It’s show time. The time for fun & games is over. I’ve given you a general overview of the exam in Part 1, an in-depth strategy roadmap in Part 2 and a comprehensive Prelims breakdown in Part 3. This finally brings us to Mains- arguably the toughest part of the whole exam. I want you to take a moment right now and imagine having cleared the Prelims exam. You have made it to Mains. Congratulate yourself. You deserve it. You have just beaten lakhs of your competitors. Feels amazing doesn’t it? Now focus. Make no mistake- Most of the people who have made it this far are not here to fool around. There are casual Prelims-attempts but no casual Mains-attempts. You’ve reached the business end of the SBI PO preparation. Each mark you score here takes you one step closer to your final destination. From 2016, the SBI PO Mains paper format was radically altered to make it very complex and unpredictable. Without a shadow of doubt SBI PO Mains was the toughest exam I have ever sat for and it has only gotten harder since then. But no matter how tough the paper is, 2000 candidates will definitely become SBI POs this year. So, instead of fearing it, let’s get the show on the road and figure out how to secure a spot in the merit list.

The Big Question: Does Mains Exam have Sectional Cut-Offs this year?

If you have been following what I’ve written so far and acted accordingly, you should already be in a great position to tackle the exam. After Prelims ends, you must immediately begin with Mains preparation without wasting any time. Do not reflect too much on the Prelims paper, now is not the time to do so. Ideally, by this time you should have attempted a few Mains mocks or at the very least been exposed to some high level Mains questions. You should also have built up a database of Current Affairs and have a good knowhow of your strengths and weaknesses. SBI PO Mains Exam is about your mental makeup & strategy as much as it is about your skills. There will be a lot of unknowns on exam day so its imperative to get the knowns sorted out beforehand. There has been a lot of chatter about sectional cut-offs since SBI last year quite unceremoniously removed them & was dragged to Court over it (I will discuss more on this case in a later Part of this blog series). However, all this confusion is unwarranted. You only need to compare the 2017 & 2018 notification side by side and the answer will be crystal clear to you.

Cognitive Endurance comes to the Fore

I wrote about Cognitive Endurance in Part 2 of this blog series. Mains is where your cognitive endurance will be put to the ultimate test. The Exam is a test of your grit, determination, resourcefulness and also your stamina. Sitting for 3 hours in front of a screen without a moment’s break is no joke. Your brain will be working non-stop during that time as you rush through each section whilst trying to maintain 100% accuracy. Add to it a further 30 minutes spent typing out in the Descriptive paper (Yes, there is no break. Descriptive pops up the very second the Objective paper ends). 3.5 hours in front of a PC with your brain on overdrive is extremely gruelling and takes its toll. I cannot stress this enough: Please prepare adequately by sitting in front of the computer for 3.5 hours without moving. Make it 4 hours if you can. Get comfortable sitting in a chair for that long & staring at a screen. Slowly, your brain and body will acclimatize the feeling & you will be physically and mentally ready to slay the exam.

Best Mocks to buy

Please prepare adequately by sitting in front of the computer for 3.5 hours without moving. Make it 4 hours if you can.

The Mains Exam is on an altogether different level and you must bear in mind that no amount of mocks can fully prepare you for the experience you will have in that exam hall. Having said that, you need to target the toughest mocks that you can find. Oliveboard is a no-brainer. If you want to qualify SBI PO Mains you better buy their mock test immediately. The difficulty level of OB mocks is usually higher than that of the actual exam so remember to never be discouraged by the low scores you will inevitably get. You need another mock to complement it and the best option available to you is either Gradeup or PracticeMock.  Do not even bother with any other mock test provider as they are simply not upto par. For offline mocks you can refer to the ones in the monthly BSC Magazine but they are a little below SBI’s level. You should also Google past memory based Mains exam papers. Don’t look beyond 2016 because that was the year the new pattern started. However, all of this hard work will not help you unless you remember 1 thing- The exam will surely surprise you. Your objective during your prep is to get better and better at tackling any surprise the exam throws at you. Ok, now lets take a look at each section for Mains.

