UPSC Civil Services Prelims Exam 2023: Increased difficulty level may result in lower cut-off, say experts

The UPSC conducted the Civil Services 2023 Prelims exam on May 28. As per experts, the question paper was a mixed bag of moderate to difficult questions. However, most students found the paper to be difficult and time-consuming.

Praveen Parihar, an aspirant from Jodhpur said the paper trend this year has changed for questions. “I would call it tough. Few moderate and easy questions were there but those were not much. Elimination has become even more difficult this year. The dominance of current affairs. It has become even more important. Static books won’t work,” Parihar said.

Sarmad Mehraj, teacher and VP, of Product (UPSC) at BYJU’S also agreed that the paper this year was more difficult than the previous year. “UPSC has surprised by ensuring the oft-cited ‘elimination method’ used by candidates to arrive at an answer is not suitable. Therefore, the expected cut-off this year is expected to be around 82-85 which is lower than last year’s 88.22,” Mehraj said.
 

This year, more questions were asked from Environment and Geography section while current affairs and international relations saw fewer questions.

“From the Constitution, questions are more or less from the textbook. The need to think arises only for 1-2 questions. For economics, there are again at best 1-2 questions that sound difficult on the face of it but on some application of common sense, the difficulty disappears. For example, the question on Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) and tax exemption and Invits being treated as borrowers. Common sense helps. Tax treatment for interest income and dividends cant be different. Treating Invits as borrowers enables the law to protect the investors who are common folk,” Sriram Srirangam Founder and Director of Sriram’s IAS explained.

In Science and Technology, two questions were asked from Space Technology, 3 from Energy, and 2 from Biotechnology. This makes 7 out of 12 questions asked. Questions from General Science were absent yet again, as has been the trend in the recent few papers.

“The history questions were comparatively easier this time. One difficult question from Ancient Modern Art and Culture. Medieval was easy and art and culture generally remained the moderately difficult area. Modern India except for one question all easy,” Mehraj from BYJU pointed out.

 

This year too, there were questions from sports which was a new entrant in last year’s paper.

 

“There is a slight change in the pattern. The Assertion and Reason type of questions is not presented conventionally. Even more noticeable: in the multiples, it is not asked as to which ones are correct. Rather, the = question was how many multiples are correct. Specifics are not required and so it can help everyone to get just a bit luckier,” Sriram said.

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