Preparations for Preliminary Examination | Crack Civil Services in First Attempt by Divey Sethi, IRS - UPSC PDF Download

 Page 1


Preparations for Preliminary Examination
I personally find preliminary examination competitively tougher than 
mains! Look at the statistics, and you shall know why. Only 14,000 
students are selected roughly from around 5 lacs appearing in any year; 
that is, more than 97 percentile is needed. The competition has become 
fiercer since the introduction of CSAT.
Further, the cut-off increased every year due to pattern predictability 
from 2011 to 2013. However, CSE 2014 is a departure from this 
trend of increasing cut-off every year. Because there had been a last-
minute change in the marking scheme of GS paper 2 for CSE 2014, 
another change in CSE 2015 was more or less expected to stabilize the 
marking scheme. Thus, in this highly competitive atmosphere, an 
aspirant, especially a fresher, is baffled as to how to go about his/her 
preliminary preparations.
?   ComparativeAnalysisofpaperII,CSAT–2014and
CSAT2015
SECTION QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2014
QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2015
Comprehension (printed in both 
English and Hindi).
26 34
Mathematics 18 24
Logical reasoning 19 13
Data interpretation 6 5
Figure based 5 4
English comprehension (written only 
in English)
6 Discontinued
Page 2


Preparations for Preliminary Examination
I personally find preliminary examination competitively tougher than 
mains! Look at the statistics, and you shall know why. Only 14,000 
students are selected roughly from around 5 lacs appearing in any year; 
that is, more than 97 percentile is needed. The competition has become 
fiercer since the introduction of CSAT.
Further, the cut-off increased every year due to pattern predictability 
from 2011 to 2013. However, CSE 2014 is a departure from this 
trend of increasing cut-off every year. Because there had been a last-
minute change in the marking scheme of GS paper 2 for CSE 2014, 
another change in CSE 2015 was more or less expected to stabilize the 
marking scheme. Thus, in this highly competitive atmosphere, an 
aspirant, especially a fresher, is baffled as to how to go about his/her 
preliminary preparations.
?   ComparativeAnalysisofpaperII,CSAT–2014and
CSAT2015
SECTION QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2014
QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2015
Comprehension (printed in both 
English and Hindi).
26 34
Mathematics 18 24
Logical reasoning 19 13
Data interpretation 6 5
Figure based 5 4
English comprehension (written only 
in English)
6 Discontinued
CSAT, 2014, again reinforced our belief in the unpredictability of UPSC 
question-setting trends! The major surprise was the deletion of the 
decision-making questions from Paper 2. Moreover, the GS paper had 
an extreme nature – questions were either far too easy or considerably 
tough. In CSAT 2015, paper 2 was qualifying only with a minimum 
requirement of 33% across every category. However, despite that, I had 
seen some aspirants not clearing preliminary because they fell short 
of the minimum required marks in paper 2. Such candidates and those 
who do not feel confident yet in CSAT paper 2 must read the section 
“Smart strategy for CSAT Paper 2” given below in this chapter.
?   TheEarlierControversy
The CSAT paper-2 had been the source of all controversy surrounding 
the preliminary examination to civil services. It was contended that the 
paper promotes English-speaking students, urban Indian population, 
and engineering and management background students. On the same 
lines, it creates a bias against Hindi-speaking and regional language-
speaking aspirants, rural India, and humanities students. The following 
were the independent general views of various aggrieved sections;
a) Hindi medium aspirants: the section of English comprehension 
(written only in English), which tests the understanding of the 
English language, is biased against Hindi-speaking students. 
Furthermore, the conversion of other comprehensions into 
Hindi is verbatim and done through translating software, which 
results in the meaning of the paragraph being distorted slightly. 
Thus, the Hindi student has to refer to the English version of the 
comprehension intermittently to grasp the exact meaning of the 
text. This leads to a waste of time.
b) Regional Language student: What will a graduate do if he/
she speaks Oriya and lacks both English and Hindi skills? Is it 
mandatory that graduates speaking other than Hindi must have 
sufficient functional literacy in English to write the CSAT exam? 
Page 3


Preparations for Preliminary Examination
I personally find preliminary examination competitively tougher than 
mains! Look at the statistics, and you shall know why. Only 14,000 
students are selected roughly from around 5 lacs appearing in any year; 
that is, more than 97 percentile is needed. The competition has become 
fiercer since the introduction of CSAT.
