UPSC has conducted Civil Services preliminary examination on 3rd June 2019. The question paper is considered tough compared to previous year examinations. Paper 1 General Studies and Paper 2 CSAT are conducted across the country. Following is the analysis of both papers, key and cut off predictions for Civils Main Examination. Candidates have to clear Paper 2 in order to evaluate the Paper 1. Screening to main exam will be done based on scores in Paper 1.
GS Paper 1 2019 Analysis:
Prelims GS Paper 1 – Question Paper and Answer Key
Prelims GS Paper 2 CSAT – Question Paper and Key
This year too, UPSC lived up to its reputation among students of being the ‘Unpredictable service commission’. In GS Paper-I, most of the questions were from Current Affairs (over 50) , Geography and Environment. Traditional topics like Polity were not difficult and relatively easy. While History gave a huge surprise as many question were asked and were quite difficult. Hence breaking the previous years trend. From Economics some questions such as on Money Multiplier and Poverty Line required applied knowledge of students. Some new types of Question are introduced from this year. Eg Sub Index of Ease of Doing Business Index. Conceptual questions were difficult as options were close to each other making guess work quite difficult. The dominance of environment based questions ebbed as this year we saw around 15 environment based questions. So, the questions were more well distributed across topics and subtopics. This played a positive role as candidates were not rewarded or punished based on his/her individual strength or weaknesses.
Broadly speaking, the level of difficulty has increased and this will have an effect on the cut-off marks as well. There could be a 2-3 points drop from 105.3 marks, which was the cut-off for Prelims 2017. However cut off would be more than cut off of 2018, which was 98.
Question Distribution of Paper 1:
Current Affairs – 57 questions
History – 12 questions
Geography – 4 questions
Indian Polity – 7 questions
Indian Economy – 9 questions
Science and Technology- 5 questions
Environment – 7 questions
CSAT – Paper 2 Analysis:
The 2019 UPSC-General Studies Paper 2, also known as CSAT, had some changes in the pattern of the Verbal (English) Section. The Quant and Reasoning sections mostly followed the last year paper pattern.
Passages overall dominated the paper with a good amount of critical reasoning questions. Those candidates who could use question selection strategies could ease the solving process. Interestingly, this year there was no Data Interpretation question. But there were some questions which required Visual Reasoning. Overall, the level of difficulty was moderate which means that difficulty increased slightly as compared to last year.
Questions distribution:
Reasoning:
Analytical Reasoning – 14 questions
Coding Decoding, Cubes – 3 questions
Syllogism – 1 questions
Sequence and Series – 4 questions
Directions & Blood Relations – 2 questions
Quantitative Aptitude:
Numbers / Fractions – 10 questions
Profit – Loss – Discount, S.I-C.I : 1 question
Averages / % ages : 6 questions
Time, Speed, Distance & Work: 1 question
Algebra – 2 question
P&C, Prob, Sets – 3 questions
Miscellaneous – 3 questions
Verbal:
Single / Two Question RC (Inference Based): 30 questions