UPSC Prelims

Basic Understanding of UPSC Prelims

If you preparaing for UPSC CSE, you’re probably came across different dailogues:

• “Prelims marks don’t get counted in final list.”
• “Prelims is just an eliminator, real game lies in mains!”
• “Prelims difficulty is increasing day by day.”
• “How to clear Prelims yaar? This is my fourth attempt!”

About UPSC Prelims Paper

• Both the question papers are objective (MCQs) format.
• The General Studies Paper-2 of the Civil Services Prelims Exam is a qualifying paper with a minimum of 66 marks (fixed at 33%).
• The UPSC Prelims question papers are set both in Hindi and English medium.

Prelims Paper Format

GS Paper Format

Max. Marks : 200 Marks
No. of Questions: 100 Questions
Duration : Two hours 
Nature : Objective (MCQs Type)
Negative Marking : Yes. (Minus 0.6666666667)

CSAT Paper Format

Max. Marks : 200 Marks
No. of Questions: 80 Questions
Duration : Two hours
Nature : Objective (MCQs Type)
Negative Marking : Yes. (Minus 0.83333333333)

Why Prelims is more difficult than ever?

Why this is happening?

We live in age of information, and due to this many people including college students knows about UPSC CSE. Many working people who want to upgrade job profile. This result into many people chasing for too few jobs(around 1000 posts every year.) At the same time the number of vacancies is decreasing consistently.

• It increases tough competition.
• It forces UPSC to eliminate some candidates.

That’s why, UPSC is designing difficult prelims paper. In addition, the board mebers adds few uncertainty quetions format every year. Making it complex for old and new aspirants.

If you’re in exam hall and you face such difficulty, you lose your mind. You start panicking and as a consequence you attempt some wrong and you didn’t manage time effectively.

This kind of uncertainty of GS Paper 1 have impact on CSAT Paper. And as a result, many couldn’t even score 66 marks(qualifying paper).

Yes, you heard right!

Even if you all are well prepared, the only way to disqualify candidates is by setting up ‘Cut Off Marks’. It means, even if all candidates are equally capable of serving as civil servants, only some candidates who cross the cut off line will be given chance to write for mains exam.

But that being said, many people clears prelims every year. Some people qualify by large margin and some toppers like Junaid Ahmad, Shrusthi Deshmukh qualified even with small margin.

How to prepare for Prelims Exam?

In order to qualify for the preliminary stage you need to score more than your competitor or score very high. This can be achieved by Studying smartly, solving PYQ, giving more Mock Tests, analysing it, going back to main sources, revising again and again!

Don’t worry, we’ll go forward step by step.

Strategy 1: Integrated Prelims preparation from beginning!

Strategy 2: Prelims Specific Preparation, 3 months before prelims! ==> GS Strategy + CSAT Strategy