CDS Syllabus 2023 - Check Subject wise Syllabus

30-December 2022...........

CDS Exam 2023 Syllabus

The government conducts numerous defence exams for candidates who wants to serve the nation and have a bravery to join Indian Defence Forces. But among them all, one grabs an immense amount of interest of Defence Aspirants, – it’s Combined Defence Services Examination or commonly called CDS Exam.

Through this Examination, Candidates get an opportunity to be a Commissioned Officer in armed forces, which is a dream for every defence aspirant. It is conducted under the guidance of Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), twice in every year. And if we talk about its posts coverage, that CDS recruit candidates for 4 academies, namely –

Indian Naval Academy
Indian Military Academy
Indian Air Force Academy
Officers Training Academy

Here we are going to discuss briefly about CDS Exam and its Syllabus for 2023. But before capturing Syllabus, some basic and important details regarding to Examination are need to be known. Let’s take a look :

Eligibility to Appear in Exam

There are numerous eligibility criteria to appear or apply for CDS Examination, regarding to age factor, education qualification, physical standards, and residence details. Some basic and necessary eligibility measures are listed here –

Both men and women are free to apply in exam.
Women are eligible to apply only for OTA.
Minimum age limit to apply is 19 Years (relaxation as per notification)

Indian Military Academy	19–24 years
Air Force Academy	19–24 years
Naval Academy	19–24 years
Officers Training Academy	19–25 years

Candidate must be settled in India.

Any graduate can apply for exam. A candidate appearing in graduation or in final semester/year of graduation can apply.
Candidate must meet the physical requirements mentioned in Notification.
Candidate must possess his/her original documents.

If you want a brief of Eligibility guidelines, it is highly suggested to go through the official CDS 2023 Notification on their official site.

Procedure of Examination

As every government exam consist a written test to examine candidate’s intelligence and learning capability, CDS also contains a Written Test. Hence, its a Defence service so there is a further need to check aspirant’s personality, physical strength, and other adaptability skills.

Thus, overall examination consist 3 stages to qualify – Written exam, SSB interview and Medical Fitness Test. Here is a quick brief of selection stages for various Defence Academies –

For IMA, INA & OTA

: Offline Written Test

: 5 Days Interview by SSB

: Medical Fitness Test

For AFA

: Offline Written Test

: 5 Days Interview by SSB

: Computerized Pilot Selection System Test (CPSS)

: Medical Fitness Test

Subjects & Marking :

Furthermore, talking about written examination it consist 3 subjects to be mastered on, namely – English Language, General Knowledge, and Elementary Mathematics. Every subject consist objective type questions to do in 2 hours on each.

English and General knowledge both have 120 Questions each, on the other hand Mathematics has 100 Questions under 2 hours. It can be more clear from following table of marking –

For IMA, INA, & AFA
Subject	Questions	Marks	Timing
English	120	100	2 Hours for each paper
General Knowledge	120	100
Elementary maths	100	100
Total	340	300

For OTA
Subject	Questions	Marks	Timing
English	120	100	2 Hours for each paper
General Knowledge	120	100
Total	240	200

CDS Exam Syllabus :

As we mentioned above, syllabus in CDS Examination is quite similar for all posts except Officers Training Academy post i.e; for IMA, INA, & IAFA subject comprises English, General Knowledge and Elementary Mathematics but for OTA, candidates only need to prepare for English and General knowledge.

Aspirants generally confuses in between Mathematics and Elementary Mathematics. In CDS, students just need to be fluent in Elementary Mathematics which is limited to 10th Grade/level maths syllabus. On the other hand, English and General Knowledge should be prepare on Graduation level. Let’s check the individual syllabus of every subject in brief –

MATHEMATICS :

It’s a most important subject of CDS Examination, which holds 120 Questions for 100 marks. Candidate has given sufficient 2 Hours to deal with the questions. If we talk about the question weightage then it consist,

- Around 20 Questions from Number System.
- Geometry and perimeter parts are easy.
- Trigonometry, Average, Percentage, Ratio and Proportion, Statistics on Moderate level.
- Time & work, Simple & Compound Interest, Profitloss and Data Interpretation have tough level.

