliminary examination carries five sample questions for each test. They are the only official indication of question types. We describe them here without copying the questions.
Reasoning samples (five):
| Sample | What it tests |
|---|---|
| 1 | Relative positions of towns (east and west of one another), to find the one farthest west |
| 2 | Position in a row: two people swap seats and you find the total number in the row |
| 3 | Rearranging the letters of a word to form a meaningful word, with rules for "more than one" and "none" |
| 4 | An alphabet series with letters swapped end to end, and a position counted from the right |
| 5 | Interchanging adjacent letters of a word and finding a letter by position |
Quantitative Aptitude samples (five):
| Sample | What it tests |
|---|---|
| 1 | Profit and loss with added costs (transport, duty, coolie charges) and a target profit percentage |
| 2 | Divisibility: which number is an exact multiple of 4 |
| 3 | Simplification with fractions: find the missing number |
| 4 and 5 | A data table (percentages of 700 employees giving ranks to six attributes) with two questions: one read from the table, one percentage-to-number calculation |
Two sentences in the handout matter more than the samples themselves. First, the types shown are "only illustrative and not exhaustive". Second, the actual examination will have questions of a higher difficulty level on some or all of these types, and also types not mentioned. So the handout fixes the floor, not the ceiling.
The handout also confirms the format the questions arrive in: five answer options per question, one correct, and the option "Other than those given as options" appears as a fifth choice in several samples. Get used to that option. It means you cannot stop at "none of the four looks right, so I made a mistake".
A working topic list for Prelims (ours, not IBPS's)
The lists below are our preparation aid. They start from the sample types above and add the topics that the test names "Reasoning" and "Quantitative Aptitude" ordinarily cover in a graduate-level bank officer screening test. IBPS has not published them and may ask outside them.
Reasoning
- Arrangements and puzzles: linear rows, circular seating, floors, days or months, boxes, with one or two variables attached to each person.
- Ranking and order: position from left and right, comparison of heights, weights or marks.
- Direction and distance: turns, shortest distance, relative positions (the first handout sample is of this family).
- Alphabet and word tests: letter series, position from left or right, forming words, rearranging letters (handout samples 3, 4 and 5).
- Coding and decoding: letter shifts, number codes, coded sentences.
- Blood relations, including coded relations.
- Syllogism: statements and conclusions, "only a few" and possibility cases.
- Inequalities: direct and coded.
- Number and alphanumeric series: counting rules, elements before or after.
- Data sufficiency on the topics above.
Quantitative Aptitude
- Simplification and approximation: BODMAS, fractions, decimals, percentages, squares and roots (handout sample 3).
- Number system: divisibility, factors and multiples, HCF and LCM, remainders (handout sample 2).
- Number series: missing and wrong terms.
- Quadratic equations: comparing two roots.
- Data interpretation: tables, bar charts, line charts, pie charts and caselets (handout samples 4 and 5 are a table).
- Percentage, profit and loss, discount (handout sample 1).
- Ratio and proportion, partnership, averages, ages, mixtures.
- Simple and compound interest.
- Time and work, pipes, time, speed and distance, trains, boats.
- Mensuration of plane figures and common solids.
- Elementary probability, permutation and combination.
There is no calculator in the examination hall, so every one of these has to be done by hand on rough sheets.
Mains tests: what is official and what is not
For the Main Examination the notification again gives only test names. When we checked on 13 November 2026, IBPS had not yet published the information handout for the CRP RRBs XV Scale-I Main Examination, so there are no official Mains samples for this cycle on this page. What follows is our planning note.
- Reasoning and Quantitative Aptitude (50 marks each): the same areas as Prelims, with 30 minutes per test. They carry half of the 200 marks.
- General Awareness (40 marks): the notification gives the name only. We suggest reading it as current affairs of the last several months, banking and financial awareness (RBI, NABARD, Regional Rural Banks, government schemes for agriculture and rural credit), and static general knowledge. The rural-bank angle is our inference from the job, not an IBPS statement.
- Computer Knowledge (20 marks): name only. We suggest basics of hardware and software, operating systems, common office software, the internet and email, networking terms, security, and standard abbreviations.
- English Language or Hindi Language (40 marks): name only. We suggest reading comprehension, cloze passages, error spotting, sentence improvement, fill in the blanks and sentence rearrangement in the language you choose.
Choose the language test early. English Language and Hindi Language carry the same marks and time, and the choice is about where you lose fewer marks, not about which is thought to be easier.
What is not tested
- Prelims has no language, General Awareness or Computer test. Those begin in Mains.
- No descriptive paper is listed for Scale-I in the notification. Both stages are objective.
- No Professional Knowledge test. That belongs to Scale-II specialist officers.
- Local language is an eligibility condition checked by the RRB, not a test in the online examination. The notification treats you as proficient if you studied the language in Class VIII or above.
How to use this syllabus
- Start from the two Prelims tests. Reasoning and Quantitative Aptitude appear at both stages and carry 80 of 80 marks in Prelims and 100 of 200 in Mains.
- Sort the working list into three piles: topics you can do at speed, topics you can do slowly, and topics you cannot do. With 30 to 37.5 seconds a question in Prelims (arithmetic from the scheme), the second pile is where most marks are lost.
- Practise with five options, including "Other than those given as options".
- Begin Mains-only tests before the Prelims result. The calendar gives about four weeks between Prelims (21 and 22 November 2026) and Mains (20 December 2026). General Awareness and Computer Knowledge cannot be built in that gap alone.
- Test each topic as you finish it. Pareeksha's topic-wise practice is organised by topic. A free 10-question mini-mock is available to try the format. Full mocks and topic practice are Pro.
- Re-read the handout that comes with your own call letter. It is the document IBPS expects you to have read.
What this page does not have
- An official topic-wise syllabus. IBPS does not publish one for this exam; the topic lists above are ours and are labelled so.
- Official sample questions for the Main Examination of CRP RRBs XV. The Mains handout was not on ibps.in when we checked.
- Topic-wise weightage or the number of questions per topic. IBPS does not publish it, and we do not reproduce counts from memory-based papers.
- The text of the handout's sample questions. We have described the types; the questions themselves are on the IBPS page linked in the sources.
Related: Exam pattern and marking · Cut-offs · Preparation strategy