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CSAT is the exam that doesn’t count — until it eliminates you. Paper II (CSAT) is qualifying in nature, meaning your marks don’t contribute to your Prelims score or merit ranking. But failing to clear 33% means your GS Paper I marks become irrelevant, no matter how well you performed. Every year, candidates who scored 120+ on GS Paper I have been knocked out of the Prelims shortlist because they underestimated Paper II. UPSCYatra’s CSAT PYQ section gives you past year questions organised by year so you can practise with real exam material, benchmark your performance, and fix gaps before they cost you a Prelims attempt.

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What’s Available

UPSCYatra hosts 617+ UPSC Prelims CSAT (Paper II) questions spanning 8 years — from 2019 to 2026. Questions from 2022–2026 are free without logging in. The complete archive from 2019–2021 is available with a free login. Each year’s questions are presented in full so you can practise them as a complete paper or filter by topic type.

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Topics Covered in CSAT PYQs

UPSC Paper II tests a specific set of aptitude skills. You’ll find questions from all of these areas across the available years:

Comprehension Passages

Reading passages followed by inference, summary, and tone questions. Speed and accuracy in parsing dense text is the key skill here.

Logical Reasoning

Syllogisms, logical sequences, statement-assumption, statement-conclusion, and cause-effect questions.

Mental Ability

Series completion, analogies, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, and spatial reasoning.

Basic Numeracy

Number systems, percentages, ratio and proportion, averages, simple and compound interest, and profit & loss. Class 10-level mathematics.

Data Interpretation

Bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, and tables. Questions test your ability to read, interpret, and calculate from structured data quickly.

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Strategy for Clearing CSAT

The goal is not to maximise your CSAT score — it’s to clear the 33% threshold reliably, then invest the rest of your preparation bandwidth in GS Paper I.

Know your minimum target

You need 33% to qualify — that’s 67 marks out of 200. With 80 questions of 2.5 marks each and a 1/3 negative marking, you can qualify by answering approximately 34–36 questions correctly while attempting carefully. Do not try to attempt all 80 questions.
1

Assess your starting point

Attempt one full year’s paper (use 2023 or 2024) under timed conditions — 80 questions in 120 minutes. Score yourself honestly. This benchmark tells you exactly how much work CSAT needs.
2

Identify your weakest topic type

Most candidates are weak in either comprehension speed or numeracy/DI. Check where you lost the most marks in your benchmark attempt and focus your practice on that area first.
3

Build a topic-focused practice schedule

Practise by topic type using the filters in the CSAT PYQ section — spend focused sessions on comprehension one day, DI the next. Varied, short practice sessions build speed more effectively than marathon attempts.
4

Take full timed papers before Prelims

In the 4–6 weeks before Prelims, take at least two complete timed CSAT papers. Confirm that you can consistently clear 33% with an appropriate attempt strategy and comfortable margin.

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Background-Based Time Estimates

Engineering / Science Graduates

Most quantitative-background candidates can clear the 33% threshold with 2–3 weeks of focused practice, primarily on comprehension speed and logical reasoning. Your numeracy and DI instincts are already strong; the unfamiliar question formats are the only real hurdle.

Humanities / Arts Graduates

Plan for 4–6 weeks of dedicated CSAT preparation, with emphasis on basic numeracy and data interpretation. These topics require building comfort with numbers from scratch, which takes more time — but with consistent practice, the 33% target is very achievable.

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Do not leave CSAT entirely to the last two weeks of Prelims preparation. It has eliminated strong GS candidates in multiple recent cycles. Treat CSAT as a risk to be managed early: spend a few weeks on it at the start of your preparation year, clear the threshold comfortably in mock tests, and then maintain that level with occasional practice through the year.
On comprehension passages, read the questions first, then the passage. This tells you exactly what to look for and dramatically reduces the time you spend re-reading. For DI, practise approximation techniques — precise calculations waste time; close approximations are usually enough to distinguish the right answer from the distractors.