Target UPSC 2022 (Prelims): Topics In CSAT Syllabus, Every IAS Aspirant Must Study Before CSE
UPSC Civil Services Exam 2022 Prelims would be conducted on June 5, 2022. The Preliminary exam consists of GS1 and CSAT II papers. Generally, the aspirants prepare for the GS1 paper for the entire year. They in fact start their preparation for CSAT II one month before the exam. Now that less than a month is left for the exam, students who have not started the CSAT preparation are late. These tips and topics would come in handy for those candidates to score qualifying marks in CSAT Paper-II. Check these topics below that would be necessary for the CSAT II paper in UPSC CSE 2022.
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Target UPSC Prelims 2022: Questions Pattern in Previous Years (CSAT)
Check the table below to know the number of questions asked over the years to understand the pattern of CSAT II in UPSC CSE 2022.
| No. |
Number of Questions | |||
| Year |
Maths & Basic Numeracy |
Logical & Analytical reasoning |
Reading comprehension |
Data Interpretation |
| 2015 |
30 |
18 |
30 |
2 |
| 2016 |
31 |
21 |
28 |
0 |
| 2017 |
28 |
22 |
30 |
0 |
| 2018 |
18 |
22 |
26 |
14 |
| 2019 |
32 |
18 |
30 |
0 |
| 2020 |
42 |
12 |
26 |
0 |
Target UPSC Prelims 2022: Check these must study topics for CSAT
UPSC CSE 2022 aspirants must study these five topics essentially to score good marks and qualify CSAT II exam.
- Unseen Passages: Solving unseen passages per day can give you the speed to read quickly and do well in the exam. Mostly taken from newspapers like New York Times, The Hindu, and Al Jazeera, these passages can occur to you as already read if you try reading these newspapers during your preparation. Also solving unseen passages increases your understanding of the English language. These are the most time-consuming questions of the CSAT II paper.
- Logical Reasoning: Solving questions on logical reasoning is also essential because you can see in the table above, how important this section is. The number of questions has remained an average every year with a major focus on syllogism, blood relationships, calendars, coding-decoding and numeric and alphanumeric series. Do not leave these topics at all.
- Numericals: Solve questions from HCF, LCM, geometry, probability and unitary method before going for the exam. It is a must you take a look at various formulae, squares and roots, exponents etc as UPSC has asked many questions from here in previous year's papers. Leaving these topics would mean compromising with the selection for the exam.
- Data Interpretation: This needs graph solving. Solving one DI question can mean scoring 5 marks altogether as such questions are interlinked. So attempting the DI question in one go would not be a bad choice for the aspirant. However, the key to attempting these is that you should not give the question more than a minute. If the answer is there in a minute then only go for the question else one should leave it.
Students tend to skip studying CSAT thinking it is just a qualifying exam. However, the last 10 years' question papers say a different story. It was difficult to even reach the qualifying marks for more than 40% of candidates in the last 5 years of UPSC CSE. So it would be a folly on part of the aspirants of CSE 2022 to skip studying CSAT leaving it all for the last week. It is essential that you pick up the papers and start solving the CSAT Paper II also.
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