Most SEBI Grade A plans fail in the same way. The candidate prepares like it is a bank exam — quant, reasoning, English, current affairs — clears Phase 1 comfortably, then discovers that Phase 1 marks are discarded and that Phase 2 is two-thirds a subject paper they have barely opened. Six weeks is not enough to fix that.
So this plan is built backwards from Phase 2.
The three facts the plan is built onmost asked
- Phase 1 is a gate, not a race. 30% in Paper 1, 40% in Paper 2, 40% aggregate, and then the marks are gone. Past a safe margin, extra Phase 1 preparation returns nothing.
- Phase 2 carries 85% of your final score. Within it, the stream paper is two-thirds and descriptive English is one-third.
- The target is about 70 in Phase 2. The cut off has sat between 62 and 67 across the last four cycles — see the cut off history.
Everything below follows from those three.
The 90-day plan
SEBI TOPPER 2024Tap to play · from the C4S channel
Ninety days is roughly what you get between the advertisement and Phase 1, with Phase 2 six weeks after that. If you have longer, stretch phase one of the plan rather than adding revision at the end.
Days 1–30: build the stream paper
| Block | Daily time | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Stream Paper 2 | 3–4 hours | One subject at a time, first pass with notes you will actually revise from |
| Current affairs | 30 min | Read the day, attempt the quiz, keep a one-line note per item |
| Phase 1 Paper 1 | 45 min | One quant set and one reasoning set, timed. Maintenance only |
| Descriptive English | Weekly | One essay or one precis, written by hand, strictly timed |
For the General stream, order the six subjects by weight and by how quickly they pay back: Finance and Economics first (they also feed General Awareness and the essay), then Commerce and Accountancy, then Companies Act 2013 (the specified chapters, read at section level — summaries do not survive contact with the paper), then Costing and Management, which are the most compressible.
Days 31–60: second pass and the first mocks
- Finish the remaining subjects and take a second pass through what you covered in month one. First-pass notes that you never revisit are wasted paper.
- Start one full Phase 1 mock a week. Analyse it for twice as long as you took to write it.
- Move descriptive English to two pieces a week — alternate essay and precis.
- Begin the previous year papers. Do them as papers, under time, not as a question bank.
Days 61–90: exam conditions
- Two Phase 1 mocks a week, at the time of day your exam is scheduled.
- Revise the stream paper from your own notes only.
- Three months of current affairs revision, compressed — this is why the daily habit mattered; there is nothing to catch up on if you kept it.
- Keep writing English. One timed piece a week minimum, right through to Phase 2.
The six weeks between Phase 1 and Phase 2
Do not rest here, and do not wait for the Phase 1 result before starting. This window is short and it is the entire competitive part of the exam.
- Stream Paper 2 at depth. Phase 1 tested recall; Phase 2 tests whether you understand the subject. Go back to the harder chapters you skimmed.
- Descriptive English, three pieces a week. Full essays, to time, by hand.
- Full Phase 2 mocks in the last fortnight, both papers in one sitting.
the monthly current affairs PDF and exam-wise material — all free, on WhatsApp.
Get it on WhatsApp — one tap or just leave your numberThe descriptive English paper: where the plan pays off
Free live session
NABARD Grade A 2026: what the 2025 cut-offs changed, and the 90-day plan
The 2025 cycle was the toughest on record at every stage. This session reads those numbers properly and turns them into a week-by-week plan for Phase 1.
In 8 days · Sun, 4 Oct at 7:30 PM IST · 75 minutes · free
One third of Phase 2, and most candidates score in the fifties on it because they have never written a precis against a clock. The arithmetic from the cut off page is worth repeating: lifting this paper from 55 to 70 adds five marks to your weighted Phase 2 score, and five marks is the entire width of the cut off band.
What to practise:
- Essay — regulator and economy themes: investor protection, market integrity, technology in financial markets, financial inclusion, the economy. Build a reusable structure: context, the problem, what the regulator has done, what remains, a conclusion that commits to a view.
- Precis — the pure skill in the paper. Fixed word count, no opinion, no lifted sentences. It improves fast with practice and not at all without it.
- Comprehension — answer from the passage, in your own words, and stay inside the limit.
Our analysis of the 2024 Phase 2 English essay shows what was actually asked and how it was marked.
Current affairs: a habit, not a chapter
SEBI’s General Awareness leans towards the securities market and the financial sector — board decisions, circulars, RBI policy, capital market developments, budget and survey figures — drawn from roughly the last four to six months. That is not something a PDF read in the final week can supply.
Fifteen minutes of daily current affairs and the daily quiz, every day from the day you start, costs you about twenty hours over three months and covers a section that candidates routinely lose ten marks on. Both are free.
Six mistakes that cost candidates the list
- Over-preparing Phase 1. The marks are discarded. A safe margin is enough.
- Waiting for the Phase 1 result before touching Phase 2. You lose two of your six weeks.
- Treating descriptive English as unpreparable. It is the most improvable paper in the exam.
- Reading Companies Act summaries. SEBI asks at section level within the specified chapters.
- Collecting resources instead of revising. Two passes through one good source beats one pass through four.
- Choosing the stream carelessly. It is locked at application and it sets your Paper 2 in both phases — see eligibility for how to choose.
If you are preparing for more than one exammost asked
SEBI, RBI Grade B and NABARD Grade A share economics, finance, current affairs and a descriptive English paper. Running them together is far cheaper than preparing separately: build the common base once, then add SEBI’s securities-market and Companies Act depth, RBI’s ESI and F&M, and NABARD’s ARD. The calendars rarely collide, so a single year can carry all three attempts.
Start here
- Syllabus and exam pattern
- Cut off history — the number you are chasing
- Previous year papers, free
- Notification status — when the next cycle is expected
