This plan is built on the official pattern in CEN RPF 02/2024, the newest RPF Constable notice as on 13 November 2026. The facts (marks, time, negative marking, physical standards) come from that notice and are on the exam pattern and syllabus pages. Everything else here is our advice, and we say so. There is no guaranteed method and no promised score. A new notice can change the pattern, so check it when it comes.
1. Start from where the marks are
| Section | Marks | Share (arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|
| General Awareness | 50 | about 42% |
| Arithmetic | 35 | about 29% |
| General Intelligence and Reasoning | 35 | about 29% |
Facts from the notice: 120 questions, 90 minutes, 1 mark each, 1/3 mark off for a wrong answer, Class 10 standard. No sectional time limit is described.
What follows from that, in our view:
- General Awareness is the lever. It is the biggest section and the fastest to answer. A candidate who knows the answer spends a few seconds; one who does not cannot work it out. Time spent here before the exam buys time inside the exam.
- Arithmetic and Reasoning decide whether you finish. They are 70 marks together and take most of the clock. Speed here comes from practice, not from reading.
- The level is Class 10. Depth beyond that is not what the notice asks for. Breadth and accuracy are.
2. Know the competition honestly
In the last cycle RRB accepted 45,30,288 applications as valid for 4,208 posts, shortlisted 42,143 for the physical tests and empanelled 4,205. The official cut-off of empanelled UR male candidates was 77.71435 on a normalised 100 scale; the other figures are on the cut-off page. We do not convert that into a target raw score, because the published marks are normalised and scaled. What it does tell you is that accuracy across all three sections mattered: a candidate could not drop a whole section and stay in the list.
3. Pacing 120 questions in 90 minutes
Arithmetic from the notice: 90 minutes for 120 questions is 45 seconds a question on average.
A split many candidates find workable (ours, adjust to your strengths):
| Section | Questions | Suggested time | Per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Awareness | 50 | 20 to 25 minutes | about 25 to 30 seconds |
| Reasoning | 35 | 28 to 32 minutes | about 50 seconds |
| Arithmetic | 35 | 33 to 38 minutes | about 60 seconds |
| Review of marked questions | whatever is left |
- Starting with General Awareness banks marks quickly and tells you how much time is left for the calculation sections. Some candidates prefer to start with their strongest section. Try both in mocks and keep the order that gives the higher net score.
- Set a hard limit per question. If an Arithmetic question has not opened up in about 90 seconds, mark it and move.
- The paper allows no calculator and no pen or pencil from outside. Practise mental arithmetic and whatever rough-work arrangement the centre provides, not your own stationery habits.
4. When to guess
A right answer is +1 and a wrong one is -1/3. If p is your chance of being right, the expected gain from attempting is p - (1 - p)/3, which is above zero only when p is above 0.25.
| Situation | Chance of being right | Expected gain per question |
|---|---|---|
| Blind guess among four options | 0.25 | 0 |
| One option ruled out | 0.33 | about +0.11 |
| Two options ruled out | 0.50 | about +0.33 |
This is arithmetic from the marking scheme, not RRB advice. In practice: do not guess blind, do attempt when you can remove at least one option with a reason, and track your guess accuracy in mocks. If your "50-50" guesses come right much less than half the time, your elimination is not as good as you think.
5. Section-wise approach
General Awareness (50 marks). The notice lists current events, Indian History, Art and Culture, Geography, Economics, General Polity, Indian Constitution, Sports and General Science.
- Finish the static areas once from school-level material: history, geography, polity and the Constitution, basic economics and Class 10 science. Then revise them on a fixed cycle.
- Give current events 20 to 30 minutes daily. A daily habit beats a monthly marathon. The Daily Dangal quiz is free and is one way to keep the habit.
- Make your own one-line notes of facts you got wrong. A short personal list is revised; a long borrowed one is not.
- General Science is inside this section. It rewards candidates who actually read the school chapters instead of memorising lists.
Arithmetic (35 marks). The notice names number system, decimals and fractions, percentages, ratio and proportion, averages, interest, profit and loss, discount, tables and graphs, mensuration, and time and distance.
- Start with percentages and ratio. Profit and loss, discount, interest and most table questions sit on them.
- Learn tables to 20, squares to 30 and common fraction-to-percentage conversions. They save seconds on almost every question.