Reasoning & Computer Aptitude

For Mains Reasoning you are given 1 hour to cover just 45 questions. Needless to say, the questions will be far above the Prelims difficulty level. But how do they increase the difficulty? One standard tactic is to make the questions quite verbose. They force you to read through a lot of matter to actually decipher what is being asked. Verbal Reasoning questions where you need to Identify Assumptions, Strong/Weak Arguments, Cause & Effect, Draw Conclusions, Statements & Assumptions and Course of Action use this ploy. Reading speed will matter a lot so make sure to read lots of long articles over the course of your prep. Focus on rapid comprehension. You’ll be surprised to find that long questions are often quite easy to solve so don’t refrain from reading through them just because they are long. Another tactic they use is to throw you disguised traditional questions. You get excited and jump in, only for your “Hey, I know this!” to change to “Oh shit! There’s a twist…”- So, its imperative that you judge each question on its own merit– Stay calm when you see a known type. Read it. Comprehend. Only after that decide whether to go for it. You’ll find Coded Inequalities, Coding-Decoding, Machine Input Output and Puzzles that seem innocuous but have hidden pitfalls- be careful while attempting them.

The exam will surely surprise you. Your objective during your prep is to get better and better at tackling any surprise the exam throws at you.

Remember- While Prelims is about covering as many questions as fast as possible, Mains is about choosing the right questions and doing as many as possible. I’ll repeat myself once again- it is indeed possible to qualify this exam without touching a single puzzle so don’t be too stressed about them. You can expect many high difficulty multi-variable Puzzles. Go after them only at the end. Blood Relations (mixed with Puzzle or Standalone) & Direction/Orientation Questions are where you can score easy marks so you must actively hunt for them. Now we come to Computer Aptitude that is appended with Reasoning for Mains- the irony is that this part will have 0 questions from actual Computers so don’t bother reading about Email, MS Office etc. It will have questions from Computer Science, namely Flow Charts, Algorithms, Binary Logic, Number System etc. It’s futile to read books for this part and you are better off just doing mocks. Practice as many high level questions as you can find online as that will make the difference in the end.

Data Analysis & Interpretation

While Prelims mentions Quant as Quantitative Aptitude, in Mains its specified as Data Analysis & Interpretation. Most people think they are one and the same but in reality that is not the case. In Mains not only does the difficulty level go up but the question types also undergo a slight shift- There is a major emphasis on DI. You can expect 4 or 5 DIs to come up. So, your job is to get comfortable with high level, calculative DI to excel in Mains. You can practice them online – consider practicing the CAT-level complex DIs. You must cover the following types.

1. Tabular DI : These can have filled-in values or Missing DI which is now a very popular type in Mains.

2. Line Graph : Usually multiple Line Graphs with different data sets that must be combined to solve the problem.

3. Bar Chart : Ratios and percentages are mixed with these to increase difficulty.

4. Pie Chart : These look simple enough but can be vastly complicated with inclusion of Probability in the DI.

5. Mixed DI : Different types of data representation mixed to increase length & require additional steps to solve it.

6. Caselet DI : Long paragraphs of text with data in them that you extract to create your own table.

If you feel that you need some extra guidance on DI refer to Arun Sharma’s DI book which gives you a gradually increasing difficulty level of questions to rapidly build up your comfort level in this section. Another vital thing to remember is that while there might not be any easy DI in the exam as a whole but there will surely be easy questions in the individual DIs– you need to target the easy questions for each DI even if you don’t solve the entire thing. This increases your chances manifold. Quant will also include similar question types as in Prelims but they will be much more calculative in nature. Prepare for a long fight to score each and every mark and practice doing very long calculations. Tables upto 30, Squares upto 35 and Cubes upto 25 should be memorized if possible.

General/Economy/Banking Awareness

The GA section for Mains is structured into 4 pillars. Current Affairs is the most important pillar and takes the longest time to cover so that should be your number one priority. While you are reading make sure to focus on the numbers because the exam loves to test your data retention skills. For example, they won’t ask “Which European Country was the first to start a Universal Basic Income trial?” Instead, they will ask “What was the monthly amount for Finland’s UBI trial?” So, while you are studying focus on memorizing the numbers as much as possible in each of the Current Affairs stories you read. Let’s see what each of these 4 pillars entails.