Further, the cut-off increased every year due to pattern predictability 
from 2011 to 2013. However, CSE 2014 is a departure from this 
trend of increasing cut-off every year. Because there had been a last-
minute change in the marking scheme of GS paper 2 for CSE 2014, 
another change in CSE 2015 was more or less expected to stabilize the 
marking scheme. Thus, in this highly competitive atmosphere, an 
aspirant, especially a fresher, is baffled as to how to go about his/her 
preliminary preparations.
?   ComparativeAnalysisofpaperII,CSAT–2014and
CSAT2015
SECTION QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2014
QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2015
Comprehension (printed in both 
English and Hindi).
26 34
Mathematics 18 24
Logical reasoning 19 13
Data interpretation 6 5
Figure based 5 4
English comprehension (written only 
in English)
6 Discontinued
CSAT, 2014, again reinforced our belief in the unpredictability of UPSC 
question-setting trends! The major surprise was the deletion of the 
decision-making questions from Paper 2. Moreover, the GS paper had 
an extreme nature – questions were either far too easy or considerably 
tough. In CSAT 2015, paper 2 was qualifying only with a minimum 
requirement of 33% across every category. However, despite that, I had 
seen some aspirants not clearing preliminary because they fell short 
of the minimum required marks in paper 2. Such candidates and those 
who do not feel confident yet in CSAT paper 2 must read the section 
“Smart strategy for CSAT Paper 2” given below in this chapter.
?   TheEarlierControversy
The CSAT paper-2 had been the source of all controversy surrounding 
the preliminary examination to civil services. It was contended that the 
paper promotes English-speaking students, urban Indian population, 
and engineering and management background students. On the same 
lines, it creates a bias against Hindi-speaking and regional language-
speaking aspirants, rural India, and humanities students. The following 
were the independent general views of various aggrieved sections;
a) Hindi medium aspirants: the section of English comprehension 
(written only in English), which tests the understanding of the 
English language, is biased against Hindi-speaking students. 
Furthermore, the conversion of other comprehensions into 
Hindi is verbatim and done through translating software, which 
results in the meaning of the paragraph being distorted slightly. 
Thus, the Hindi student has to refer to the English version of the 
comprehension intermittently to grasp the exact meaning of the 
text. This leads to a waste of time.
b) Regional Language student: What will a graduate do if he/
she speaks Oriya and lacks both English and Hindi skills? Is it 
mandatory that graduates speaking other than Hindi must have 
sufficient functional literacy in English to write the CSAT exam? 
Preparations for Preliminary Examination
Or is it expected that every graduate college offers functional 
literacy in English? Does this also amount to a preference of 
Hindi belt areas over the rest of India? Many tough questions 
remain here.
c) Rural Aspirants: Does language bias, as contended by Hindi and 
regional language students, lead to urban-rural divide widening 
through Civil Services Examination? The basic assumption for 
rural bias to exist would be that English is mainly the language of 
urban India, especially the metropolitan centers.
d) Humanities students: the contention is that mathematics, 
which has around 17 percent weightage, is above the standard 
of 10
th
 class. Also, it is asserted that logical reasoning and data 
interpretation, which amount to 30 percent weightage combined, 
are more managerial than administrative. It is further argued 
that engineering and management students have a clear-cut 
advantage over humanities aspirants and, simultaneously, the 
administrative skills required for services can’t be judged by this 
pattern of examination.
?   ThePresentSchemeofMarking
The protest took off from Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi after the 
announcement of the final result of CSE 2013 by UPSC, and within 3 
months or so, it captured the imagination of the people’s representatives 
sitting in the parliament of India. To pacify the outrage, the government 
hurriedly proposed the following changes to be done by the UPSC for 
CSE 2014;
A) The marks of English comprehension (compulsory, which has no 
translation in Hindi) won’t be counted in the final merit.
B) The aspirants who took the exam in 2011, the year when CSAT 
was introduced for the first time, would be given an extra attempt 
in 2015.
Page 4


Preparations for Preliminary Examination
I personally find preliminary examination competitively tougher than 
mains! Look at the statistics, and you shall know why. Only 14,000 
students are selected roughly from around 5 lacs appearing in any year; 
that is, more than 97 percentile is needed. The competition has become 
fiercer since the introduction of CSAT.
