This plan starts from three official facts and works outwards: the scheme in the Reserve Bank's advertisement for Assistant, Panel Year 2025 (the newest cycle as of 13 November 2026), the negative marking, and the cut-offs RBI published. Wherever we do arithmetic on those figures we say so. Everything else here is our study advice, not RBI's.
1. Know where the marks are
| Stage | Test | Questions and marks | Share of the paper (arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prelims | English Language | 30 | 30% |
| Prelims | Numerical Ability | 35 | 35% |
| Prelims | Reasoning Ability | 35 | 35% |
| Mains | Reasoning | 40 | 20% |
| Mains | English Language | 40 | 20% |
| Mains | Numerical Ability | 40 | 20% |
| Mains | General Awareness | 40 | 20% |
| Mains | Computer Knowledge | 40 | 20% |
Two things follow.
- In Prelims, Reasoning and Numerical Ability are 70 of 100 marks. Speed in these two decides most of your score.
- In Mains, the five tests are equal. General Awareness and Computer Knowledge, which are not in Prelims at all, are 40% of the paper that fixes the order of merit.
2. Know your time per question
| Test | Questions | Time | Seconds per question (arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prelims English Language | 30 | 20 minutes | 40 |
| Prelims Numerical Ability | 35 | 20 minutes | about 34 |
| Prelims Reasoning Ability | 35 | 20 minutes | about 34 |
| Mains Reasoning | 40 | 30 minutes | 45 |
| Mains English Language | 40 | 30 minutes | 45 |
| Mains Numerical Ability | 40 | 30 minutes | 45 |
| Mains General Awareness | 40 | 25 minutes | 37.5 |
| Mains Computer Knowledge | 40 | 20 minutes | 30 |
The advertisement lists a time against each test. Practise with a separate clock for each test, because time saved in one cannot be assumed to carry to another. Thirty-four seconds a question means that a long puzzle or a heavy data-interpretation set has to be paid for by very quick questions elsewhere in the same test.
3. Decide when to guess
Each right answer is +1 and each wrong answer is -0.25. Arithmetic, not RBI advice:
- If your chance of being right is p, the average gain from an attempt is p minus 0.25 times (1 minus p). That is positive only when p is above 0.2, or 1 in 5.
- A blind guess among five options is exactly at 1 in 5 and gains nothing. After removing one wrong option it is 1 in 4, and after removing two it is 1 in 3.
- Four wrong answers cancel one right answer.
Then look at the cut-offs. In Panel Year 2025 the General cut-off on the Prelims total was 90.25 in Mumbai and 96.75 in Chandigarh. A candidate who attempted all 100 and got 92 right would score 90 (92 minus 2, arithmetic), below every General cut-off in the table. At this level a guess is not a way to add marks. It is a risk to marks you already have. Our advice is to attempt everything you can solve, and to guess only when you have genuinely narrowed the options.
4. Read the cut-offs before you plan
From RBI's office-wise tables (full tables on the cut-off page):
- Prelims, Panel Year 2025: General 90.25 to 96.75 out of 100 across the 17 offices. In Mumbai, the largest office, the spread from General (90.25) to ST (85.00) was only 5.25 marks.
- Sectional cut-offs, Prelims: 12.00, 14.00 and 14.00 for General and EWS, which is 40% of each test. These are easy to clear compared with the total.
- Mains, 2023 cycle (the last table published): General 111.25 to 126.75 out of 200.
Our reading: Prelims is an accuracy and speed contest in which nearly every question has to be right. Mains is a broader paper in which the cut-off has been near 60%, so depth in General Awareness and Computer Knowledge has room to separate candidates. Prepare for the two stages differently, but at the same time.
5. A four-phase plan
We give phases, not a number of days, because your starting level decides the length.
Phase 1: Concepts. Cover arithmetic chapters, the main reasoning types and core grammar once, properly. Start a daily habit of reading one English editorial and noting current affairs. Begin Computer Knowledge from the fundamentals.
Phase 2: Topic practice. Do untimed sets by topic, then timed ones. Your goal is accuracy first. Use Pareeksha's topic-wise practice (Pro) or any set that tags questions by topic, so you can see which topic leaks marks.
