This page is our advice. The facts it rests on, such as the number of questions, the timers, the negative marking and the rule that only Mains marks count, are from State Bank of India's advertisement for Junior Associates (Customer Support & Sales), No. CRPD/CR/2026-27/17 dated 11 August 2026, and its "Acquaint Yourself" booklets. Wherever a sentence is SBI's rule we say so. Everything else is a study suggestion that you should adapt to your own strengths.
1. What the pattern rewards
Read these official facts first, because the plan follows from them.
| Official fact | What it means for preparation (our reading) |
|---|---|
| Prelims: 100 questions in 60 minutes, three tests with 20 minutes each | Speed under a fixed sectional clock is the main skill in Prelims |
| No minimum marks for any Prelims test or the aggregate; shortlist by aggregate | Your total matters; you do not need to "clear" each section separately |
| About 10 candidates per vacancy, category-wise, go to Mains | Prelims is a ranking exercise inside your own state and category |
| Prelims marks are not added; merit is the Mains aggregate out of 200 | Mains subjects deserve time from day one |
| Mains has General/Financial Awareness for 50 marks and Computer Aptitude inside the 60-mark reasoning test | Up to 110 of 200 Mains marks sit in tests with content Prelims never checks |
| One-fourth negative marking in both stages | Accuracy has a price; blind guessing gains nothing |
| Local language test after provisional selection, with failure meaning no appointment | Out-of-state applicants have one more thing to prepare |
2. Know your time budget
All of this is arithmetic from the official tables.
| Test | Questions | Minutes | Seconds per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prelims English Language | 30 | 20 | 40 |
| Prelims Numerical Ability | 35 | 20 | about 34 |
| Prelims Reasoning Ability | 35 | 20 | about 34 |
| Mains General/Financial Awareness | 50 | 35 | 42 |
| Mains General English | 40 | 35 | about 52 |
| Mains Quantitative Aptitude | 50 | 45 | 54 |
| Mains Reasoning Ability & Computer Aptitude | 50 | 45 | 54 |
Two things stand out. Prelims gives you barely half a minute per question, so very few candidates finish all 35 questions in Numerical Ability or Reasoning. The realistic goal is to find and finish the questions you can do fastest. Mains gives more time per question, which usually means longer questions, such as data sets and multi-step puzzles. That last point is our inference from the timings.
3. Prelims: train for the sectional timer
SBI's rule is that each test has separate timing. Unused minutes in English do not move to Numerical Ability. Our suggestions:
- Practise in 20-minute blocks from the first week. A 35-question topic drill with a 20-minute alarm teaches more about this exam than an untimed 100-question set.
- Sort questions on sight. In Numerical Ability, simplification, approximation and number series are usually quick; a data-interpretation set pays several marks for one reading; long word problems are slow. Do them in that order. In Reasoning, inequalities, syllogisms, coding and direction questions are quick; a seating puzzle is five marks or nothing, so decide within a minute whether to commit.
- Set a skip rule. If a question has taken 60 seconds with no clear path, leave it. At 34 seconds per question on average, one stuck question costs you two others.
- Use English to bank marks. Forty seconds per question is the most generous timer in Prelims. Error spotting, fill in the blanks and vocabulary questions take seconds if you know them. Read the passage questions before the passage.
- Mental maths is not optional. No calculator is allowed. Tables to 25, squares to 30, cubes to 15 and fraction-to-percentage conversions should be automatic.
4. The guessing rule
SBI's booklet says each question has five options, and the advertisement deducts one-fourth of the question's marks for a wrong answer. From that:
| Options you can rule out | Chance of being right | Expected marks from guessing (1-mark question) |
|---|---|---|
| None | 1 in 5 | 0 |
| One | 1 in 4 | +0.06 |
| Two | 1 in 3 | +0.17 |
| Three | 1 in 2 | +0.38 |
This is arithmetic, not SBI advice. The practical rule is: never guess blind, and do guess once you have honestly eliminated options. The word "honestly" matters. In your mock analysis, check whether your eliminations were right as often as the table assumes.
5. Mains: start the two "new" areas early
Only Mains marks count, by SBI's rule. Three of its four tests extend Prelims subjects. The areas Prelims does not touch are these.