Further, the cut-off increased every year due to pattern predictability 
from 2011 to 2013. However, CSE 2014 is a departure from this 
trend of increasing cut-off every year. Because there had been a last-
minute change in the marking scheme of GS paper 2 for CSE 2014, 
another change in CSE 2015 was more or less expected to stabilize the 
marking scheme. Thus, in this highly competitive atmosphere, an 
aspirant, especially a fresher, is baffled as to how to go about his/her 
preliminary preparations.
?   ComparativeAnalysisofpaperII,CSAT–2014and
CSAT2015
SECTION QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2014
QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2015
Comprehension (printed in both 
English and Hindi).
26 34
Mathematics 18 24
Logical reasoning 19 13
Data interpretation 6 5
Figure based 5 4
English comprehension (written only 
in English)
6 Discontinued
CSAT, 2014, again reinforced our belief in the unpredictability of UPSC 
question-setting trends! The major surprise was the deletion of the 
decision-making questions from Paper 2. Moreover, the GS paper had 
an extreme nature – questions were either far too easy or considerably 
tough. In CSAT 2015, paper 2 was qualifying only with a minimum 
requirement of 33% across every category. However, despite that, I had 
seen some aspirants not clearing preliminary because they fell short 
of the minimum required marks in paper 2. Such candidates and those 
who do not feel confident yet in CSAT paper 2 must read the section 
“Smart strategy for CSAT Paper 2” given below in this chapter.
?   TheEarlierControversy
The CSAT paper-2 had been the source of all controversy surrounding 
the preliminary examination to civil services. It was contended that the 
paper promotes English-speaking students, urban Indian population, 
and engineering and management background students. On the same 
lines, it creates a bias against Hindi-speaking and regional language-
speaking aspirants, rural India, and humanities students. The following 
were the independent general views of various aggrieved sections;
a) Hindi medium aspirants: the section of English comprehension 
(written only in English), which tests the understanding of the 
English language, is biased against Hindi-speaking students. 
Furthermore, the conversion of other comprehensions into 
Hindi is verbatim and done through translating software, which 
results in the meaning of the paragraph being distorted slightly. 
Thus, the Hindi student has to refer to the English version of the 
comprehension intermittently to grasp the exact meaning of the 
text. This leads to a waste of time.
b) Regional Language student: What will a graduate do if he/
she speaks Oriya and lacks both English and Hindi skills? Is it 
mandatory that graduates speaking other than Hindi must have 
sufficient functional literacy in English to write the CSAT exam? 
Preparations for Preliminary Examination
Or is it expected that every graduate college offers functional 
literacy in English? Does this also amount to a preference of 
Hindi belt areas over the rest of India? Many tough questions 
remain here.
c) Rural Aspirants: Does language bias, as contended by Hindi and 
regional language students, lead to urban-rural divide widening 
through Civil Services Examination? The basic assumption for 
rural bias to exist would be that English is mainly the language of 
urban India, especially the metropolitan centers.
d) Humanities students: the contention is that mathematics, 
which has around 17 percent weightage, is above the standard 
of 10
th
 class. Also, it is asserted that logical reasoning and data 
interpretation, which amount to 30 percent weightage combined, 
are more managerial than administrative. It is further argued 
that engineering and management students have a clear-cut 
advantage over humanities aspirants and, simultaneously, the 
administrative skills required for services can’t be judged by this 
pattern of examination.
?   ThePresentSchemeofMarking
The protest took off from Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi after the 
announcement of the final result of CSE 2013 by UPSC, and within 3 
months or so, it captured the imagination of the people’s representatives 
sitting in the parliament of India. To pacify the outrage, the government 
hurriedly proposed the following changes to be done by the UPSC for 
CSE 2014;
A) The marks of English comprehension (compulsory, which has no 
translation in Hindi) won’t be counted in the final merit.
B) The aspirants who took the exam in 2011, the year when CSAT 
was introduced for the first time, would be given an extra attempt 
in 2015.
The government has tried to alleviate the concerns of the Hindi students 
by the above proposals. However, UPSC, an autonomous constitutional 
body, was unrelenting in its pursuit until the eleventh hour. With the 
change of chairmanship, the above-written modifications were notified 
in the Gazette.
There are several issues related to this supposedly trivial issue of 
removing compulsory English questions. The first and foremost deal 
with the autonomy of the constitutional bodies themselves. If UPSC 
is pressurized to change the pattern or the marking scheme at the last 
hour by the government, its autonomy will be questioned. And then 
the question pertaining to the autonomy of other constitutional bodies, 
such as the election commission and the comptroller and auditor 
general, may be brought into public debate.
