CDS (I) 2015 – Paper Analysis

Overview

• UPSC conducted Combined Defense Service Exam (CDS), for recruitment to office cadre of the Army, Navy and Air Force, on February 15, 2015.
• The paper was conducted in three parts. Each subject i.e. English, General Knowledge and Elementary Mathematics, was tested in a separate paper and the duration of each of these was two hours.
• All three papers comprised multiple choice questions.The papers on English and General Knowledge had 120 questions each while the paper on Elementary Mathematics comprised 100 questions.

Mathematics

This section comprised questions from a variety of areas.  A major part of the section was based on Arithmetic, Trigonometry, Mensuration and Geometry. Some questions from Trigonometry, Number system and Geometry were of good difficulty level.

English

Grammar and Vocabulary dominated the section. The section also saw questions from 5 short passages. Apart from fact based questions, the passages had a few inference based questions too, which were a little tricky in nature. Some of the questions on Para-Jumble and Sentence Arrangement had close options and hence required some amount of deliberation.

General Knowledge

Questions from Static GK dominated the section.  While the science based questions were NCERT level, questions from history revolved mainly around art and culture of 18th century. The overall level of difficulty of this section was moderate.