Books, some links, topic description, topics in English at the end

Tier 1 Preparation Strategy

First of all, lets know some useful information about SSC CGL Tier 1 exam

Mode of the Exam is pen paper.

Duration of Exam is 2 hours.
It consists of 200 questions.
Aspirants wont be given any extra time to fill the bubbles. That means around 15-20 minutes will
be consumed in filling the bubbles.
So one is left with only 100 minutes to attempt these 200 Questions.
There is no sectional cutoff in the exam.
It consists of 50 questions each from following sections :
a) Logical Reasoning
b) General Awareness
c) Quantitative Aptitude
d) English Language and Comprehension
Each question from all sections carries 1 mark which makes it a 200 Marks Exam .
Generally the cutoff to clear the paper is 90-105.

Analysis of the topics

We have already shared detailed analysis of each section.
Click here to see the detailed analysis of each section.

Preparation Strategy
Keeping in mind, there are only 30 days left for the exam, we are sharing this strategy for all type of
aspirants.
In todays times, most common section of students giving exam is Engineering Graduates. Due to the
improved Job conditions in Government sector, it is becoming famous particularly among Engineers.
Generally they develop strong Logical and mathematical concepts during their graduation and
hence face very less issues in qualifying the exam. So lets discuss preparation strategy for them first.

1) For engineers or candidates with strong maths background

- It is observed that Students with strong maths concepts are also good at Logical Reasoning. So these
two are the main sections where maximum marks can be scored by you.
Lets discuss the preparation strategy for each section one by one.
Logical Reasoning
- This section normally contains questions from ........ sections. :

Out of these sections, you will mainly face problems in series questions , combination
questions(circular), picking odd one out and fill in the series(abcd wala).
These topics can be mastered only by practicing questions .
You can refer these books to work on the mentioned topics. Try to complete atleast 1 book
from these.It should not take more than 7-8 days if you give LR 2 hours a day.
After completing one or two book ,you can directly start giving mock tests to assess your
performance.
Determine your weak sections and work on them simultaneously.
A person with good logic and knowledge of the pattern of this section can score 40-45 marks out
of 50.

General Awareness
- It is the most vast section and requires months of preparation if you want to score above 30. Key
points for preparing this section:

As you need not devote a lot of time to Logical Reasoning and Quantitative Section , you can this
section good time.
In SSC CGL, mostly Static GK comes from this section.
Only 2-4 questions can be expected from current affairs.
Reading newspaper can be one source to grab these 2-4 marks and in addition,newspaper helps
in building English Language concepts.
So daily 1-2 hours of newspaper reading is considered good.
Some topics which should be given importnace for preparation from static GK are Science and
Technology, Modern History of India , Geography and Constitution of India.
These sections constitute around 40-45% of the questions and also these topics will help greatly
at the time of interview.
Give 2 hour daily to prepare Static GK.
Anything more than 20 marks from this section will be considered a good score.
Books to refer are :

Quantitatie Analysis
- If you are having strong basic concepts of Mathematics, then this section will be cakewalk for you. In
recent years(CGL 2013 and 2014),this section has seen a major change in the difficulty level of questions.
Now the questions are very basic in nature and a lot more easy. 35-40 marks can be easily scored and
you should prepare to get those remaining 10-15 marks.

One should start the preparation by referring only one book.

Complete that book so that all the basic concepts are brushed up. It is important to ensure that
you did not miss any concept.
........... book would be ideal for this purpose.Learn the shortcuts or formulae from book only if
your method takes long time to solve the question. If you study maths daily for 3 hours, you can
complete this book in 6-7 days.
After that,you can start doing random questions from any source ( like mock tests , internet ,
forums , FB and whatsapp group) and should optimize the way of doing questions.
This will prepare you for the exam as there will be random and mixed questions in the exam. So
swift switching from one type of question to another is very important.
Simultaneously start giving mock tests.As in todays scenario, your score does not depend on
ability of solving difficult questions but the time taken to solve an easy question.
After giving the mock test analyse its solution thoroughly,and change the way of doing a question
only if you think it is necessary.
Your objective should be to attempt all 50 questions in 40 minutes.

