RITES Limited is a Mini Ratna Enterprise that is under the Ministry of Railways. This entrance exam which was conducted by RITES was held in October 2023. My preparation journey was a roller-coaster ride. The tough part was that I had to prepare for two entrance exams i.e. I had my Airports Authority of India (AAI) entrance exam on 14th October and RITES entrance exam on 15th October 2023. So, you can imagine how tough it had been for me to prepare for both exams side by side. Now, I will be sharing my journey.
So, the registration process started on the 12th of August and the last date that RITES decided for submission of applications was the 4th of September 2023. The exam was scheduled for 15th October. To clear this exam, one must be thoroughly prepared as this exam is not at all the same as other government entrance exams. The syllabus might be the same as other exams but the difficulty level of the questions is not that easy. So, one should be prepared to face any level of questions. The sections that are asked in the Junior Assistant (HR) exam are: English, Data Analysis and Interpretation and the third section is Reasoning.
The English section is of 40 marks whereas questions are of 1 mark each. The Data Analysis and Interpretation section is of 40 marks where questions are of 1 mark each. The Reasoning section is of 45 marks whereas questions are of 1 mark each. So, this exam is of 125 marks. No negative marking is there in this entrance exam. The time allotted to the candidates is 2.5 hours. The registration fees for this exam are Rs 600 (plus taxes) for General/ OBC candidates and Rs 300 (plus taxes) for EWS/ SC/ ST/ PWD Candidates. The eligibility criteria for this exam is that you must have completed your Graduation in any discipline.
The thing that makes this exam different from other government exams is that it is a pen-and-paper test. You will be given the question paper which consists of 125 questions just like you are given question papers in your school exams. To fill in the answers, an OMR Sheet is given to the candidates in which you have to fill your answers by filling/ colouring the circle just next to the question that you attempted. One more thing that is different in this exam is that it is conducted only in six locations across India and they are: Delhi/ Gurgaon, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Nagpur.
The important thing to note here is that you are not allowed to use a whitener (correction pen) if you have made some mistakes while marking your answers. Also, carry with you a black as well as a blue pen. One good thing related to this exam is that it consists only of one stage. This written test has 100% weightage and no other rounds are there after this written test. If you are preparing for this exam or going to prepare for it in the future, you can get help from different platforms such as Google, YouTube, Telegram, etc. Mock tests for this exam are a little bit tough to find. But you can get help from Telegram as it consists of many groups on which students or teachers share some or the other important details, some previous year papers or some mock tests as well which are conducted by different coaching institutes, etc.
So, I would conclude by saying that you have to be prepared for any type of entrance exam. I shared this experience because it was a little bit different from other government entrance exams which are carried throughout the year as this exam was a pen and paper test. You have to be ready for any type of situation that is in front of you. If you have experience marking the answers on an OMR Sheet, then it would be not that difficult for you to take this exam but if you have not taken any test like this, then prepare for it before appearing for this exam.