The second issue is that the fiduciary value of the institutions has been 
challenged. The intentions of the people running these institutions and 
their capabilities have been debated. Are not the members of UPSC, 
who have been entrusted with the responsibilities to recommend civil 
servants to DoPT, doing justice to their jobs and thus, to the nation? Do 
they not have the vision and the corresponding autonomy to change 
the structure of the examination as per the requirements of the current 
times? These questions not only torment an aspirant but are also of 
concern to every common man because the process of selection of civil 
servants affects the nation itself.
The above pacifying act of the govt. rendered the pattern of the 
preliminary unstable – what would be the purpose of English 
comprehensive questions when their marks are not taken into 
merit? Thus, it was evident that CSE 2015 would attract a major 
change, at least in the preliminary part of it. And this happened. 
In preliminary 2015, paper 2 became only a qualifying paper with 
a 33% fixed minimum criteria for every category. The paper 1 of 
200 marks would be considered for merit. The grievances of the 
protesting aspirants were addressed in a long-term constructive 
Page 5


Preparations for Preliminary Examination
I personally find preliminary examination competitively tougher than 
mains! Look at the statistics, and you shall know why. Only 14,000 
students are selected roughly from around 5 lacs appearing in any year; 
that is, more than 97 percentile is needed. The competition has become 
fiercer since the introduction of CSAT.
Further, the cut-off increased every year due to pattern predictability 
from 2011 to 2013. However, CSE 2014 is a departure from this 
trend of increasing cut-off every year. Because there had been a last-
minute change in the marking scheme of GS paper 2 for CSE 2014, 
another change in CSE 2015 was more or less expected to stabilize the 
marking scheme. Thus, in this highly competitive atmosphere, an 
aspirant, especially a fresher, is baffled as to how to go about his/her 
preliminary preparations.
?   ComparativeAnalysisofpaperII,CSAT–2014and
CSAT2015
SECTION QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2014
QUESTIONS in 
CSAT 2015
Comprehension (printed in both 
English and Hindi).
26 34
Mathematics 18 24
Logical reasoning 19 13
Data interpretation 6 5
Figure based 5 4
English comprehension (written only 
in English)
6 Discontinued
CSAT, 2014, again reinforced our belief in the unpredictability of UPSC 
question-setting trends! The major surprise was the deletion of the 
decision-making questions from Paper 2. Moreover, the GS paper had 
an extreme nature – questions were either far too easy or considerably 
tough. In CSAT 2015, paper 2 was qualifying only with a minimum 
requirement of 33% across every category. However, despite that, I had 
seen some aspirants not clearing preliminary because they fell short 
of the minimum required marks in paper 2. Such candidates and those 
who do not feel confident yet in CSAT paper 2 must read the section 
“Smart strategy for CSAT Paper 2” given below in this chapter.
?   TheEarlierControversy
The CSAT paper-2 had been the source of all controversy surrounding 
the preliminary examination to civil services. It was contended that the 
paper promotes English-speaking students, urban Indian population, 
and engineering and management background students. On the same 
lines, it creates a bias against Hindi-speaking and regional language-
speaking aspirants, rural India, and humanities students. The following 
were the independent general views of various aggrieved sections;
a) Hindi medium aspirants: the section of English comprehension 
(written only in English), which tests the understanding of the 
English language, is biased against Hindi-speaking students. 
Furthermore, the conversion of other comprehensions into 
Hindi is verbatim and done through translating software, which 
results in the meaning of the paragraph being distorted slightly. 
Thus, the Hindi student has to refer to the English version of the 
comprehension intermittently to grasp the exact meaning of the 
text. This leads to a waste of time.
b) Regional Language student: What will a graduate do if he/
she speaks Oriya and lacks both English and Hindi skills? Is it 
mandatory that graduates speaking other than Hindi must have 
sufficient functional literacy in English to write the CSAT exam? 