1. Current Affairs

This will cover about 60 to 70% of the paper. You can stop reading new Current Affairs once there are 20 days left for the exam. Make sure to cover atleast 6 months of CA prior to this date. You must have a firm grasp over the following-  Latest Government Schemes, India’s ranks in all of the newly released indexes, Various Committees formed recently, Notable New Appointments (Focus on new heads of financial institutions), Important Meetings/Seminars/Summits, New Schemes/updates published on the RBI website, India’s GDP Growth Percentage Forecasts by different organizations, Important “Days” & Sports News. Also, be aware of the new SBI products which were launched recently in the market (The SBI YouTube channel is very helpful here).

2. Static GK

SBI has greatly reduced its focus on Static GK so only a couple of questions come from this part. To tackle them, you need to be well versed with National Parks & Wildlife Sanctuaries, Important Dams & Corresponding Rivers, Bank Headquarters, Headquarters of important financial institutions in the news, Festivals celebrated by different States, Names of Important Reports published by International Organizations, Country Capitals & Country Currencies (Specially the ones recently visited by PM or President) etc.

3. Banking Awareness (Static + Dynamic)

The Static portion of BA requires knowledge of RBI Policy Rates(Repo, Reverse Repo, MSF etc.), Banking Ombudsman, Differentiated Banks (Payments Bank, SFB, Wholesale Banks etc.), PSL Norms, Capital & Money Markets, NPA classification & Recovery Schemes, Types of ATMs, NI Act (focus on Cheques & DDs), Bank Nationalisation, Basel 3 Norms, Apex Financial Bodies (RBI, NABARD, SEBI, IRDA, PFRDA, SIDBI, EXIM etc.), Misc. Banking Acronyms (PSL, IRAC, APBS, MSF, PCA, USSD etc.). The Dynamic part of BA will be covered from the Current Affairs portion itself.

4. Economy

The Economic Survey and Budget will cover most of the Economy based questions. Do not waste time going through the entirety of both of them, just pickup the highlights/summary document and memorize the important numbers (The focus is on data retention more than conceptual clarity). For other questions remember FDI Growth Rates, Export Growth numbers, Various Economic Indices (especially Base Years for each one-WPI, CPI, IIP etc.), SECC 2011 and Census 2011 main data points. Any other questions will be covered via Current Affairs portion.

English Language

If you have never struggled with English then congratulations- SBI Mains will show you how a subject that you know so well can be convoluted beyond recognition. They have radically altered this section since the 2016 exam (perhaps the most among all the sections) and now English language questions are truly on another level. Earlier, it was possible to start with misc. questions in English (leaving out Reading Comprehension & Parajumbles) & later come back to RC. However, the miscellaneous questions in recent years have become too ambiguous & tricky so you might need to change your approach- I suggest you just scope out the questions once when you land in this section and if you see too many new/confusing types, go straight for the RCs (the exam usually has 2). Solving RCs accurately is the key to get good marks in English. You must read quality articles from sources like The Economist, WSJ, Bloomberg etc. as SBI itself has directly lifted articles from these sources many times. Use the STOP method for RCs- at the end of each paragraph make a mental note of the following aspects of the paragraph:

1. Scope : Boundaries of the passage. What it encompasses? How it relates to the primary idea of the RC?

2. Tone : What is the style of writing? Explanatory or Descriptional? Analytical? Giving an opinion/hypothesis?

3. Organization : Top things each passage is talking about & Important Transitions-what info in each paragraph?

4. Purpose : Relates to the scope & tone of the passage- Why did the author write this? What does he want?

You must properly practice the following misc. questions:

• Word Association Pair – Detect the relation between 2 words. i.e. if they are Synonyms or Antonyms.
• Para Jumbles, Sentence Jumbles, Odd Man Out, Para Completion & Sentence Completion.
• Cloze Test, Error Spotting and Fill in the Blanks (high chance of fill in with sentences).
• Sentence Improvement/Completion/Beginning.

