Civil Services Preliminary Exam 2013 Analysis

Civil Services Preliminary Exam 2013, the first stage in the Civil Services Exam conducted by UPSC has just got over.

UPSC is often quoted for its surprise elements and continuously evolving question pattern. But this time the surprise element was brought in a slightly different way.

UPSC Prelims 2013 : Analysis : General Studies Paper 1

UPSC Prelims Paper 1 (GS) in 2011 and 2012 had given its due weightage to current events related to polity, economics, environment, technology etc. Reading along the same trend, many aspirants and even coaching institutes expected more questions from current affairs section this year; but this expectation was shattered by UPSC, shifting its entire focus on conventional topics like History, Economics, Polity, Geography etc.

As Civil Services Mains exam has evolved in a direction giving more focus towards current events related General Awareness, UPSC might have decided to give more focus towards conventional knowledge at Prelims stage. But this made the GS Paper 1 look rather easy for any serious aspirant.

Those with decent knowledge in five conventional areas – history, economics, polity, geography and science could have fetched 50-65 easy/moderate easy questions. Environment related questions too occupied a bigger chunck, but not all of them were crackable. Science and biology in particular was a crucial part in CSP 2013. Although not 100 percent of question were doable in Civil Services Prelims 2013, getting 50+ question right to get a score of 90-100 seems not a tough job.

UPSC Prelims 2013 : Analysis : General Studies Paper 2

Thought CSAT 2011 had good weightage for numerical ability (mathematics), 2012 paper had hardly 2-3 maths questions. But UPSC brought back the weightage for maths in 2013. There are numerous questions from numerical and mental ability this time, resulting in time shortage for many aspirants.

Almost all questions from CSAT paper 2 belonged to easy/moderate- easy levels, but time factor made some of these questions look tough. Certain questions from Reading Comprehension was confusing, and the way RCs were arranged (only 2/3 questions per each passage) made things more time consuming. 65+ attempts for paper2 can be counted as good, and a total of 125-140 as a decent score for a candidate with balanced scoring in Paper 1.

The general output from candidates is that though the Paper 1 seemed easy/ok, paper 2 faced time-crunch. Stay tuned for more feed back and answer keys and detailed solutions for Civil Services Prelims 2013 and in mean time let us know your feed back through comments.

Civil Services Prelims 2013 Answer Keys with Detailed Solutions :

UPSC General Studies Paper 1 Answer Key

UPSC General Studies Paper 2 Answer Key

Expected Cut-Off for IAS Prelims 2013

As most of you might know, there are no individual cut-offs in Civil Services Prelims. Cut-offs for general category in 2012 was 209, while that in 2011 was 198. With more quantitative ability questions this year, there is a chance that cut-offs might be lower as in 2011. But only final results can give a clue on this – cut-offs can vary each year based on the toughness of exam, number of candidates, number of vacancies etc.

UPSC Prelims Cut off 2013 : Polls

Participate in the polls given below and post feedback on your expected result for IAS 2013 based on various keys.

[poll id=”3″]

[poll id=”4″]

[poll id=”5″]