How to Prepare for RBI DEPR exam?

RBI has released the notification (for the year 2020-21) for conducting recruitment examination for selecting 29 Grade- B Officers in Department of Economic & Policy Research (DEPR). Based on the questions asked in this examination in the recent years, we detail below some important steps for the preparation of this coveted examination:

1. What to Prepare: This examination will test your understanding of core fields of economics. Questions can be expected from

a) Microeconomics: Important topics include demand functions, substitution & income effect, revealed preference theory, elasticity of substitution, producer theory, oligopoly models, etc. Pay special attention to numericals.

b) Macroeconomics: Important Topics include IS-LM, Classical Theory, Keynesian Economics, Open Economy, etc. 

c) Statistics and Econometrics: This portion is the most important portion; since it gets a high weightage in the DEPR exam. Questions can be expected from measures of central tendency, dispersion, correlation, normal distribution, CLT, assumptions of CLRM (and what happens to estimates when these assumptions don’t hold true), calculation of regression coefficients (including matrix formulation), testing hypothesis, etc. Prepare this portion thoroughly to get an edge over your competitors.

d) Indian Economy: You may expect some (around 2-5) questions from Indian economy static and/or current affairs.

2. How to Prepare: Prepare your syllabus from the recommended books and/or your notes. Thereafter, begin solving test papers, since it is the test papers that will give you a good estimate of your present state of preparation. You may attempt any Test Series that you consider ‘good’. As a matter of fact, we also provide a Test Series on payment of a nominal fee. In case you choose to prepare with us, we wish to highlight a few points about our Test Series. 

a) The Test Series contains Mock Tests only for Phase I.  The exam pattern (three sections, 62 questions, marks allotted, etc.) is based on the pattern used for 2019-20 recruitment.

b) There may be a freely available demo test. However, this test is only to familiarise the candidate with the Test Portal and may not mimic the actual exam. In particular, the number of questions will be far less than the actual exam. 

c) These Mock Tests can be attempted only through the desktop /PC/laptop.

d) We give greater emphasis to numericals in our Mock Tests, especially those from statistics and econometrics in our Mock Tests, since we believe good performance in this section may increase the probability of success ‘significantly’ !

e) Please treat these Mock Tests to be ‘exclusive in consumption’. That is, they are meant for the use of only one person. Therefore, these tests can be attempted only from a single machine. In case you use multiple machines for attempting the tests in the package, you may be locked out and may NOT be able to attempt any additional tests. Further, you will not even be able to review the previously attempted tests. NO REFUND WILL BE APPLICABLE IN THIS SCENARIO.

For more details on what we offer, visit our homepage. All the Best for the Exam !