- Do topic sets untimed first, for method. Then time them.
- Keep a formula sheet for mensuration and revise it weekly.
General Intelligence and Reasoning (35 marks). The notice names analogies, classification, series, coding and decoding, syllogism, statement and conclusion, relationship concepts, arithmetical reasoning and several figure-based items.
- Practise figure-based questions (non-verbal series, figure classification, spatial visualisation) on a screen. They are named in the notice and are easy to neglect.
- Reasoning improves with volume. Twenty mixed questions a day is better than a hundred on Sunday.
- For syllogism and statement-conclusion, fix one method and stick to it.
6. Train for the physical tests alongside
Facts from the notice: men run 1,600 metres in 5 minutes 45 seconds, long jump 14 ft and high jump 4 ft. Women run 800 metres in 3 minutes 40 seconds, long jump 9 ft and high jump 3 ft. The run gets one chance; each jump gets up to two. PET and PMT carry no marks but failing any one ends the candidature. Ex-servicemen are exempted from PET.
Our advice:
- Begin now, not after the CBT. In the last cycle the CBT result came on 19 June 2025 and the physical tests ran from 13 November to 6 December 2025. That gap was useful, but a future cycle may not give the same one.
- Build the run gradually. Start with easy continuous running three or four days a week and add timed efforts later. Time yourself over the exact distance on a measured track at least once a fortnight.
- Practise the jumps as skills. Long jump and high jump depend on technique and take-off, not only strength. A few sessions with someone who can watch your form help more than repeated unsupervised attempts.
- Check the measurements early. Height (and chest for men) cannot be trained in the way a run can. Measure yourself against the PMT table on the exam pattern page before you invest months.
- Check the medical standard too. The notice says candidates wearing glasses or having flat foot, knock knee, squint eyes or colour blindness are not eligible for appointment. Read para 3 of the CEN before you begin.
- Do not train through pain. If you have any health condition, consult a doctor before starting. We are not giving medical advice.
7. A phase plan
We do not give a number of months. It depends on your starting point. The order matters more.
Phase 1: Foundation. Go through the three topic lists. Finish Arithmetic and Reasoning basics topic by topic. Read the static General Awareness areas once. Start easy running.
Phase 2: Topic practice. Untimed sets by topic, then lightly timed ones. Accuracy first. Pareeksha's topic-wise practice is organised by topic (Pro), so you can see which topic leaks marks. Begin timed runs.
Phase 3: Full mocks. Full 120-question papers in 90 minutes, at one sitting, on a screen. One a week at first. Review each one fully before the next.
Phase 4: Final weeks. Two or three mocks a week, revision of your wrong-fact list and formula sheet, current events of recent months, and no new topics in the last few days. Keep running, but ease off just before the test so you are fresh.
8. How to review a mock
After each mock, write every wrong or skipped question in a log with one tag:
- Concept gap: I did not know the idea. Fix: study it, then do 10 questions.
- Fact gap: a General Awareness fact I did not know. Fix: add it to the one-line list.
- Formula or fact slip: I knew it but misremembered. Fix: put it on the revision sheet.
- Time: I ran out of time. Fix: practise full-paper timing and the per-question limit.
- Careless: misread the question. Fix: slow the first read.
- Bad guess: guessed and lost marks. Fix: guess only after eliminating an option.
Count the tags weekly. The largest tag is next week's work. Compare your percentile, not just your marks: on Pareeksha every candidate in a cohort sits the same fixed paper, so percentile shows where you stand on identical questions. See how it works. RRB normalises multi-shift papers, so a raw mock score is not directly comparable with a published cut-off.
9. Free and paid practice on Pareeksha
- Free: a 10-question mini-mock to try the format, and the Daily Dangal quiz.
- Pro: full CBT-pattern mocks, previous-year papers and topic-wise practice.
What this page does not have
- No chapter-wise weightage, because the notice does not publish one.
- No fixed timetable or number of months. It depends on you.
- No target or "safe" score. The official cut-offs are on the cut-off page and we do not estimate future ones.
- No detailed running or fitness programme. The standards are official; how you train should suit your body and, where needed, a doctor's advice.
- No date for the next RPF Constable notice. None existed on the RRB portal on 13 November 2026.
Related: Syllabus · Exam pattern · Cut-offs