Phase 3: Sectional speed. Practise each Prelims test against its own 20-minute clock. Learn the order in which you attempt questions inside a test. Most candidates do best by clearing short questions first and leaving the longest puzzle or data set for the remaining minutes. That order is a habit you choose in practice, not in the hall.
Phase 4: Full mocks and analysis. Sit full 60-minute papers at the time of day you expect your shift, then analyse them (section 8). Keep General Awareness and Computer Knowledge revision going through this phase, because Mains comes soon after. In Panel Year 2025 Prelims was on 11 and 13 April 2026 and the Main Examination was fixed for 7 June 2026.
6. Subject tactics
RBI prints no topic list, so these tactics rest on the test names and our working lists on the syllabus page.
- Numerical Ability. Mental calculation is the base: tables, squares, fraction-to-percentage conversions and approximation. Secure simplification, number series and quadratic comparisons first because they are quick, then data interpretation, then the arithmetic word problems. In Mains the same areas come with longer data sets, so practise reading a table or chart once and answering five questions from it.
- Reasoning. Puzzles and seating arrangements take the most time and give several questions each. Practise them daily until you can judge within the first half minute whether a puzzle is worth doing now or later. Inequalities, syllogism, coding and direction questions are the quick marks; do not lose them to haste.
- English Language. Read every day. Comprehension, cloze tests and para jumbles reward reading speed more than rule lists. For grammar, keep an error notebook from your own mocks. At 40 seconds a question in Prelims, English can be the test where you save time if your reading is fluent.
- General Awareness (Mains). Keep one running note for current affairs and one for banking and financial awareness, with the Reserve Bank's own functions and terms at the centre. Revise weekly. We revise the last six months before Mains; that window is our choice.
- Computer Knowledge (Mains). Thirty seconds a question means pure recall. Short lists of terms, shortcuts and abbreviations, revised often, work better than long chapters.
7. The Language Proficiency Test and your choice of office
The LPT is mandatory and qualifying. The advertisement says a candidate not proficient in the official or local language of the state concerned "shall be disqualified", and that no exemption is given. Appendix-I names the languages: for example Marathi or Konkani for Mumbai, Hindi for New Delhi, Bhopal, Jaipur and Kanpur & Lucknow, Bengali or Nepali for Kolkata and Tamil for Chennai.
Our advice:
- Decide your office with the language table and the vacancy table side by side. You can apply to one office only.
- Do not chase a lower cut-off into an office whose language you cannot read and write. The cut-off pattern of one cycle may not repeat, and the LPT comes at the very end, after all the work is done.
- If you speak the language but rarely write it, practise reading a newspaper and writing a short passage by hand in it during the weeks after Mains. The advertisement gives no format, so we cannot tell you more than that.
8. A weekly mock-analysis routine
- Sit one full Prelims-pattern paper under exam conditions, with the per-test clocks.
- The same day, sort every question into four groups: right and quick, right but slow, wrong, and skipped.
- For each wrong answer, write the cause in a few words: concept, calculation, misread or guess. Count your guesses and see how many were right. This tells you whether your guessing rule from section 3 is working.
- For "right but slow", find the faster method. In a paper with 34 seconds a question, slow rights cost as much as wrongs.
- Pick the two weakest topics and do a short topic set on each before the next mock.
- Track accuracy as well as score. With cut-offs in the 90s, a rise in accuracy is worth more than a rise in attempts.
- Compare your percentile with others who sat the same paper. See how fixed-paper percentile works.
Once a fortnight, replace the Prelims paper with a Mains-length sitting: the five tests in order, 135 minutes, including General Awareness and Computer Knowledge.
9. Free and paid practice on Pareeksha
- Free: a 10-question mini-mock to try the format, and the Daily Dangal quiz.
- Pro: full Prelims-pattern mocks and topic-wise practice.
Our mocks for this exam cover the Preliminary stage. RBI does not release its question papers, so we do not offer official previous-year papers for RBI Assistant.
What this page does not have
- A day-by-day timetable or a promised score. Both depend on where you start.
- A "safe score". We quote RBI's published cut-offs and do not estimate future ones.
- Advice on the format of the Language Proficiency Test. The advertisement does not describe it.
- The Mains cut-off for Panel Year 2025, which RBI had not published as of 13 November 2026.
- The dates of the next cycle. RBI has not advertised it yet.
Related: Syllabus · Exam pattern · Cut-offs