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A. Preliminary Examination
This is the first stage of the exam and should never be taken lightly. Candidate should clear it to keep himself in the race. But it’s never been easy; it is a hard nut to crack. The preparation should be such that you should not have any doubt about clearing the exam. The prelims should only be a passing phase. If you prepare well for the mains exam and be clear about the basics, then prelims should not be problem. Now, we have a brand new syllabus for PRELIMS with two papers, the nature of syllabus requires a candidate more to concentrate on the General Studies section. Though we have Paper 2 which is more or less an extension of Paper 1. The new Recruitment Process of Civil Services Exam conducted by the UPSC is called the CSAT or the Civil Services Aptitute Test. The CSAT has in effect from the Civil Services Examination, 2011. CSAT will not only enable us to choose civil servants with right aptitudes but also end the use of scaling system for varying subjects that has been a matter of concern for many. Earlier it used to be one paper of General Studies and other is one of the 23 optional subjects offered by the UPSC now the paper 2 has changed to a new Paper called CSAT. There are no optional subjects as both the subject is common to all candidates. In one way we can say that preliminary exam is a test of recognition. You have to recognize the correct answer from given options. So if you are strong in basics this should not be problem. Do not spend too much time in memorizing facts. It’s fine if you can recognize it. Prepare some mnemonics, which will help you in recognizing the right answer. One should do as many previous year papers as possible. It will help you in time management and also in identifying the weak areas. Please remember that this practice should be right from the beginning and not in the final stages. As the new pattern suggests that aspirants should focus more on the language skills along with other disciplines.
NEGATIVE MARKING/PENALTY FOR WRONG ANSWERS
Negative marking in the Prelims examination was introduced in 2007 with the idea to select eligible candidate for the further stages. Also to filter out candidates who get selected on the basis of smart guesses and luck. Negative marking make paper more complex but its good and suits for the genuine and meritorious candidates. In the Negative marking there is Penalty for wrong answers marked by the candidate in the Objective type Question Papers. Except some of the questions where the Negative Marking will be built in the form of different marks being awarded to most appropriate and not so appropriate answer for such questions. The underlined sentence must be read carefully as in the PRELIMS 2011 Paper 2 there were questions which didn’t had any penalty. It was free from negative marking. Candidate should keep in mind.
There are four alternatives for the answers to every question. For each question for which a wrong answer has been given by the candidate, one third (0.33) of the marks assigned to that question will be deducted as penalty.
If a candidate gives more than one answer, it will be treated as a wrong answer even if one of the given answers happens to be correct and there will be same penalty as above for that question.
If a question is left blank i.e. no answer is given by the candidate, there will be no penalty for that question.