Trends of questions from NCERT asked in UPSC Prelims

The UPSC Prelims is the first step toward a career in India’s coveted Civil Services. The Civil Services Exam consists of three stages: a preliminary exam, a mains exam, and an interview. Prelims is the screening test that screens out a majority of candidates. Every year, only 14000 to 15000 candidates are chosen to take the mains. As a result, it is critical to understand the types of questions asked in the preliminary stage, as well as the sources for them.

NCERTs are considered very important for building the concepts and such concepts are usually required to answer the questions in the prelims. Sometimes, the questions are asked even directly. The UPSC Prelims Syllabus has several topics under various areas, and analysing the questions may be quite beneficial in understanding the relevance of NCERTs, for the preparation. Aspirants will find trend analysis of UPSC Prelims from NCERTs from 2015 to 2021 in this article.

Subject Wise Weightage of the UPSC Prelims

There are two papers in the IAS prelims exam round. The prelims papers are made up of objective type questions with negative marking for wrong answers. The prelims exam is structured as follows:

To be eligible for evaluation, candidates must score at least 33% on General Studies Paper II, and they must attempt both papers. Candidates who get the minimum cut off marks in General Studies I and qualify in General Studies II are permitted to take the UPSC Mains exam.

To do well in the UPSC Prelims, you must understand the UPSC Prelims subject wise question weightage for paper 1 General Studies. The table below show the subject-wise weightage for the number of questions in General Studies I from 2015-2021:

As demonstrated in the table above, only questions from the topic Environment had a reasonably consistent tendency, ranging around 11 to 15 questions. The number of questions in history are reasonably high up to 20 questions most of the time, from science 8-10 questions are asked every year. The other subjects vary greatly from year to year.

The statistics above also demonstrate the importance and relevance of current affairs in the prelims test, as well as the weightage it carries in the first stage of the UPSC exam.

Note– You can check the detailed Subject wise Weightage of UPSC Prelims here.

Note– Check the UPSC cut off marks here to plan your prelims strategy.

Trends of Questions from NCERT

NCERTs are basic books that help you develop your concepts, which will help you attempt and solve various questions in the prelims exam. The table below shows the questions that could have been answered solely by studying the NCERT books for all subjects.

According to the statistics above, if one reads their NCERTs diligently, they can answer up to 25 questions correctly. Although the topic may not be directly asked, with the knowledge provided in the NCERTs, one may easily answer around 25 questions in the UPSC Prelims. Because the History portion contains the majority of the questions, NCERTs are an extremely useful source for covering the history section. The Geography Section allows you to answer up to 5 questions. If one had gone through the concepts of the NCERTS, one may have answered correctly up to 7 questions from the Polity sections in 2017. Similarly, Economy NCERT is crucial for answering fundamental questions in the prelims. Science and Environment, on the other hand, cover 2-3 NCERT based questions.

Thus pay special attention to your NCERTs as they are a very important source to score well in the prelims. However, candidates should also practise previous year’s UPSC papers to check their preparedness. A well-balanced study schedule is also required to overcome the volatility of the UPSC Prelims.

Check out the resources below to know importance of reading the NCERTs for UPSC Preparation:

• Old or New NCERT Textbooks
• How to Read NCERT for UPSC 
• List of all important NCERT books for IAS
• NCERT books- free PDFs
• NCERT Notes for UPSC

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