CDS-2 2024 Paper Analysis and Expected Cut Off Marks

04-September 2024...........

This year’s CDS-2 2024 exam has already been conducted across centers in the country and since then all the candidates have been waiting to know the expected cutoff for all the academies. The CDS exam grants entry to various major league academies like IMA Dehradun, INA Ezhimala, AFA Dundigal, and OTA Chennai. UPSC is the prime body that decides and publishes the cut-offs for the written exam and is the governing body that is responsible for the final selection after the completion of the recruitment process. The cutoff depends on both the written exam with the criteria that the minimum qualifying marks acquired in each subject and the minimum aggregate marks of the last qualifying candidate which means that the final CDS cutoff rests on the marks of the last recommended candidate. The minimum criteria for qualifying individual subjects need to be 20 percent respectively. Candidates are required to attain separate qualifying marks for both the written exam and the SSB Interview respectively. As per the CDS cutoff, the candidates are then selected and stationed for the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Indian Naval Academy (INA), Air Force Academy (AFA), and Officers’ Training Academy (OTA).

CDS- 2 2024 Paper Analysis

The written exam for IMA, INA, and AFA consists of English, General Knowledge, and Elementary Mathematics sections. The criteria for admission to OTA comprises two sections, English and General Knowledge. The total marks of the test for IMA, INA, and AFA are 300 while for OTA it is 200. Candidates are mandatorily required to secure the minimum qualifying marks individually in each subject, that is 20%. UPSC prepares a total list of candidates who obtain the minimum qualifier marks in the written exam. The candidates who are declared successful in the written exam are then called up for their intelligence and personality tests.

Subsequently, the SSB Interview depends upon the two-stage selection process. Stage 1 comprises Officer Intelligence Rating (OIR) tests and Picture Perception Description Test (PP&DT). Stage 2 comprises Interviews, Group Testing, Officer Tasks, Psychology Tests, and the Conference. The CDS cut-off for the SSB Interview is decided out of 300 marks for IMA, INA, and AFA and 200 marks for OTA respectively.

According to this year’s paper, the pattern for CDS 2 2024 English paper was easy to moderate. New topics appeared in this section candidates were able to attempt a fair number of questions. There were a few new topics asked like matching lists, correlating sentences, and usage of paired words. On the other hand, the General Knowledge question paper was tough as compared to the English section and the overall difficulty level of the paper was moderate. A fairly decent number of questions were asked from Current affairs, Geography, and History.

Cut-off Trend for 2024

To assess the cut-off trend for this year, the previous year’s cut-off trend must be glanced upon which has been mentioned later below in the same article. The Cutoff differs with each training academy respectively. This cut-off by the UPSC depends on several factors namely-

Total number of seats available
Number of candidates appearing for the exam
Difficulty level of exam
Previous year cutoff trends

Previous year cut-off list trend-

The table will give you a clear picture of the cutoff trend based on the qualifying marks as declared by UPSC in the previous years. Alternatively, it also gives an insight on the difficulty levels of the exam and selection probability for the SSB interview-

Name Of Examination IMA INA AFA OTA

CDS (I) 2018 118 98 138 69

CDS (II) 2018 116 102 131 80

CDS (I) 2019 116 105 129 78

CDS (II) 2019 134 122 148 95

CDS (I) 2020 130 118 143 93

CDS (II) 2020 139 134 152 97

CDS (I) 2021 145 136 158 107

CDS (II) 2021 138 132 148 102

CDS (I) 2022 136 128 147 100

CDS (II) 2022 126 118 136 98

CDS (1) 2023 132 122 142 101