UPSC CSAT Analysis 2025: The UPSC CSE Prelims 2025, the first round of the UPSC CSE 2025, will be conducted on 25th May 2025. The UPSC CSAT difficulty level has been rising in the last few years, and can be considered moderate to challenging, requiring candidates to have conceptual clarity and a strong foundation.
CSAT (GS Paper II) will be a two-hour paper, conducted in the afternoon shift. The exam format is expected to remain the same as past years' exams, with no section-wise time limit. The Prelims Analysis for CSAT will be live on the exam day.
UPSC CSAT 2025 will be an objective-type paper, carrying 200 marks and 80 questions from topics of quantitative aptitude, logical reasoning and comprehension. Like previous years, it is expected to have 80 questions, carrying a total of 200 marks. Each question carries 2.5 marks, and there is a negative marking of 0.83 marks for each wrong answer. To qualify, an aspirant needs to score 33% or 66 marks.
UPSC does not disclose the exact number of questions per section. However, for candidates’ reference, following is the previous years’ topic-wise question distribution.
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Topic-Wise distribution over the past 6 years |
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|
2024 |
2023 |
2022 |
2021 |
2020 |
2019 |
|
Verbal |
27 |
26 |
27 |
27 |
26 |
30 |
|
Reasoning |
15 |
11 |
17 |
22 |
12 |
18 |
|
Quants |
38 |
43 |
36 |
31 |
42 |
32 |
CSAT or GS Paper II has 80 questions carrying a total of 200 marks. Each question carries 2.5 marks, and there is a negative marking of 0.83 marks for each wrong answer. To qualify, an aspirant needs to score 33% or 66 marks. Aspirants can check whether they’ve qualified by using Career Launcher’s CSAT Score Calculator, which will be live after the exam.
Check your scoreAspirants need 33% marks, i.e. 66 out of 200 marks to qualify in GS Paper II or CSAT.
CSAT has 80 questions, each carrying 2.5 marks- adding up to a total of 200 marks. For each correct answer, candidates will get the full 2.5 marks, and for each wrong answer, there will be a negative marking of 0.83 marks (1/3rd of the total marks allotted to the question).
There is a negative marking of 0.83 marks (1/3rd of the total marks allotted to the question) for each wrong answer.