English Language and Comprehension

- It is the most predicatble section in the exam.The no of questions from each topic and their difficulty
level remained same over the years .
A person with good reading habbits( Novel or Newspaper) will find himself very comfortable in this
section.
If one does not read newspaper, he should not start it now. Just have a look in the newspaper
and try to find atleast 10 difficult words daily. In CGL exam , mostly the common used words
come, so newspaper words help a lot in this regard.
Make a Notebook to note down these words , their meaning , synonyms and antonyms.
Writing these down is very important since spelling check questions also come in the paper.
Learn the spelling of confusing words with double letters like commissioner , assassination ,
rabit , habbit , Grammar and also words with silent letters like pseudo.
If you are writing down only 10 words per day and learning them simultaneouly, you will be having
a repository of around 1000 words before the exam(as you are writing their synonyms and
antonyms as well).

If you encounter a word whose synonym is already written, write the new word with the previous
synonym only as it is easy to learn a group of words having same meaning.
A person good in Mathematics and Logical Reasoning should devote maximum time to prepare
this section because if he succeeds in doing so,he can score overall very well in the Prelims.
Also , if your English Language is good, don't learn much rules for Error Correction and Fill ups as
it is a language and hence driven by sense of correctness than by Rules.
But if you find it difficult to identify the errors, then you should learn the Rules for them . We will
be sharing them to help you out.
Comprehensions are generally very easy and need not be prepared.
Idioms should be attempted by eliminating other options. Basic sense of correctness can help a
lot in this section.

Now as you are good in Mathematics & Logic, you can spare enough time for English and can touch
General Awareness Section, you should target to score 140+ considering the present level of the paper.

Time Wise Strategy

Now lets see what you need to do daily.

First 10 days
- Give one previous year paper on the first day. This will help you to familarise yourself with the
pattern , and also it will help to guage your future performance/improvement with respect to
result of this paper.
After that you need to do following tasks daily:
o 2 hours LR Practice from book.
o 1 hour newspaper reading(only if you are in good habit of doing that).
o 1-2 hours to Static GK.
o 2-3 hours Maths practice from some book.
o 1 hour Vocabulary creation and learning.
o 1-2 hour miscellaneous.
-

In between give one more mock test to check your improvement.This time will be very
important for you. Try to give 10 hours daily to studies.

11-15 day
- Give two previous year papers.Anlyse them properly to see which topics you could not cover.
- Cover the uncovered topics from books ,net or our blog.
- Do group study to know better methods of doing questions.

15-23 day
- Give a mock test in every two days.
- Analyse the tests to check what type of questions , you are encountering for the first time.
- Get the methods to solve them from any source.
- Practice that method with some other questions.
- Try to solve some high level questions and learn new methods.
Last week
- Daily give one mock test or previous year paper.
- Optimize the method of doing the questions.
- Analyse the paper and solution of each question thoroughly

2) Aspirants with weak maths concepts

- A common myth among aspirants is that students with non engineering background or weak maths
concepts find themselves struggling to qualify the paper. However, this is never the case. With
concentrated approach and hard work, anyone can get 140+ in this exam.You just need to develop a
proper study plan and stick to it. Analysing the pattern and and working around it will get you at par with
candidates having strong background.

Lets develop a study plan for you.

Logical Reasoning
If you are not good at it , there is nothing to worry. Questions in this section follow a set pattern and even
if only the concerned topics are covered, one can easily score 40 in this section.

....... book is good to start with. It will provide you the questions of same pattern and difficulty level
as encountered in SSC exam.
You should cover each topic one by one. Logical Reasoning topics do not take more than 3 hours
to be prepared.
Do not spend much time on preparing any difficult section , as it will delay your overall
preparation. This section has lot of easy topics, target those.
If you are giving 3-4 hours daily to this section, you can easily finish off this section from 1 book in
5-6 days.
Then prepare this section from second book . This will provide you with different type of questions
of a particular topic. This time it will hardly take 3-4 days to complete the book.
After that start giving mock tests. Check if you missed any easy topic to cover. If missed, practice
it from net.
Determine the scope of improvement and work on them.
In Logical Reasoning the difficult topics are series questions , combination questions(circular) and
fill in the series(abcd wala).
You can leave these topics if you are not able do well in them.
If you practice enough questions and work according to plan, you shall be able to score 35-40 in
this section.

