Reasoning ability is one of the important sections in the bank exam. This section checks the candidate’s reasoning capacity by asking tricky but logical questions like directions, seating arrangements, syllogisms, input output, puzzles and many more. While some of these questions can be time consuming and hard to solve, others are comparatively easier.

To solve the reasoning section successfully, you need to have a proper study plan prepared for which you will first need to be thorough with the reasoning ability syllabus. Through this article we are going to focus on the reasoning ability syllabus for the IBPS PO Prelims.

What is the Reasoning Syllabus for the Upcoming IBPS PO Preliminary examination?

The IBPS PO examination is conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection for the post of probationary officer or PO. There are different sections in this examination out of which reasoning ability is one of the most important and tricky ones. This is why you would need to focus on this section.

Here we will have a look at the reasoning ability syllabus so that you can have the entire syllabus ready with you to plan your preparation accordingly. In the IBPS PO Prelims, the reasoning ability section has a total of 35 marks and has about 14 topics in its syllabus. These topics are:
1. logical reasoning
2. alphanumeric series
3. Direction/ranking
4. blood relations
5. seating arrangements
6. data sufficiency
7. Coding-decoding
8. Puzzle
9. Tabulation
10. Input-output
11. Syllogism
12. coded inequalities
13. statement and argument
14. analogy

All these topics are included in the reasoning ability syllabus and the questions in this section of the IBPS PO exam can be based on any of these topics. There are some topics which are a little easier to solve like the topics of blood relations or directions, while some topics like syllogisms or coding-decoding can be tricky and time consuming.

The importance of knowing that the reasoning section carries such topics is that you can plan your study accordingly and dedicate enough time to all topics that fall under this particular section while you are preparing for it.

For solving questions based on syllogisms or statement-arguments you would need to focus on the question and analyse it before giving an answer. These are the topics where there are chances of making silly mistakes which should be avoided to prevent losing marks.

On the other hand, the topics like coding-decoding, data sufficiency and alphanumeric series will require a lot of practice which you can do by solving mock tests and previous exam papers. For topics like puzzles as well, you will need a lot of practice which will ensure that you solve the question based on such topics in time.

All in all, the syllabus for the reasoning section is vast, but if you prepare a schedule where you dedicate enough time to all the topics that fall under this syllabus then you can surely complete all the topics and have a chance at successfully completing the reasoning section of the IBPS PO Preliminary examination.