A student usually need to attempt more than 55 correct questions to qualify the paper and shine in overall merit. Basic topics to cover whole Elementary Mathematics are – Arithmetic, Algebra, Mensuration, Geometry, Trigonometry and Statistics. Talking about the syllabus topics in brief, check the below table –

Subjects	Topics
Arithmetic	Number System, Natural numbers, Rational & Real numbers, Integers, Fundamental operations, multiplication, subtraction, addition, and division, Square roots, Decimal fractions, Unitary method, time and work, percentages, time and distance, simple & compound interest, ratio and Proportion, profit and loss, Elementary Number Theory, Prime & composite numbers, Division algorithm, Tests divisibility by 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 11, Factorisation Theorem, Multiples and factor’s, L.C.M. & H.C.F, Euclidean algorithm, Logarithms to base 10, laws of logarithms & use of the logarithmic tables
Algebra	Basic Operations, simple factors, Theory of polynomials, solutions of quadratic equations, relation between its roots and coefficients , Simultaneous linear inequations in 2 variables and their solutions, Simultaneous linear equations in two unknowns—analytical & graphical solutions, Rational expressions and conditional identities, Set language and set notation, & Laws of indices
Trigonometry	Simple trigonometric identities, Trigonometric tables, & Simple cases of height & distance
Geometry	Plane and plane figures, Lines and angles, Theorems on properties of angles at a point, Parallel lines, Sides & angles of a triangle, Congruency of triangles, Similar triangles, Concurrence of medians and altitudes, Properties of angles, sides and diagonals of a parallelogram, square and rectangle, Circles and its properties including tangents and normals & Loci
Mensuration	Areas of squares, parallelograms, rectangles, triangles, and circles, Surface area and volume of cuboid, lateral surface and volume of right circular cones and cylinders, surface area and volume of spheres
Statistics	Collection and tabulation of statistical data, Graphical representation frequency polygons, bar charts, histograms, pie charts, and others, Measures of central tendency

GENRAL KNOWLEDGE :

General Knowledge is called the score grabbing subject in CDS Examination. The paper questions all covered under Current affairs and Static GK subjects, which holds total 120 question for 100 marks. The time given for the test is more than sufficient I.e; 2 Hours.

Measuring from previous year papers, General Knowledge test contains about 24 question on Moderate level, which a good student can attempt them correctly. For attaining a good merit and scoring enough to cross the threshold, a student need to attempt more than 74 Questions. The detailed topic wise syllabus is given below –

History
Geography
Politics
Economics
Sociology
Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biology)
Environment
Sports
Awards
Books & Authors
Culture and Traditions

ENGLISH LANGUAGE :

This section deals with testing of candidate’s knowledge on grammar, vocabulary, punctuations, spellings and errors finding ability. Especially for IAFA and INA perspective, English is a mandatory and needed skill. The weightage of question in this section is –

- 120 Questions for 100 marks
- 20 synonym and antonym based questions
- 10 questions from fill ups, sentence/phrase rearrangement
- 20 Questions from reading comprehension
- 20 questions from error detection
- Other questions from grammar study

If we talk about the topics, this section covers –

Antonyms
Sentence improvement
Comprehension
Synonyms
Word substitution
Ordering of sentences
Spotting Errors
Selecting Words
Ordering of words in a sentence

Candidates need to attempt more than 60 questions to achieve a good score in this section.

Overall, a candidate needs to clear his/her basic mathematics concepts based on the 10th level and attain a good knowledge in General Knowledge and English to achieve the minimum qualification threshold and be in merit. The syllabus is wide but the topics are all known and well familiar, so an aspirant just needs to sharpen his/her efforts, give time, and focus.

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