CHENNAI: Civil service aspirants who appeared for the Union Public Service Commission's (UPSC) preliminary exam on Sunday said both the general studies and aptitude papers were tough. Of 50,000 students who have applied for the exam from Tamil Nadu, 50% of them did not turn up.
Candidates said history questions, particularly medieval and ancient questions, were tough and the civil services aptitude test (CSAT) paper was lengthy.
"UPSC adopted a new question format and choices. History questions were very difficult this year. We expect the cut-off to come down compared to previous year," said Karthikeyan, an aspirant from Chennai.
Dharani, another aspirant from Trichy said the general studies was easy with more current affairs questions. "One of the questions in the current affairs section also asked about cryptocurrency. CSAT questions were lengthy to answer and I could not complete the paper," she said.
The General studies paper had 100 questions while the CSAT paper had 80 questions. UPSC will evaluate only the answer sheets of candidates who have qualified in the CSAT paper.
S Chandru, academic head, Shankar IAS Academy, said, the quantitative and reasoning sections in CSAT paper had lengthy questions. "Each question in these sections took more than five minutes to solve and students struggled to complete the paper," he said.
Israel Jebasingh, director of Officers IAS Academy, said, the cut-off will come down due to unconventional paper and increase in vacancies this year. "We expect the general category cut-off from 87.5 to 82 this year," he said.
With Tamil Nadu registering its lowest performance in civil services 2021 exam, there was an expectation for this year's exam as it had the highest number of vacancies. However, around 50% of students from Tamil Nadu were absent for the exam.
In Chennai, 46% of candidates were absent while Trichy (51.5%), Coimbatore (50.2%) and Madurai (53.5%) have recorded more absentees.
