A four-month IBPS PO plan

Four months is enough for IBPS PO if you start from a reasonable base in school maths and English, study around six to seven hours a day, and do not waste the first month. It is tight if you are starting from scratch, and tighter if you are working. This plan is built for a full-time aspirant, with notes on how to adapt it.

The plan's one big idea is that the prelims and mains are prepared together. The gap between them has usually been a few weeks. That is enough to sharpen mains skills, not to learn banking awareness or long puzzles from zero. So the mains-only parts run quietly in the background from the first month.

The shape of four months

Month 1: basics (weeks 1–4)

Quant

• Tables to 30, squares to 50, cubes to 25, and percentage–fraction pairs (1/8 = 12.5%, 1/6 ≈ 16.67%, 3/8 = 37.5%) learnt cold.
• Simplification and approximation, number series, quadratic equations.
• Percentage, ratio, averages: the three topics every other arithmetic chapter depends on.

Reasoning

• Inequality, syllogism, coding–decoding, direction sense, blood relations, order and ranking.
• From week 3, one easy puzzle a day (floor or linear seating).

English

• One editorial a day, read for the argument, not for words alone.
• Grammar basics: subject–verb agreement, tenses, articles, prepositions.
• Ten new words a day, learnt in a sentence, not in a list.

Banking (30 minutes a day)

• History of Indian banking, the RBI and its functions, basic banking terms.

End-of-month check: you can do a 20-question simplification set in about 10 minutes with high accuracy, and solve an easy puzzle without looking at a solution.

Month 2: full coverage (weeks 5–8)

Quant

• All remaining arithmetic: profit and loss, interest, time and work, speed and distance, mixtures, probability, permutation and combination, mensuration.
• Data interpretation in all basic formats: table, bar, line, pie.

Reasoning

• All puzzle and seating types: floor, box, scheduling, circular, square.
• Input–output, data sufficiency, alphanumeric series.

English

• Cloze, error spotting, fillers, para jumbles, one RC a day.

Banking and economy

• Payment systems, NPAs and Basel norms, financial inclusion, schemes.
• Start a current-affairs notebook, one page a week, banking and economy first.

Mains-only

• Computer aptitude: 20 minutes a day.
• One essay a week, typed.

From week 6: three 20-minute sectional tests a week.

Month 3: prelims speed (weeks 9–12)

• Sectional tests most days: one each for English, quant and reasoning.
• Full prelims mocks three times a week, moving to five a week by week 12.
• Analyse every mock the same day. Spend as long analysing as attempting; the method is in mock tests and analysis.
• Revise weak topics the mocks reveal, not the ones you like.
• Banking and current affairs continue: 45 minutes a day.

End-of-month check: your mock scores clear every sectional cut-off you are tracking with a margin, most days. If one section keeps failing, see the catch-up rules below.

Month 4: prelims peak, then mains depth (weeks 13–16)

Before the prelims

• A full prelims mock every day, with analysis.
• Mains-level practice in the second half of the day: one long puzzle, one caselet DI, a few critical reasoning questions.
• Banking awareness revision; one typed essay and one letter a week.
• In the last few days, lighter practice and early nights. The final-month routine is in the last month before IBPS PO.

After the prelims

• Do not wait for the result. Start mains mocks within a few days.
• Two or three full mains mocks a week, including the descriptive.
• Banking awareness and current affairs become the daily anchor, because they are the fastest marks in the mains.

A daily timetable for a full-time aspirant

That is about seven hours of focused work. Treat the times as a template, not a rule. What matters is that every day touches all four areas.

If you are working

Suppose an aspirant has about three hours on weekdays and eight on weekends. A workable split:

Stretch the four months to five or six if you can. More on this in preparing for IBPS PO with a job.

The weekly check

Fill it every Sunday. It takes ten minutes and keeps the plan honest.

When you fall behind (you will)

1. Never skip the daily banking slot to catch up elsewhere. It is the hardest thing to recover later.
2. If you are more than a week behind, drop the rarest topics in the syllabus, not the core ones.
3. If one section stays below its cut-off in mocks for two weeks running, give it an extra hour a day, taken from your strongest section.
4. If you miss a day, do not try to do two days' work the next day. Continue from where the plan is.

What to do next

• Write the prelims date on the first page of your notebook and count back sixteen weeks.
• Copy the month 1 list into a weekly planner.
• Start the banking notebook and the error log today.
• Book your first sectional test for week 6.