UPSC Civil Services Prelims 2013 Exam Analysis

Analysis of GS Paper 1 (CSAT), CSP 2013

The Prelims Paper I for the UPSC Exam 2013 was held from 9:30 to 11:30am on Sunday, 26th May, 2013. The paper did not throw up any major surprise. As far as the difficulty level of the questions is concerned, the paper was along expected lines. A major point to note is that the paper was fairly balanced, featuring about 20 questions from each of the major topics- History, Indian Polity, Indian Economy, Geography and Science and Technology. The fallout of this is that unless the candidates were well versed with each of these topics they stand to lose. This is one of the factors that could be said to have raised the level of difficulty of the paper.

Another feature to note is that the questions were quite lengthy in their content and thus required more time to read. This can be understood from the fact that the 100 questions in the paper were spread over 21 sheets, averaging less than 5 questions per sheet. There were 55 questions in the paper that required candidates to check multiple combinations of statements to arrive at the correct answer. These questions took more time and effort to solve, and were prone to errors.

The topic wise break up of the questions in Paper I is as follows:

Topic

Number of Questions

Difficulty Level

History & Culture

15

Easy

Polity

19

Moderate

Geography & Ecology

27

Moderate to Difficult

Science

21

Moderate to Difficult

Economy

18

Moderate

 

A score of 85 to 95 in this section can be considered a good one.

 

Analysis of GS Paper II (CSAT), CSP 2013

Paper II of the UPSC Prelims Exam - CSAT - was held from 2:30 to 4:30pm. The overall difficulty level of the paper was similar to that of past years’. The most noticeable change was that there was a substantial increase in the number of questions from Quantitative Aptitude. This increase in questions was partly set off by a significant DECREASE IN THE NUMBER OF Reading Comprehension questions - from 40 last year to 23 this year. The Reading Comprehension passages, though easy, were slightly lengthy this time around. Also, the number of questions asked from individual passages varied from 2 to 5. The three passages from English Language Comprehension had 8 questions asked from them. All these questions were very basic in nature and could have been answered after a single reading of the passage. The number of questions from Decision Making came down to 6 as compared to 7 last year, and these were not very difficult to manage.

 

Topic

Number of Questions

Difficulty Level

Reading Comprehension

23

Easy

English Passages

8

Moderate

Data Interpretation

6

Easy - Moderate

Quantitative Ability

12

Easy - Moderate

General Mental Ability

7

Moderate

Analytical Reasoning

18

Easy - Moderate

Decision Making

6

Moderate

 

A score of 135 to 145 in this section can be considered a good one.

The likely category wise cut offs for CSP 2013 are as follows:

Category Score Total Score
General 230 - 240 400
OBC 220 - 230 400
SC 210 - 220 400
ST 200 - 210 400

 

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