NABARD Grade A Exam Guide: All you need to know

NABARD, which stands for National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development is an apex level development which looks after the credit needs in Indian agriculture and rural areas. This specialized bank holds an annual exam for its much-coveted NABARD grade A services of post Assistant Manager.

Following are some details about the exam: 

NABARD Grade A Exam Date

Exam dates are yet to be confirmed due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis. However, the following are some tentative dates related to the exam:

NABARD Grade A Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria for NABARD Grade A exam can be understood in terms of age limit, which is similar for all posts, and educational qualifications, which differ from post to post.  

Age Limit: In order to be eligible, an applicant must not be less than 21 years of age and not more than 30 years of age as on 1st January 2020. This means that the candidates should not be born before 2nd January 1990 or after 1st January 1999.

NABARD Grade A Qualification: Educational qualifications for various posts in the NABARD Grade A service are provided in Annexure I. 

NABARD Grade A Vacancy

As per the official NABARD Grade A 2020 notification, there are a total of 154 vacancies this year. The table below shows a breakdown of openings post-wise.

NABARD Grade A Application Process

To apply for the exam online, the following process has to be followed:

1. Visit the official NABARD website www.nabard.org. 
2. Register by providing required details.
3. Login again using required credentials.
4. Go to "Career Notices" link and then click on "Click here to continue".
5. Select the post you are applying for and read the following instructions carefully.
6. Fill in form details and submit it.
7. Pay the online exam fee as per details given below:

NABARD Grade A Admit Card

Admit cards are published on the official NABARD website a few days before the exam. To access the admit card, please follow the following steps:

1. Visit the official NABARD website www.nabard.org
2. Click "Career Notices" and then click "Click here to continue"
3. Enter your NABARD Registration Number and your Password/Date of Birth
4. Click on “Submit”
5. Download your admit card

NABARD Grade A Salary Structure

The starting salary of NABARD Grade A Assistant Manager post is Rs. 28,150 per month in the scale of 28150-1550(4) -34350-1750(7) – 46600 –EB - 1750(4)- 53600-2000(1)-55600 along with other benefits. Currently, initial monthly gross emoluments currently sum up to about Rs. 61,000.

NABARD Grade A Selection Process

Final selection in NABARD is conducted via three phases:

1. Preliminary Exam: An online objective type test
2. Main Exam: An online combined objective type and descriptive test
3. Interview

NABARD Grade A Exam Syllabus

Following is the NABARD Grade A exam syllabus for preliminary stage:

1) English Language

1. Reading Comprehension
2. Cloze test
3. Sentence improvement
4. Spotting the errors
5. Fill in the blanks
6. Sentence rearrangement
7. Para Jumbles
8. New pattern questions

2) Reasoning Ability

1. Puzzles & Seating arrangement
2. Syllogism
3. Data sufficiency
4. Statement based questions (Verbal reasoning)
5. Inequality
6. Miscellaneous Questions
7. Input-Output
8. Blood relations
9. Coding-Decoding

3) Quantitative Aptitude

1. Data Interpretations
2. Quadratic Equations
3. Number Series
4. Simplification/ Approximation
5. Data Sufficiency
6. Arithmetic Questions
7. Quantity Comparisons
8. Mathematical Inequalities

4) General Awareness

1. Banking, Economy and Insurance.
2. Current affairs including recent appointments, awards, and honors, sports, new schemes, national and international news, latest developments in science and technology.

5) Computer Knowledge

Various topics like Networking, Input-output devices, DBMS, MS Office, Internet, History of computer & generations and Shortcuts.

NABARD Grade A Exam Pattern

NABARD Grade A Exam Pattern for Prelims:

The overall weightage for Prelims exam is for 200 marks. It is a screening test which is conducted for a duration of two hours and carries 25% penalty marks for incorrect answers. Let's take a look at section-wise breakdown below:

NABARD Grade A Exam Pattern for Mains:

The mains exam consists of two papers. The first paper, General English, is descriptive type and is common for all posts. The second paper differs for general posts and all other posts. Each incorrect answer carries 25% penalty marks .

NABARD Grade A Cut Off

The NABARD Grade A Sectional Cut Off Marks for Prelims 2017 were as given in the table below:

Annexure I