The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) conducts some of India's most competitive bank recruitment exams. Whether you're aiming for a Probationary Officer, Clerk, Specialist Officer, or Regional Rural Bank post, practicing with real-format questions is the fastest way to close knowledge gaps before exam day.
Our free IBPS practice test PDF lets you study anywhere — print it out for the commute, work through it offline, and track your progress question by question. The PDF covers all major subject areas tested across IBPS exam types so you can use a single resource regardless of which post you're targeting.
IBPS runs the Common Recruitment Process (CRP) on behalf of 11 public sector banks in India. Four separate CRP cycles cover different post categories: CRP PO/MT for Probationary Officers and Management Trainees, CRP Clerks for clerical cadre, CRP SPL for Specialist Officers across disciplines like IT, law, HR, and agriculture, and CRP RRB for officer and assistant positions in regional rural banks.
Each cycle carries its own eligibility criteria, exam pattern, and syllabus. Understanding which CRP you're targeting is the first step — it determines how you allocate your study time across subjects.
The IBPS PO selection process runs across three phases. Prelims is a 1-hour objective test covering English Language (30 questions), Quantitative Aptitude (35 questions), and Reasoning Ability (35 questions) — a total of 100 marks. Candidates who clear prelims sectional cutoffs advance to Mains, a 3-hour exam with five sections: Reasoning and Computer Aptitude, English Language, Data Analysis and Interpretation, General/Economy/Banking Awareness, and an English Language Descriptive Paper. Mains shortlists lead to a Personal Interview round worth 100 marks; the final merit list combines Mains and Interview scores in a 80:20 ratio.
The IBPS Clerk process has no interview stage. Prelims mirrors the PO pattern (100 questions, 1 hour). Mains is a 160-minute objective exam covering Reasoning Ability and Computer Aptitude, English Language, Quantitative Aptitude, and General/Financial Awareness. Final selection is purely merit-based on Mains performance within state and category quotas.
Quantitative Aptitude is consistently the highest-weightage numerical section, testing simplification, number series, data sufficiency, and data interpretation sets involving bar charts, pie charts, and tables. Expect 35 questions in Prelims and up to 35 in Mains for PO.
Reasoning Ability covers logical reasoning puzzles (seating arrangements, floor puzzles, blood relations), verbal reasoning (syllogisms, assumptions, conclusions), and input-output coding. The PO Mains version is combined with Computer Aptitude, adding questions on hardware, software, MS Office, and internet concepts.
English Language tests reading comprehension passages, cloze tests, para-jumbles, error detection, and sentence improvement. The PO Mains also includes a 30-minute descriptive paper (letter and essay writing) worth 25 marks, evaluated manually after the objective sections.
General and Financial Awareness, tested only in Mains, covers current affairs from the past 6 months with emphasis on RBI policy, government banking schemes, financial institutions, budget highlights, and recent appointments in the banking sector.
IBPS applies both an overall cutoff and sectional cutoffs independently. Wrong answers carry a negative mark of 0.25 per question in objective sections, which means selective answering outperforms random guessing. Sectional cutoffs vary by category (General, OBC, SC, ST, PwD) and are released after each exam cycle based on difficulty and candidate performance. Historical cutoffs for IBPS PO Prelims have ranged from 7–10 marks per section for reserved categories to 11–14 for the General category.
IBPS typically releases its annual CRP calendar in September or October, covering all cycles for the upcoming year. Notification for PO is usually released in August–September, with Prelims in October and Mains in November. Clerk notifications follow in September–October, with Prelims in August and Mains in October of the same cycle year. RRB notifications come out in June–July, with exams running from August through October.
For IBPS PO, a serious preparation timeline of 4–6 months is standard. Spend the first two months building fundamentals across all three Prelims subjects, then shift to Mains-level difficulty with mock tests and sectional drills. For IBPS Clerk, a focused 3-month plan works for candidates with a strong quantitative and reasoning base — the absence of an interview stage means the written exam carries all the weight. In both cases, attempting at least 20 full-length mocks under timed conditions before the actual exam is strongly recommended.
Want more than the PDF? Our IBPS practice test platform offers full-length timed exams that replicate the actual CRP format — automatic scoring, answer explanations, and section-by-section performance breakdowns included.
Try these questions from our free IBPS - Institute of Banking Personnel Selection practice tests. The correct answer and an explanation follow each question.
A passage reads: 'The Jan Dhan Yojana successfully opened millions of bank accounts for the unbanked population. Yet, dormant accounts—those with no transactions for extended periods—remain a persistent challenge undermining the scheme's impact.' What does the author suggest about financial inclusion metrics?
Answer: C. Account activity, not just account opening, should determine the success of inclusion schemes
The author argues that dormant accounts undermine the scheme, implying active usage is a better measure of true financial inclusion.
Passage: 'Inflation targeting, adopted by the RBI in 2016, commits the central bank to maintaining CPI inflation within a specified band. This framework enhances monetary policy credibility and anchors inflation expectations.' The word 'anchors' in this context most likely means:
Answer: B. Stabilizes or keeps steady
In monetary policy context, 'anchors' means stabilizes or keeps inflation expectations steady around the target.
A passage reads: 'The RBI periodically conducts open market operations by buying or selling government securities to regulate liquidity in the banking system. When the central bank buys securities, it injects liquidity; when it sells, liquidity is absorbed.' What happens to liquidity when RBI sells government securities?
Answer: C. Liquidity is absorbed
The passage explicitly states that when the central bank sells securities, liquidity is absorbed from the system.
Passage: 'The cash reserve ratio is the fraction of a bank's total deposits that must be held as reserves with the central bank. A higher CRR reduces the funds available for lending, effectively tightening credit in the economy.' Based on the passage, what is the effect of raising the CRR?
Answer: C. Banks have fewer funds to lend, tightening credit
The passage directly states that a higher CRR reduces funds available for lending and tightens credit.
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