Roadmap and Strategy for CSAT Paper II

Civil Services examination is being conducted by UPSC. It has three stages: Preliminary Exam (Prelims), Main Exam (Mains), and Interview (Personality Test). One has to crack the preceding stage to crack it finally and reach one’s goal. As far as prelims exam is concern UPSC has changed the pattern of the exam. Earlier it used to be one paper of General Studies and other is optional subjects, now the paper 2 has changed to a new Paper 2 called CSAT. We can take the second paper CSAT as an extension of the paper first. The recent invent of new look Prelims require a little revamp in your preparation strategy. CSAT is new to everybody it requires a brand new and comprehensive strategy to go through. We have a year’s question paper through which we can access major points while preparing, we can sketch and pitch up the topics and areas from where questions are being asked and it is expected to come.

The syllabus of second Paper is to test the candidates' skills in comprehension, interpersonal skills, communication, logical reasoning, analytical ability, decision making, problem solving, basic numeracy, data interpretation, English language comprehension skills and mental ability. With the new pattern, more stress is on language skills and analysis and decision making capacities, so work on these on a consistent basis as these are skills that are developed over years and not just in a few months. It would be advisable to start focusing on your problem solving and language skills as soon as you decide to take the exam.

Moreover, there are sections in the paper 2 which a candidate thinks that it is more or less like on the lines of banking or MBA but this is a mistake, we should understand that the very purpose of this examination is to select Civil Servants, that’s why the syllabus adds decision making and problem solving.

Paper second contained only 80 questions but indeed it was a lengthy paper as it was fully loaded with comprehension passages. Comprehensions (bilingual) had 28 questions and English comprehension had 9 questions which almost contains half the paper. Quantetive Aptitude section had 13 questions, Logical reasoning contributed 13 questions including 3 questions of syllogism and 9 questions were from data interpretation. Decision making and problem solving had 8 questions which was purely application based. You can better understand by the following Table:

There are some important areas like Comprehension, Decision Making, Quantetive Aptitude and Reasoning which plays the most dominant section of the question paper. Now let me discuss each section in details:

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