RBI Grade B | 2024
RBI Grade B Phase I 2024: topic weightage and difficulty analysis
200 questions across 4 sections. Overall difficulty: moderate.
RBI holds the Grade B (General) Phase I across shifts, with a different paper in each and normalisation applied across them. The structure below is from the official advertisement: 200 questions for 200 marks in a composite 120 minutes, with one fourth of a mark deducted per wrong answer, and Phase I is qualifying only. What sets it apart from every other banking Preliminary paper is the weight on General Awareness, which alone is 80 of the 200 marks. The topic counts below are our own compilation from candidate reports across shifts, not official data, and no question text is reproduced anywhere on this page.
Where the questions came from
Sorted by weightage, so the topics worth the most preparation time are at the top of each section.
General Awareness
General Awareness
A realistic target for a strong candidate: 45 to 55 attempts. This is our own guidance, not an official figure.
| Topic | Questions | Share of the section |
|---|---|---|
| Current affairs of the last six months The single largest block in the whole paper. Weighted heavily to economy, banking and government policy rather than general trivia. | 38%30 Hard | |
| Banking and financial awareness RBI's own tools and terminology, regulators and financial instruments. This is where a candidate reading beyond a standard bank syllabus pulls ahead. | 25%20 Hard | |
| Economy and monetary policy | 15%12 Hard | |
| Static general knowledge and miscellaneous | 13%10 Moderate | |
| Government schemes and Union Budget | 10%8 Moderate |
Reasoning
Reasoning Ability
A realistic target for a strong candidate: 38 to 46 attempts. This is our own guidance, not an official figure.
| Topic | Questions | Share of the section |
|---|---|---|
| Puzzles and seating arrangement Nearly half the section. Set selection is the core skill, as in every officer paper. | 42%25 Hard | |
| Logical reasoning: statement, assumption and critical reasoning Heavier than a typical bank paper; RBI leans towards analytical and critical reasoning. | 13%8 Hard | |
| Blood relations and direction sense | 8%5 Moderate | |
| Data sufficiency | 8%5 Moderate | |
| Input and output | 8%5 Moderate | |
| Inequality | 7%4 Easy | |
| Syllogism | 7%4 Easy | |
| Coding and decoding | 7%4 Moderate |
English Language
English Language
A realistic target for a strong candidate: 20 to 25 attempts. This is our own guidance, not an official figure.
| Topic | Questions | Share of the section |
|---|---|---|
| Reading comprehension | 33%10 Moderate | |
| Cloze test | 17%5 Moderate | |
| Error detection | 13%4 Moderate | |
| Para jumbles | 13%4 Moderate | |
| Fillers and word usage | 13%4 Moderate | |
| Sentence improvement and connectors | 10%3 Moderate |
Quantitative Aptitude
Quantitative Aptitude
A realistic target for a strong candidate: 18 to 23 attempts. This is our own guidance, not an official figure.
| Topic | Questions | Share of the section |
|---|---|---|
| Data interpretation The largest block; caselet and mixed-chart sets appear more than in a clerical paper. | 40%12 Moderate | |
| Arithmetic word problems | 27%8 Moderate | |
| Number series | 13%4 Easy | |
| Simplification and approximation | 10%3 Easy | |
| Quadratic equations and quantity comparison | 10%3 Easy |
Advertisement
What this means for your preparation
General Awareness is 80 of the 200 marks, far more than any other banking Preliminary paper gives it. Phase I is effectively decided by how much economy, banking and current affairs a candidate has revised, because the other three sections are scoring for a prepared aspirant.
Phase I is only a screen; its marks do not enter the final merit, which is decided by Phase II and the interview. Clear the cut-off with margin and pour depth into Phase II.
The clock is composite across the whole 120 minutes, so time can be moved between sections. Bank the fast reasoning and quantitative marks, then spend the remaining time on the long General Awareness section.
RBI reasoning leans analytical, with critical reasoning and heavy puzzles. Treat it as harder than a standard bank paper and practise set selection accordingly.
The penalty is a quarter mark per wrong answer. General Awareness cannot be reasoned out, so guessing there is genuinely costly; answer what you know and leave the rest.
Read the RBI Annual Report, monetary policy statements and financial-awareness sources rather than a generic current-affairs digest, because that is where this paper's marks actually come from.
See the real paper, officially
- RBI official website
Recruitment notices, results and the Opportunities@RBI section are published here, along with the objection facility after each phase.
- RBI Opportunities portal
Call letters, scorecards and response sheets are accessed here with your registration credentials.
Common questions
- Can I download the RBI Grade B Phase I: Preliminary Examination 2024 question paper?
- Not from this site. In India an exam question paper is a copyright work owned by the conducting body, and reproducing it commercially is infringement. What you can do is view your own paper and responses through the official portal during the objection window after the exam, and the links to do that are on this page.
- Are these topic counts exact?
- No, and we would rather say so. The exam runs across multiple shifts with a different paper in each, and the conducting body does not publish a topic-wise breakdown. The section structure, marks and timing are official. The topic counts are our compilation from candidate reports and describe the typical shape of the paper.
- How should I use a weightage analysis?
- To decide what to study next and what to skip. If one block is a third of a section, practising it has several times the payoff of a topic that carries two questions. It also tells you which questions to leave in the exam itself, which matters more than most candidates think.