An analysis of the IAS 2012 exam

May 22, 2012 | Filed under: Education | Posted by: Ritu Jain

UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) conducted the Civil Services Prelims exam last Sunday, May 20th. Here is a break down of the types of questions asked.

Topic	No. of Questions	Marks
G.K	14	28
Current Affairs	8	16
History	19	38
Polity	16	32
General Science	16	32
Geography	7	14
Environment and Ecology	11	22
Economy	9	18
TOTAL	100	200

22 GK and Current Affairs based questions were asked, 66 questions were asked from the conventional topics like History, Polity, Geography etc. Candidates who prepared Polity and History well should score good marks in these topics. In addition, the questions from Polity and History were from easy to moderate difficulty level which means easy marks if you had prepared these topics well.

Paper 1 had a lot of “all are correct” type of questions. These are trickier for students as they cannot confidently use the mark by elimination approach here. The doubt that maybe all the options are correct always lingers in the mind if one is nor sure about the combinations listed in the answer. This might be the determining factor for cut offs this time round.
Paper 2 was relatively easier and there were a lot of passages (11 in all). There were 7 questions on decision making (these do not have any negative marking). This paper though easier was more time consuming.

CSAT 2012 complete analysis and answer keys

CSAT 2012: Answer Key Paper 1
CSAT 2012: Answer Key Paper 2
Expected Cutoffs
General Studies Question Paper of CSAT 2012
Complete Analysis

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