General Awareness
It is the most vast section of the paper.
As you need to give more time to Mathematics and Logical Reasoning, a bold advise would be
not to touch this section at all.
It requires a lot of time even if you want to improve to improve only 5-10 marks.
Then also if you want to prepare something from this section, prepare the topics you are already
good in.
Trying to prepare a new subject would be a suicidal attempt.
The advice of not touching this section is given based on the inputs of many toppers of previous CGL.
It shall not harm you much as there is no sectional cutoff in the paper.
Quantitatie Analysis
Strategy to prepare this section is similar to Logical Reasoning . The only difference is that it has
more variety of questions and hence it is very important to develop strong basic concepts of each
topic so that different type of questions from these topics can be solved with ease and in less
time.
A big relief for you is, in recent years(CGL 2013 and 2014),this section has seen a major
change in the difficulty level of questions. Now the questions are very basic in nature and a lot
more easy. So anyone can score 35-40 if sufficient amount of practice is done.

You should start the preparation by referring only one book.

........... book would be ideal for you since it explains in detail the basic concepts. Don't go for too
many shortcuts and formulas.That will unnecessarily confuse you.
Build a strong foundation by learning the basics of the concepts, it doesn't take too much time or
efforts .
This section requires a little more time. Try to give it 4-5 hours daily(one or 2 topic). You shall be
able to complete first book in 7-8 days. Proper way of utilising these 7-8 days is:
o For each type of question, formulate your own way of doing it.
o You can refer our blog also for learning easy ways to attempt questions.
o Write down the unique questions and way of solving them in a separate notebook .
o A common mistake aspirants make is they learn shortcuts and formulas for each new
question without knowing the actual logic behind it and the way to solve it completely .
You should write the whole method of solving the question and not just the formula.

After completing first book , now solve one previous year exam.
You will encounter some uncovered topics while solving the paper, prepare those topics
thoroughly with the help of other books and internet.
For this you can refer this book..
Solve one or two previous year papers like this only.
Although your score will be less but by now, you must have covered basics of 80-85% of the
expected topics and now is the time you can move to prepare the advaced level of these topics.
Analyse these papers now thoroughly to observe which questions took more time and which
questions you could not solve.
Check its solutions to learn new method if your method was too lengthy or you could not solve the
question.Write the new method in your notebook.
If you were able to solve a question in less than a minute, you should not learn a new method for
that question.
Now you will be left with around 15 days before the exam . Start giving 1 mock test in 2 days to
check your improvement. Click here to download them.
Start visiting our forum daily to check the new methods of solving questions.
You can also upload your score in a particular paper to check your ranking as well.

English Language and Comprehension

- It is the most predicatble section in the exam.The no of questions from each topic and their difficulty
level remained same over the years .
A person with good reading habbits( Novel or Newspaper) will find himself very comfortable in this
section.
If one does not read newspaper, he should not start it now. Just have a look in the newspaper
and try to find atleast 10 difficult words daily. In CGL exam , mostly the common used words
come, so newspaper words help a lot in this regard.
Make a Notebook to note down these words , their meaning , synonyms and antonyms.
Writing these down is very important since spelling check questions also come in the paper.
Learn the spelling of confusing words with double letters like commissioner , assassination ,
rabit , habbit , Grammar and also words with silent letters like pseudo.
If you are writing down only 10 words per day and learning them simultaneouly, you will be having
a repository of around 1000 words before the exam(as you are writing their synonyms and
antonyms as well).
If you encounter a word whose synonym is already written, write the new word with the previous
synonym only as it is easy to learn a group of words having same meaning.
If your English Language is good enough , don't learn much rules for Error Correction and Fill ups
as it is a language and hence driven by sense of correctness than by Rules.
But if you find it difficult to identify the errors, then you should learn the Rules for them . We will
be sharing them to help you out.
Comprehensions are generally very easy and need not be prepared.
Idioms should be attempted by eliminating other options. Basic sense of correctness can help a
lot in this section.

