The website designed by a group of IIT alumni to help aspiring State Bank of India probationary officers prepare for the online recruitment test would now cost a few bucks.

Students would now have to pay Rs 15 per test paper for appearing in mock paper test series. If a student is registered with the web portal appearing for 29 test series, he/she would have to pay for 27 tests, as two tests have been made free. The two free ones would be live tests. The first one would be held on May 31, while the dates of the second test have not been announced.

The portal, which was launched last year in July, was providing free services till December last year.

To make Bihar students conversant with the online format of examination now conducted for jobs in banks, six students from IIT-Bombay, two of whom are from Bihar, developed the portal comprising test series for banking examinations. The group on Sunday organised a programme to make students aware of it. To promote the portal, the six IITians organised the programme in which many banking aspirants attended the function.

The web portal www.textbook.com consists of 29 test series on banking examinations. The pattern of the mock test papers is similar to banking examination so that students can learn about time management. Like banking examinations, there are 200 questions to be attempted in two hours.

"On an average, each question is to be answered in 36 seconds. Even if one extra second is spent on every question, we need 200 seconds more to complete the paper. As the total time is not stretchable, candidates should sacrifice some questions without attempting them and in such a situation, students can learn about time management after appearing for the test," said Bhavna, a bank aspirant and a student of Patna University.