Do as many mocks as you can and also look up the Memory Based SBI PO Mains English paper 2016 onwards. Develop a habit to skip the questions when you see any ambiguity or subjectivity (when examiner or you can interpret in different ways). If done correctly, this section will help you fetch a lot of marks and give you an edge.

Descriptive Test

We finally come to the last part of the exam. As soon as your Objective paper ends, you are presented with the Descriptive Test and you must type out an Essay & Letter in just 30 minutes. The letter is usually of 150 words but the Essay word limit changes every year- it was 300 words in 2016 and only 150 words in 2017. A 150 word essay is much more difficult than a 300 word one so make sure you practice ultra short & concise essays. It is vitally important that each mock test you take at home is followed up with a Descriptive Test so that you can practice sitting for 3.5 hours straight. You should also preferably sit at a computer and type this test on a keyboard- The idea is to simulate the Exam Day as closely as possible so that you build up your cognitive stamina and muscle memory.

A Few Stats & The Final Stretch to Exam Day

I’ve already written in Part 2 about the importance of GA- That 40 mark section is the only place where experimentation is impossible & you can expect SBI to play by the book. For Mains, English plays a huge role as well- Adding in the Descriptive Test a total of 90 marks out of 250 or 36% of the paper is English. English+GA effectively covers 52% of the exam. I’m not a big fan of analyzing cut-offs but Mains cut-offs usually remain in a similar range so it’s worth noticing the trend- In 2016, out of 250 marks you needed to get 90 marks (36%) to be called for interview while in 2017 you needed to secure 89.25 (35.7%) to make the cut. So you can imagine what your strategy should be to get, proverbially, the “most bang for your buck”.

The final stretch to the exam is a lot about your mental makeup- how you structure your thoughts will be pivotal to your success. Never second guess yourself. Reprimand yourself if you find that you are engaging in any negative self talk. You are going there to win it. You are already a winner. All that remains is to make the world see it. Make sure to get enough rest in the final week and revise your notes. Maintain a list of question types that you got wrong frequently and make sure to go through them once before the day of the exam. Above all, be thankful for everything. Even if today a lot is missing from your life, know that it is out there, waiting for you. Trust in a higher power. Pray. You don’t need to be religious to pray. It’s spiritual. Every morning, be grateful that you are alive and surrounded by people who love you. The Power of Prayer is profound. The universe is always listening. You only need to ask.

My Mains Exam experience

31st July 2016. 9 AM slot. The day I had been waiting for, for ages, had finally arrived. One day before the exam I was determined to cover all the things that I thought were essential for success- I went through all the concepts I had studied and rapidly covered all my notes. Then, I glanced over a few tricky problems I had bookmarked and some areas in which I was consistently making errors. It turned out to be a bad idea and I don’t recommend it. By late evening when I was done with the hyper speed revision my brain seemed to be brimming with data. I kept away my notes and mobile, took a deep breath and just relaxed. The rest of the evening I was with my family and reminded myself “Supriyo, you’ve done all you can. Leave the rest to the universe”. I wrote the following to reinforce my positive affirmations one final time and made sure to get a good night’s sleep.

D-Day Arrives

The sun was out and I woke up early. Incredibly, this time as well my designated exam centre was on the outskirts of town, nearly 40 kms away from my home. Regardless, by 7:56AM I had reached the centre and as usual saw a large crowd of aspirants, most of them with their heads buried deep in their notes. I looked at the sea of people and mentally told myself “I’m here to beat all of these people today”. I suggest you do the same on your day. It fires up the subconscious mind with a readiness to win. I was quite surprised to see a few friends from college since I didn’t know any of them to be preparing for SBI. I chatted with a few people and soon we were led inside. As soon as we entered we could gauge the “no nonsense” atmosphere. The level of security checks was just something else! The Mains call letter instructions were meticulously followed. The examiners removed wristwatches & water bottles from the candidates who had brought them without bothering to read the call letter.