Preparations for Preliminary Examination
Or is it expected that every graduate college offers functional 
literacy in English? Does this also amount to a preference of 
Hindi belt areas over the rest of India? Many tough questions 
remain here.
c) Rural Aspirants: Does language bias, as contended by Hindi and 
regional language students, lead to urban-rural divide widening 
through Civil Services Examination? The basic assumption for 
rural bias to exist would be that English is mainly the language of 
urban India, especially the metropolitan centers.
d) Humanities students: the contention is that mathematics, 
which has around 17 percent weightage, is above the standard 
of 10
th
 class. Also, it is asserted that logical reasoning and data 
interpretation, which amount to 30 percent weightage combined, 
are more managerial than administrative. It is further argued 
that engineering and management students have a clear-cut 
advantage over humanities aspirants and, simultaneously, the 
administrative skills required for services can’t be judged by this 
pattern of examination.
?   ThePresentSchemeofMarking
The protest took off from Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi after the 
announcement of the final result of CSE 2013 by UPSC, and within 3 
months or so, it captured the imagination of the people’s representatives 
sitting in the parliament of India. To pacify the outrage, the government 
hurriedly proposed the following changes to be done by the UPSC for 
CSE 2014;
A) The marks of English comprehension (compulsory, which has no 
translation in Hindi) won’t be counted in the final merit.
B) The aspirants who took the exam in 2011, the year when CSAT 
was introduced for the first time, would be given an extra attempt 
in 2015.
The government has tried to alleviate the concerns of the Hindi students 
by the above proposals. However, UPSC, an autonomous constitutional 
body, was unrelenting in its pursuit until the eleventh hour. With the 
change of chairmanship, the above-written modifications were notified 
in the Gazette.
There are several issues related to this supposedly trivial issue of 
removing compulsory English questions. The first and foremost deal 
with the autonomy of the constitutional bodies themselves. If UPSC 
is pressurized to change the pattern or the marking scheme at the last 
hour by the government, its autonomy will be questioned. And then 
the question pertaining to the autonomy of other constitutional bodies, 
such as the election commission and the comptroller and auditor 
general, may be brought into public debate.
The second issue is that the fiduciary value of the institutions has been 
challenged. The intentions of the people running these institutions and 
their capabilities have been debated. Are not the members of UPSC, 
who have been entrusted with the responsibilities to recommend civil 
servants to DoPT, doing justice to their jobs and thus, to the nation? Do 
they not have the vision and the corresponding autonomy to change 
the structure of the examination as per the requirements of the current 
times? These questions not only torment an aspirant but are also of 
concern to every common man because the process of selection of civil 
servants affects the nation itself.
The above pacifying act of the govt. rendered the pattern of the 
preliminary unstable – what would be the purpose of English 
comprehensive questions when their marks are not taken into 
merit? Thus, it was evident that CSE 2015 would attract a major 
change, at least in the preliminary part of it. And this happened. 
In preliminary 2015, paper 2 became only a qualifying paper with 
a 33% fixed minimum criteria for every category. The paper 1 of 
200 marks would be considered for merit. The grievances of the 
protesting aspirants were addressed in a long-term constructive 
Preparations for Preliminary Examination
manner by the CSE 2015 notification, which has been elaborated in 
the later part of this book.
?   TheWayAhead
As we have discussed earlier, the success of a candidate is not entirely 
through his/her own efforts. There is a direct external contribution 
from parents, family, and peers, and there is an indirect contribution 
from the society at large, which has to be virtuously returned to the 
society by public service. Thus, the discussion entails that there are 
certain factors beyond the reach of an aspirant that will influence the 
chances of his/her selection. The efforts must be directed to maximize 
the positive factors and minimize the negative factors as far as selection 
is concerned. Coming to the case of the alleged disadvantaged lot 
comprising Hindi students, regional language students, rural, and 
humanities students, their efforts were directed toward scrapping the 
paper 2 of the preliminary exam. As per their contention, this would 
have given them a level playing field and thus enhance the chances of 
their selection. However, the present mechanism of testing a basic level 
of proficiency in paper 2 and considering paper 1 for merit is certainly 
not adverse to the above-mentioned section of students.
Dear aspirants, certain things are beyond our control. Thus, after a 
point, one cannot change the external factors, and even if that change 
may occur, it might take time to transcend into action. That stage is 
important to realize, as after this, the aspirant has to let go of external 
factors and work on factors that he or she may control directly, such as 
the subject knowledge, language command, analytical skills, etc. With 
this in mind, one should set the right strategy for further preparations 
during the present times of volatility in pattern and marking scheme.
So what is there for an aspirant in all this turmoil and confusion? Many 
aspirants halt studies when there emerged a speculation that the date of 
the preliminary exam would be postponed to the month of September 
in 2014. It is in these times that clever aspirants benefit. The best way