SBI PO Cut-off and Selection: What SBI’s Official Numbers Show

Search for “SBI PO cut-off” and you will find confident tables of category-wise marks. None of them comes from a public SBI document. SBI’s PO pages for 2019-20 to 2026-27 carry no cut-off document for any stage; coaching sites say the category cut-offs appear inside each candidate’s own score card, behind a roll-number login, so every table online is copied from someone’s score card and cannot be checked against a public source. What SBI does publish are roll-number lists of who went through at each stage, and counting them gives the real shape of the competition. This guide sets out those official numbers and what they mean for a candidate.

SBI result lists (our counts) and advertisements.

The ratios match the advertisement’s rules. About ten times the category vacancies go from the prelims to the Main (15,802 for 1,500 is 10.5 times). Up to about three times go from the Main to Phase III — 1.46 times in 2024-25 and 2.61 times in 2025-26, both within that ceiling. And the final list does not always fill: in 2024-25 SBI selected 505 candidates for 600 advertised posts, 84%, while in 2025-26 it filled all 541.

The “up to three times” ratio for Phase III is a ceiling, not a target: SBI calls candidates only if they clear the minimum score in each Main test and the descriptive paper, and a minimum aggregate. In 2024-25 only 875 candidates were called for 600 posts, which suggests many fell short of a sectional minimum; after the group exercise and interview, which have minimums of their own, 505 were selected. The 2025-26 cycle, with more than twice as many called per post, filled every post. Neither advertisement explains the difference, and we do not speculate beyond the counts.

SBI’s careers FAQ defines a cut-off as “the marks secured by last candidate who is called for that particular activity i.e. Main exam, Interview etc.” It also says there is no provision for re-checking answers or scores, and that the Bank does not provide the answer sheet, question paper or answer key. Candidates see their own marks through SBI’s marks utilities, which need a roll or registration number, a date of birth and a CAPTCHA. Coaching sites report that individual score cards show category cut-offs; we could not verify that without candidate credentials.

Without an official cut-off, the honest targets are the rules themselves. In the prelims, you are competing to be in roughly the top ten candidates per vacancy in your category on the total score, with no sectional minimum. In the Main, you need a safe score in every test and the descriptive paper — a single weak test ends the attempt — and then enough aggregate to be in the top two to three per vacancy. In Phase III, the interview and group exercise are worth 25 of the final 100, so they can still reorder candidates close together on the Main. Our final-score guide shows the arithmetic.

The 15,802 roll numbers on the 2026-27 prelims result are the only official count of how many candidates cleared the first stage in any of the three cycles — SBI did not publish a prelims roll list in 2024-25 or 2025-26, only a marks utility. The number fits the advertisement’s rule of about ten times the vacancies per category. SBI does not publish how many applied or appeared, so the competition at the prelims itself — the step that removes the most candidates — cannot be measured from official figures; any “applicants per seat” number on a website is an estimate.

From advertisement to final result took about five and a half months in 2024-25 (27 December 2024 to 12 June 2025) and about six months in 2025-26 (23 June to 18 December 2025). The 2026-27 advertisement’s own tentative calendar — a final result in November or December 2026 — fits the same rhythm. The gap between the Main exam and its result varied from 16 days to 54, so do not read too much into a quiet few weeks.

With 1,500 posts, the 2026-27 cycle is almost three times the size of 2025-26, and the prelims shortlist grew with it: 15,802 candidates went through to the Main. If SBI again calls up to about three times the vacancies to Phase III, that could be as many as roughly 4,500 candidates — but, as 2024-25 showed, the number called depends on how many clear every sectional minimum, and the Bank decides those. The larger intake does not change the rules; it changes the numbers at each gate. Watch for the Main result, which will show how many were called.