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Competitions » CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test) » New Pattern & Old Pattern of CSAT

The comparison between the old pattern and the new pattern on different parameters like Marks, questions, marks per question, time, negative marking.

	Old Pattern(till 2010)		New Pattern(from 2011)
Name of the examination	Civil Services Preliminary examination		Civil Services Aptitude Test
Paper	Paper 1(General Studies)	Paper 2(One optional paper out of 23 subjects)	Paper 1	Paper 2
Marks	150 marks	300 marks	200 marks	200 marks
Questions	150	100/120 **	*	*
Marks Per question	1	3/2.5**	*	*
Time	120 mins	120 mins	120 mins	120 mins
Negative Marking	0.33 marks	0.33 of the marks allotted to that question	*	*

Note (**): In Paper-2, the candidate had to choose one optional paper (out of 23 subjects). For Mathematics and Statistics, the number of questions was 100, while the number of questions for any of the remaining 21 optional subjects was 120.
Note (*): The number of questions marks per question, and negative marking has not been released by UPSC till date.

Comparison: Past and Present (for Paper-1)
The comparison between the old syllabus for Paper-1 and the new syllabus for Paper-2. It can clearly be observed that the test area of 'General Mental Ability" which was there in Paper-1 (old syllabus) has now been taken out from Paper-1 and kept in Paper-2 (as the next table indicates).

Old Syllabus-Paper 1 or General Studies(till 2010)	New Syllabus -Paper 1(from 2011)
General Science	General Science
Current events of national and international importance	Current events of national and international importance
History of India and Indian national Movement	History of India and Indian national Movement
India and World Geography	India and World Geography
Indian Polity and Economy	Indian Polity and Governance
General Mental Ability	Economic and Social Development
	General Issues on Environmental Ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate change

Comparison: Past and Present (for Paper-2)

The table below gives the comparison between the old syllabus and the new syllabus for Paper-II. It can be observed that Paper-II had undergone a major change in light of the fact that lots of new areas have been included, which were earlier not there in Civil services (Preliminary) examination.

Old Syllabus Of Paper 2 (till 2010)	New Syllabus- Paper 2(from 2011)
Optional Paper (any one out of 23 subjects)	Comprehension
	Interpersonal Skills including Comprehension Skills
	Logical reasoning & Analytical ability
	Decision making and Problem Solving
	General Mental Ability
	Basic Numeracy (Numbers & their relations, orders of magnitude etc)-Class Xth level, Data Interpretation (charts, graphs, tables, data sufficiency etc)-Class Xth level.
	English Language Comprehension Skills(Class Xth level)

Main Examination:
The candidates who clear the first stage of the civil services examination (i.e. CSAT), will be called for the next stage (i.e main examination). In year 2008, the number of candidates who qualified for mains was approximately 7% of the total number of candidates who appeared for civil services preliminary examination. The Main Examination consists of a written examination and an interview test. The written examination will consist of 9 papers of conventional essay type. Out of these 9 papers, first two papers are only qualifying in nature.

PAPER	SUBJECT	MARKS
Paper-I	One of the Indian languages to be selected by the candidate from the Languages included in the eigth schedule to the constitution (Qualifying Paper).	300
Paper-II	English(Qualifying Paper)	300
Paper-III	Essay	200
Papers-IV & V	General Studies (2 papers)	600(300 marks for each of the two papers)
Papers-VI, VII, VIII & IX	Any two subjects to be selected from the list of optional subjects. Each subject will have two papers. Thus, a total of four papers	1200 (300 marks for each of the four papers)
Interview		300
Total (Excluding the marks obtained in the qualifying paper)		2300

Number of Test Takers-Prelims & Mains
The table below gives the number of candidates who applied for civil services (prelims & mains) for different post

Year of Examination	Number of Candidates applied for CS(Prelims)	Number of Candidates appeared for CS(Prelims)	Number of Candidates applied for CS(Mains)	Number of Candidates appeared for CS(Mains)	Total number of vacancies
2002	301585	157486	3430	3301	310
2003	316496	160784	5972	5750	457
2004	349020	174475	5565	5328	453
2005	345106	175202	5140	4923	457
2006	383983	195803	7692	7496	533
2007	333680	161469	9158	8886	734
2008	325433	167035	11669	11330	767
2009	409110	193091	12096	11516	875
2010	547698	269036	12491	-	920

Interview:
Candidates who obtain minimum qualifying marks in the written Main Examination will be called for an interview for a Personality Test. However, the papers on Indian Languages and English will be of qualifying nature. The marks obtained in these qualifying papers will not be counted for ranking. The number of candidates to be called for interview will be about twice the number of vacancies to be filled. The interview will carry 300 marks (with no minimum qualifying marks).

Centres for Preliminary Examination:
The examination centres for the preliminary exam usually are:

Agartala	Chandigarh	Imphal	Lucknow	Ranchi
Ahmedabad	Chennai	Itanagar	Madurai	Sambalpur
Aizwal	Cuttack	Jaipur	Mumbai	Shillong
Aligarh	Dehradun	Jammu	Nagpur	Shimla
Allahabad	Delhi	Jodhpur	Panaji (Goa)	Srinagar
Aurangabad	Dharwad	Jorhat	Patna	Thiruvanathapuram
Bangalore	Dispur	Kochi	Port blair	Tirupati
Bareilly	Gangtok	Kohima	Puducherry	Udaipur
Bhopal	Hyderabad	Kolkata	Raipur	Vishakhapatnam

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