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NABARD Grade A
Strategy

Strategy for NABARD Grade A.

Regulator exams give you little time between phases and few seats. Whatever you can’t revise in the last two weeks won’t help you in the exam, so we build everything to be revised.

Study less. Revise more.

  1. Plan for the last 15 days, not for 4 months
  2. Read only what you can revise at least 10 times
  3. Learn it as tables, mnemonics and flash cards
  4. Write answers early, and get them evaluated
A page from Ultra Compact Management: one table per theory, with real-life examples, extra insights, and advantages and disadvantages for the descriptive paper

NABARD repeats itself.

The match between NABARD’s previous papers and the actual paper is one of the highest of any exam. The classification of farmers by holding size was asked four times in five years. PM Fasal Bima Yojana premiums were asked for Kharif, then for Rabi.

Write 600 words without fear.

RBI Phase II is now mostly descriptive, and NABARD followed. You don’t need model answers to memorise. You need a way to build an answer for a question you have never seen.

The Lego Method

Break the question down, set aside what doesn’t matter, place it in the syllabus, reuse what you have solved before, then add detail. A 10-day cycle of diagnostic answers, one part at a time.

Templates

Three words for agriculture (FIRST, MSP MSP-ER, ICICI) open up 15 to 20 points. Templates exist for every major ESI and Finance and Management keyword.

2D4C

Two Ds and four Cs: definitions and data, then committees, case studies, codes and mnemonics, and ready conclusions.

Theme-based PYQs

Questions from 20 years (2002 onwards), sorted into themes. In 2021 and 2022, 60 to 70% of the questions came from themes already asked.

Agriculture template: FIRST for pre-production, MSP MSP-ER for post-production, ICICI for the core dimensions
The Lego Method: divide a problem into sub-problems, conquer each, combine the solutions

Prepare once, write three exams.

SubjectRBI Grade BSEBI Grade ANABARD Grade A
General Awareness✓✓✓
Economic and Social Issues / Economics✓✓✓
Finance✓✓
Management✓✓
Agriculture and Rural Development✓
Accountancy, Costing, Companies Act✓
English writing (descriptive)✓✓✓
Quant and Reasoning✓✓✓

General stream of each exam, from its latest notification. Preparing for one gets you most of the way to another.

Read the strategy.

Descriptive

Why model answers are the least efficient way to prepare for the RBI descriptive paper

Model answers assume unlimited memory. Templates, structure and deliberate practice work better.

ReadDescriptive

Writing a high-scoring answer in the RBI descriptive paper

Six rules, and a worked answer to a 2014 HRD question.

ReadDescriptive

The Lego Method: answering a question you have never seen

Six steps that turn an unexpected descriptive question into an engineering problem.

ReadDescriptive

Three words for 15 to 20 points on any agriculture question

FIRST, MSP MSP-ER and ICICI: a template for RBI and NABARD answers on agriculture.

ReadNABARD

Why previous papers matter more in NABARD than anywhere else

NABARD’s papers match its past papers more closely than almost any exam’s.

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