The Most Comprehensive Analysis of Prelims 2012 with Cut-off - IAS ...

General study

 last year general study paper was more  focussed  on economy,geography and enviornment questions this year UPSC adopted a more balanced approach and questions from history ,polity and general  science  were asked in plenty;lot of people  start saying that history and polity loosing there colors in this exam .but this year paper stressed more on these subjects.this paper seems quiet easy in first view but when you go for answers then due to the presence of multiple answers in most of the questions it hamper the simple nature of exam .
 here is complete analysis of the topics of exam:

Topic	No. of Questions	Marks
G.K	14	28
Current Affairs	6	12
History	19	38
Polity	17	34
General Science	16	32
Geography	8	16
Environment and Ecology	10	20
Economy	10	20
TOTAL	100	200

As you can see from the table above,in this year there is less focus on the current years questions which mainly dominate the UPSC-mains.candidates normally prepare for the history and polity well but due to the multiple answer it will affects there expected marks.

CSAT

CSAT  was quite easy, although lengthy.there were only 3-4 questions of mathematics .many students prepared hard for  the maths ,but this was complete shock for them.but overall due to the presence of logical reasoning questions ,decision making(no body can be 100% sure which ans is right),10 smalll english comprehension this paper was easy and scoring too

Expected Prelims 2012 Cut Off

i think most of the people guessing that the cut off will be more then 220 but i think it will be n 80+115=195marks out of 400. In fact, I predict the cut-off marks will be in the range of 190-205 marks simply because of the easy nature of paper 2 and tricky answer  of paper 1.

so, friends share your experience   of your exam and your idea about cut off.