CSP 2013 Analysis

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 History and Culture Polity Geography and Ecology Science Economy

Number of questions 15 19 27 21 18

Difficulty Level Easy Moderate Moderate to Difficult Moderate to Difficult Moderate

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

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.
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Topic Reading Comprehension English Passages Data Interpretation Quantitative Ability General Mental Ability Analytical Reasoning Decision Making

Number of questions 23 8 6 12 7 18 6

Difficulty Level Moderate Easy Easy-Moderate Easy-Moderate Moderate Easy-Moderate Moderate

A score of 135 to 145 in this section can be considered a good one. The likely category wise cut offs for CSP 2013are as follows: Category General OBC SC ST Score 220 230 200 210 195 205 192 201 Total Score 400 400 400 400

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