General/Financial Awareness (50 marks). SBI's booklet describes it as a test of your "awareness of people and events past and present in different walks of life", and its sample questions are about banking and the economy. Our approach:
- Spend 30 to 40 minutes on it every day from the first week. It cannot be crammed, and it is the fastest test in Mains at 42 seconds per question, so marks here are cheap in time.
- Keep three running notes: banking terms and institutions; current affairs by month; static facts that keep recurring.
- Revise by month. A fact read once in August is gone by November unless it is seen again.
- Read about State Bank of India itself. This is our suggestion, since the job is customer support and sales in that bank.
Computer Aptitude. SBI does not say how many of the 50 questions in the combined test are on computers, so do not over-invest. A short, complete pass through computer fundamentals, operating system and office software basics, internet and email terms, networking words and safe digital banking practices is enough for most candidates. Two or three weeks at 20 minutes a day covers it.
For the shared subjects, Mains-level work means larger data-interpretation sets and caselets in Quantitative Aptitude, multi-variable puzzles and data sufficiency in Reasoning, and longer passages in English. Add one Mains-level set per subject per week from the middle of your plan, so the step up after Prelims is not a shock.
6. The local language test
Check this before anything else: did you study, in Class 10 or Class 12, the language you chose in the application form? If your mark sheet shows it, SBI's advertisement exempts you from the test. If it does not, you will sit the Local Language Proficiency Test after provisional selection. Its pattern in the advertisement has passages with objective questions, passages with subjective questions and a verbal test. Our advice for candidates who need it: read a newspaper in that language daily, write a short paragraph three times a week, and practise speaking. It is a qualifying test, but the advertisement leaves no room for doubt that failing it ends the candidature.
7. A 12-week plan
This is one workable shape, not the only one. Adjust the weeks to the time you actually have.
| Weeks | Focus | Mocks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 4 | Concepts: arithmetic chapters, core reasoning types, grammar rules. Daily awareness reading begins. Timed 20-minute topic drills | One Prelims mock a week from week 3 |
| 5 to 8 | Speed: mixed sectional tests against the 20-minute timer. Data interpretation and puzzles daily. Computer basics pass. Monthly awareness revision | Two Prelims mocks a week |
| 9 to 10 | Prelims peak: full mocks at your likely exam slot, with analysis on the same day. One Mains-level set per subject per week | Three Prelims mocks a week |
| 11 to 12 and the gap before Mains | Mains: full-length Mains mocks, awareness revision by month, longer data and puzzle sets | Mains mocks, at least one a week |
Do not stop Mains work while waiting for the Prelims result. In the 2025 and 2026 advertisements Prelims is placed in September and Mains in November, tentatively. Candidates who wait for the result before opening the awareness notes lose most of that gap.
8. A weekly mock-analysis routine
After each mock, log every wrong or skipped question with one of these tags:
- Concept gap: I did not know the idea. Fix: study it, then do 10 questions on it.
- Slip: I knew it but miscalculated or misremembered. Fix: add it to the revision sheet.
- Time: the section timer ran out with easy questions unseen. Fix: change the order in which you scan that section.
- Stuck: I spent over a minute and still left it. Fix: apply the skip rule earlier.
- Bad guess: I guessed without eliminating. Fix: section 4 above.
Count the tags each week. The largest tag is next week's work. Look at your percentile as well as your marks. On Pareeksha every candidate in a cohort sits the same fixed paper, so your percentile compares you with others on identical questions, which is close to how a rank-based shortlist works. See how it works.
9. Common mistakes
- Treating Prelims as the exam. It contributes nothing to the merit list.
- Hunting for a "safe score". SBI publishes no cut-off list we could open; see the cut-off page.
- Practising without the sectional clock, then discovering on exam day that the last ten questions were never seen.
- Leaving General/Financial Awareness until after Prelims.
- Applying to a state for its vacancies without checking whether you can pass its language test.
10. 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, previous-year papers and topic-wise practice. The SBI Clerk series is listed under banking exams.
What this page does not have
- An official study plan or booklist. SBI publishes neither. The plan above is ours.
- Target scores. We do not estimate cut-offs.
- Topic-wise question counts from past papers. SBI does not release its papers as public documents.
- Preparation notes for each local language. The test pattern is in the advertisement; material for each language is outside this page.
Related: Syllabus · Exam pattern · Cut-offs