One of the most often asked questions by students is “how to improve in general awareness for bank exams?” This is a very important topic for all competitive exams. It is also quintessential at the interviews and group discussion stages. The weightage of this important area in each of the major banking exams is given below.
Weightage of General Awareness in different Banking Exams
| SBI Clerk | SBI PO | IBPS Clerk | IBPS PO | |
| Mains exam | 25% Weightage | 20% Weightage | 25% Weightage | 20% Weightage |
As we can see, none of the preliminary banking exams have GK in the syllabus. But around 25% of the questions in  the mains exams are from this subject. After the mains there is an Interview and/or a Group discussion which lay heavy emphasis on the candidate’s knowledge of Bank PO General Awareness. So, even though there is no weightage for General Awareness in the preliminary exam for banks, for a candidate to be successfully recruited, mastery of General Awareness is very essential.
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Since this is an important component of all the four major banking exams, let’s discuss in detail, strategies to master it. The four major sources for General Awareness preparation are as follows:
1) To crack competitive exams, read Newspapers: Newspapers like The Hindu, The times of India, Eenadu etc are very useful resources to improve General Awareness. It can be very helpful to read these newspapers on a daily basis especially for Current Affairs.
2) Watch news channels to stay updated on Banking current affairs: Channels like NDTV, BBC, CNN IBN, etc show news events that are well presented. In a given amount of time the attention span wrt electronic media is much higher than that of print media. Or Download Daily Current Affairs Today’s Capsule PDF and go through tem
3) Books for banking exams: Books like Manorama Year book, Tata McGraw Hill’s General Studies for Paper 1, etc are very useful for competitive exams. Since this is a dynamic subject, the books should be updated regularly.
4) Websites for tips/shortcuts: In the recent times, internet has revolutionized preparation for competitive exams. Lots of websites are competing to tap the consumer market with preparation tools for banking exams. There are websites offer up to date information on General Awareness as well. Cracku is offering FREE daily GK tests to help students prepare for the upcoming banking exams.
5) Apps and tools for current affairs: Apps like Cracku provide useful information to stay updated.
Download Static GK Capsule PDF
Syllabus for General Awareness:
The questions come from a wide range of topics including:
- Banking and Financial Terminology
- Marketing Aptitude
- Computer Knowledge
- Science
- History
- Geography
- People and places
- International events
- Capitals and currencies
- Books and authors
- Movies
- Languages and Culture
- Abbreviations
- Sports
Tips & Tricks to master General Awareness for Bank Exams:
1) Make GK Notes regularly: General Awareness is a very vast subject and hence it is important to make good notes during preparation. This is important to get clarity on the subject as well as for revision in the future. This also helps boost self confidence.
Download Static GK Capsule PDF
Check out previous years banking question papers from Cracku here: FREE Solved previous years’ question papers in online format.
2) Have a preparation strategy: Unlike other subjects, this requires meticulous planning and daily preparation to master. An important component of this topic is Current Affairs which is very dynamic. To be able to master it, one needs to be very diligent with daily preparation.
3) Syllabus for Banking General Awareness is vast: General Awareness by the nature of the subject is very vast and it’s important to note that no candidate to master the entire subject. Our preparation should be targeted towards scoring well relatively.
4) Focus on exams like IBPS: Its important to stay relevant during the preparation. There is always a risk of getting carried away and reading irrelevant topics under the pretext of GK. Topics that are related to banks like ATMs, Privatisation of banks, banking terminology, etc should be given due attention during the preparation. Cracku is offering a comprehensive course to help students stay ahead of the competition. It includes 20 all India mocks tests in online format as well as a crash course covering all important concepts and topics for the exam. Subscribe to mock tests at Comprehensive Courses for Banking exams
5) Time management is essential to crack SBI PO: Time management is of utmost priority during preparation. It is essential to split time in order to do justice to all the sections of the exams like Quantitative Aptitude, Reasoning, etc as well as sub topics of General Awareness like science, history, current affairs, etc
6) Mocks and previous papers for SBI Clerk: Practicing using online mocks as well as previous papers can help understand the pattern of the questions asked in all topics as well as to help improve confidence during the preparation. This also helps improve time management during the exam so that the exam can be attempted in a balanced fashion. Answers should be carefully analysed after each mock to understand areas needing improvement.
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