I suggest you read the Call Letter carefully and follow it to the T

Even wallets were not allowed. We were patted down thoroughly, almost like at airport security, to make sure that we didn’t have anything on us. Girls could not carry hairbands or hairpins. They weren’t even allowed to carry a single handbag no matter how small it was. Some even had to remove their jewellery! The male candidates had to remove their belts. Even socks had to go. A guy next to me joked “Maybe they’ll ask us to strip to our underwear next! Hail SBI!” Not everyone was so jovial about this- one guy lost his cool and shouted at the examiners after he was forced to remove his belt (Quite an ordeal for gents with ill-fitting pants!). Despite lots of protests the examiners were firm. My advice? Never get riled up in these situations. Visualize all these as minor hurdles and do not bother reacting to them. It’s not necessarily a bad thing- all these extra precautions protect the legitimacy of the exam. You can be sure that no one got an unfair advantage. A dual digital biometric verification & a physical one using a regular Stamp Pad was administered and after a long winded process we reached our designated labs.

Ready to Roll

Finally, I was seated. As always, I took in the surroundings. I recognized a few of the faces in the room from Prelims and smiled at them- brief moments of familiarity amidst a sea of uncertainty. 09:45 AM. We were allowed to login and read through the instructions. By this time I was well conversed with the drill. At exactly 10 AM the small window popped up in the centre of the screen informing me that I could begin. I took a deep breath and told myself one last time in my head- “I will win”. I clicked the button and the exam began.

SBI PO Mains doesn’t pull any punches

The paper began with Reasoning & Computer Aptitude. The very first section was nightmarish- it was full of long, descriptive questions. As I clicked through the questions that came up, each looked like a mini RC to me- lots of data to process before I could even understand what was being asked. This was unprecedented- the exam had long Critical Reasoning questions which one usually expects to find only in CAT/GMAT exams. It took me a while to figure out which problem to start with because there were almost no simple ones. I finally began with a slightly complicated coding-decoding problem and attempted it successfully. I was dazed by the variety- There was a question stating some prerequisites to get the Dean’s position in a college and a profile of a person was given who had failed to secure the job. The question asked to find out why he had failed. Another question dealt with college admissions- A list of 5 attributes necessary for eligibility were given and we were asked to find out in what order those criteria should be applied so as to find out if a candidate was suitable in the least amount of time. The questions were mind bogglingly tough. There were 2 big puzzles which I didn’t even bother attempting & smaller ones which I tried and failed. This was not going good. I hardly had 10 marks to show for 20 minutes worth of work.

More Trouble and Surprises

I moved straight to an Input-Output question. Although it was a triple shifting one, atleast it was a type that I was familiar with. Halfway through it I noticed that the even numbers were being subtracted & odd numbers added after shifting! I had missed it totally and had to redo it but thankfully got it correct. Next I solved a difficult Coded Inequality. Lot of work for only 3 questions. Each question type had so few questions! For the “Computer Aptitude” part we hapless aspirants had studied some traditional Computer questions but boy oh boy, were we in for a shock!

It took me a while to figure out which problem to start with because there were almost no simple ones. I was dazed by the variety.

SBI reckoned that since this was Computer Aptitude they would have some fun. There were no questions from Computers! Instead, a huge Data Flow Diagram and a Flowchart question involving lots of data and numbers stared at us. Just to read through the damn thing would take 5 minutes so I didn’t even bother. There was a Matrix with missing numbers that had to be filled in by following a few steps- it was one of the easier questions (if anything could be classified as easy) but I was out of time and the clock ran out while I was trying to solve it. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would not be able to finish even reading through all the 45 questions in 60 minutes. I was ashamed of myself. I could only attempt 19 and I knew my accuracy was all over the place. It was a total trainwreck.

An Opportunity to get my bearings

The next section was GA. After the onslaught of Reasoning, GA was a much needed breather. 40 Questions in 35 minutes is enough time to read every question twice and still have lots of time left. I did the best I could here but this section wasn’t my strong point and I was still reflecting on my massive failure in the Reasoning section. The questions were quite traditional- National Parks, Largest FDI Inflow state, SBI related news, Economic Survey, SECC 2011 etc. A few strange ones cropped up as well- First woman to climb Everest & other statistics oriented questions. I attempted only 24 in the end but I would later come to know of people who did upto 38! I cursed myself for not having put in the time and effort to adequately prepare for GA. About 10 minutes were left by the time I was done with this section so I just closed my eyes and took deep breaths to relax. The exam was not over yet. I still had a chance to redeem myself. It’s not over till it’s over Supriyo. Be a warrior and FIGHT!