Time Wise Strategy

Now lets see what you need to do daily.

First 10 days
- Give one previous year paper on the first day. This will help you to familarise yourself with the
pattern , and also it will help to guage your future performance/improvement with respect to
result of this paper.
After that you need to do following tasks daily:
o 4 hours LR Practice from book.
o 5 hours Maths practice from some book.
o 1 hour Vocabulary creation and learning.

o
o
-

1 hour newspaper reading(only if you are in good habit of doing that and time allows).
1 hour miscellaneous.

In between give one more mock test to check your improvement.This time will be very
important for you. Since you need to do Maths and LR also , try to give 12 hours daily to
studies.

11-15 day
- Give two previous year papers.Anlyse them properly to see which topics you could not cover.
- Cover the uncovered topics from books ,net or our blog.
- Daily do the practice of the questions.

15-23 day
- Give a mock test in every two days.
- Analyse the tests to check what type of questions , you are encountering for the first time.
- Get the methods to solve them from any source only if you think it is not very difficult or time
consuming.
- Practice that method with some other questions.
- Do not try to solve high level questions or learn new methods.
- Stick to the basics and do a lot of practice.

Last week
- Daily give one mock test or previous year paper.
- Optimize the method of doing the questions.
- Analyse the paper and solution of each question thoroughly

3) Non English Background Aspirants

- Frankly speaking, no one can learn a language in a few months, so if you are from non English
Background or your english is not good , you should not try to learn the language but should concentrate
only on the topics which come in the subjects.
Lets see how it can be done :

You cant do much for error correction and fill ups, if you have started preparing just now for the
paper.
Then also, if some basics are covered, around 50% of these questions can be attempted. For
basics you can refer this book.
You should try to read only these topics from Grammar : Tenses, Modals , rules for singluar/plural
Gaurav can tell .
These topics wont take much time or efforts.
Then for Vocabulary you can use the below method.
o Just have a look in the newspaper and try to find atleast 10 difficult words daily. In CGL
exam , mostly the common used words come, so newspaper words help a lot in this
regard.
o Make a Notebook to note down these words , their meaning , synonyms and antonyms.
o Writing these down is very important since spelling check questions also come in the
paper. Learn the spelling of confusing words with double letters like commissioner ,
assassination , rabit , habbit , Grammar and also words with silent letters like pseudo.
o If you are writing down only 10 words per day and learning them simultaneouly, you will
be having a repository of around 1000 words before the exam(as you are writing their
synonyms and antonyms as well).
o If you encounter a word whose synonym is already written, write the new word with the
previous synonym only as it is easy to learn a group of words having same meaning.
o It will cover your one word substitution also.
o We will be sharing vocabulary daily on our website. It will be specifically for SSC CGL
exam. Keep studying from there.
Idioms should be attempted by eliminating other options. Basic sense of correctness can help a
lot in this section.

Practice some Reading Comprehensions. Its an easy section and can fetch you 100% marks
with less efforts.
For time Strategy, you should refer one of the two already mentioned depending on your skills of
Maths. Along with that you need to give 2 hours to Other sections of English (Like Grammar,
Comprehension etc).

How to give Mock/Previous Year tests:

The most important thing is you should have a similar environment like that while giving the actual
paper.
Sit in a quiet place and then start the paper.
Give it completely in one go . Dont do it in bits and pieces.
Set a timer for 100 minutes(this is actually what you get to solve the questions).
The order and time duration for each section should be same as you will be employing in actual
paper.
You can try to experiment with order and time duration if you are not comfortable in present
setting.
One of the topper told, he used to spend 3-4 hours in analysing the paper. This is what you
should also do.
Analyse each and every question of maths and LR, to check for the better methods from the
solution of the paper. You should adopt the new method only if you feel it is necessary.
For english, check the solution of Grammatical questions and note them down in a separate
notebook . Do the same for Vocab. This alone can improve your score by upto 10 marks.

I hope this will help you guys. All the best for exam.