USPC Prelims 2018 Tougher Than Last Year; Cut Off may dip this year

So finally the UPSC Preliminary exam has been held today. The Prelims for Paper 1 was held from 09:30 AM to 11:30 PM, whereas, the Paper 2 was held from 02:30 PM to 04:30 PM. After the exam is over, various coaching institutes released the answer key and question paper for UPSC IAS 2018 at their official website.

Many students after the exam shared their views on various social media platforms. Many of them commented that Paper 2 was a bit tough in comparison to Paper 1. Here are few of the tweets.

UPSC Civil Services is unarguably one of the toughest examinations in India. There are only some of the reaction of the students. However, most of them have expressed their worry on these social media platforms. It is said that the difficulty level of the exam this year was much more in compared to last year.

The paper for UPSC IAS prelims 2018 was full of surprises. For example, many questions were on static General Knowledge. Many students said that in Paper 1 the most difficult section was History. Many examinees have also suggested that if one if preparing for Prelims next year, should focus on syllabus and study as per it only.

Even though the paper was tough, the students should not lose hope, as the cut off marks may drop considering the difficulty level of the test this year. So there is still a ray of hope for the students.

Last year, the cut off for IAS Prelims was 105.34 for General Category, 102.66 for OBC, 88.66 for SC and ST. However, if the paper was tough then it can be expected that everyone will score fewer marks than last year and hence cut offs will drop. As per the exam analysis for IAS 2018 Prelims, if the cutoff of IAS 2018 dips, then it may be around 100 for General and similar lowering will happen for other categories.

There are various factors which are to be considered for the IAS 2018 expected cut off, such as, number of Candidates appeared, Difficulty Level of the Examination, Total Number of Posts available, and Section-wise marks attained by candidates.

The Civil Services Examination (CSE) is a nationwide competitive examination in India which is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). It is held for recruitment to various Civil Services of the Government of India, including the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS), etc. There are three phases of selection in UPSC IAS, namely, preliminary examination consisting of two objective-type papers (General Studies Paper I and General Studies Paper II also popularly known as Civil Service Aptitude Test or CSAT), and a main examination consisting of nine papers of conventional (essay) type, lastly a personality test (interview).