I honestly thought I was good in English

English Language began next. I was momentarily relieved. “Ok, this is my forte” I thought and jumped in. I couldn’t have been more wrong. What followed was another devastatingly difficult section. My paper began with 7 “How can you start this sentence?” questions: A sentence was provided and part of its starting portion was dotted out. 3 starting “portions” were given in the options. We had to choose which of the 3 could be used to start the question. Almost all options seemed correct and the answer choices had “more than one correct” options further adding to the complexity. It was too risky. Even a slight mistake would fetch you -0.25. I had to skip all 7 of them. I understood that this was no traditional paper and switched my strategy- I skipped everything and went straight for the 2 RCs. They were long and dense but each question there carried 1.5 marks and I invested my time to capitalize on that.

Alternative Manoeuvre pays off

25 Minutes into the section I was done with RCs. I spotted a twisted Parajumble- They had jumbled the sentences and instead of asking to rearrange them, they asked which of the sentences speak about something that is inconsistent with the tone or main idea of the passage. Each sentence was long and meandering in nature and it took a long time to get to the correct answer. “Fill in the blanks” was modified to “Fill in with sentences”- Long passages were provided with entire lines missing in between. We had to accurately identify which overlong sentence would fit into the passage. Synonyms/Antonyms were asked via Word Association Pairs questions to further add to the confusion. I remember learning a new word- shrift-that I had never read or heard before. I could not believe that I was struggling so much on the English section! It seemed to take an almost Herculean effort to score each and every mark. It was the first and only English exam in my life where I could not completely attempt all questions due to lack of time! Yes, 40 minutes for 35 questions seemed too less! Thankfully though, thinking on my feet worked out and I managed to attempt 30 in this section with decent accuracy.

Number Crunching on a severely depleted Mental State

After more than 2 hours of torture, the Data Analysis & Interpretation section began. I was mentally fatigued and emotionally assaulted by that time because of the previous sections. It was purely my will to make it that did not allow me to quit. I reminded myself “The paper is gonna be tough for everyone, DO NOT give up!” and ploughed on. The previous sections had taught me that it would be impossible to attempt everything- it all depended on which questions I chose to do and which I skipped. Strategy was everything. Quant was also full of hard, passage based long questions. The main difficulty was that the paper was extremely calculative and mentally taxing because it came at the fag end of the exam. I took my time with DIs (there were around 4 or 5 DIs) so as not to sacrifice my accuracy. I was sure of the answer in only 1 of them however. I did miscellaneous Word Problems next and skipped the difficult Number Series. I couldn’t finish many problems and got stuck on multiple ones but finished most of the ones I picked up. I refrained from attempting too much and finished with only 17 questions attempted.

Cheeky Descriptive Test

I reminded myself “The paper is gonna be tough for everyone, DO NOT give up!” and ploughed on.

I was very disappointed but there was no time to grieve just yet. The final section began right away and we had to start typing. It seemed to me that after the insanely difficult paper SBI decided to have a little fun with us. The Essay topics were very cheeky to say the least. One of the Essay topics (300 words) was on “Effect of Pokémon Go”! The other topics were “Discuss the positive effects of Hike in salary of an employee” & “Importance of learning history of a nation (I chose this one)”. The Letter Writing (150 words) topics were “Letter to Editor about increase in selfies among the youth”, “Letter to Principal about importance of parents in children’s education” & “Letter to your parents about your success in new job & new life in the city (I wrote on this topic by imagining that I was selected in SBI!)”. The topics were quite trivial and I could almost imagine the examiner laughing at our plight after the insanely difficult exam. I stuck to the exact word limit for both Essay and Letter and finished well before time.

Final Attempts(Objective Paper): Reasoning 19, General Awareness 24, English 30, Quant 17

The Marathon Ends

Finally, my SBI PO Mains Exam came to an end. Immediately after the exam ended I turned to the guy sitting to my right. I’ll never forget the sheepish smile that he gave me. I smiled back, non-verbally communicating between ourselves the message “Aaj toh lag gayi bhai!” The girl sitting to my left was almost teary eyed. I asked her how it went and she just kept shaking her head, unable to talk. As we submitted our rough sheets and filed out of the classroom the body language of almost every aspirant conveyed a mix of disbelief and shattered dreams. A few started talking excitedly, sharing their attempts and discussing their answers. I just walked out, disinterested in any immediate post mortem whatsoever. I saw a few known faces and exchanged mono syllabic greetings as they walked by. I vaguely remember a guy proudly proclaim that he had attempted 38 in the GA section. “If only I had focused on GA…”, I thought as I exited the centre. The crowds of candidates outside seemed like a blur as I made my way out. I wondered how people could still talk. I was just too sad and drained to engage in any conversation.

Wallowing in Self-Pity

It was past 3 PM when I reached home and I was too ashamed to even face my parents. Thankfully they did not bother me too much as well and I just slumped into my bed and slept. In the evening I went online and looked up every review on every website I could find. The coaching community seemed to have been equally shocked. The general consensus among stunned students was that SBI had taken the exam to an altogether new level. Gradeup was one of my favourite haunts and that day I enjoyed reading through the posts by students who were equally shattered as I was. Meme after meme was being spawned all through the evening with some truly innovative ones like “उड़ता SBI – Exam दी माँ दी“- you get the drift. It was a sort of a cathartic relief to diss at SBI after having suffered through the torturous exam. Even I posted one of the many angry rants that evening. It was quite well received.

Yep, I was angry. Pretty angry.

A Train Ride to remember forever

It took me a few days but eventually, I got back on track and started preparing for the next exam- IBPS PO. SBI had mentioned the result date to be 16th August but it got delayed. There was no sign of the result and by 18th I had lost all hopes and stopped waiting for it. I had taken a few days off to visit my grandparents. That day I was on a train returning to my city. The date was 19th August 2016. Suddenly, a notification popped up on my phone- SBI PO Mains Exam Result declared– A bolt from the blue! The mobile network was very unstable on the train. I got up and desperately ran around the compartment trying to find the right spot and connect to the network. I was super tense. I couldn’t register anything or anyone in the packed train around me. I was right next to the train’s gate when my phone finally got a connection. My hands were shaking as I downloaded the small file. Control+F. Pasted my roll number- BAM! A match! I was in! I almost fell off the train’s gate and was jubilant beyond measure. Holding on to the side of the train’s door with the wind gushing in my face I checked the file over 20 times to confirm. There was no mistake. I had made it. I still wonder what my co-passengers must have thought as they saw a crazy guy jumping with jubilation near the exit gate. It was the sweetest train ride ever- Suddenly, I was back in the race!

The Lone Ranger

At this point of time I was yet to get the full results because SBI only declares that after the entire process is over. A lot later that I found out my Mains score- 110.75 out of 250 (cut-off was 90). I will share my full marksheet later in this blog series. After I reached home and the initial euphoria had quelled, I analyzed the roll numbers in the list. I made a huge revelation: I was the only person from my exam centre to qualify! For the over 300 other people in my exam centre, the road had just ended. At every exam, I take a picture to remember my seat number (before putting away my mobile). I had taken one before SBI PO Mains as well. I took another look at that picture.

Did I really deserve to be the only chosen one? I’ll never know…

It ain’t over till it’s over

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”-Paulo Coelho

Anything is possible, if only you believe it to be so. I had given up all hope but somehow the universe conspired to make it happen for me. It reminded me to never tap out before the final bell is rung. I’m a big believer in destiny and luck. However, it is we who shape our luck and take our destiny in our hands with the actions that we take every day. A lot of us SBI POs after selection have asked ourselves, Why did I make it? Surely there were more intelligent people there. More hard working people. More talented people. Were we just more hungry? Did we believe more than others? We worked smarter perhaps? I believe it was a mix of all of the above. In the end it all comes down to your honest and sincere efforts. The most important question is “Do you really believe you are meant for this?” If you do, a quiet voice inside you will resoundingly agree. This is the voice you need to amplify until the entire world hears it. What do you believe? Subscribe to Supriyo Panda’s Newsletter!