• Reading Comprehension
• Interpersonal skills including communication skills,
• Logical reasoning and analytical ability
• Decision making and problem solving
• General mental ability
• Basic numeracy (numbers and their relations, orders of magnitude etc.) (Class Xlevel)
• Data interpretation (charts, graphs, tables, data sufficiency etc. Class X level)
• English Language Comprehension skills (Class X level).

Common Points to be remembered:

• Paper-II of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination will be a qualifying paper with minimum Qualifying Marks fixed at 33.33%.
• The Questions will be of Multiple Choices, objective type the appearance of questions will be set in HINDI and ENGLISH.
• Each paper will be of TWO Hours duration. Blind candidates will however be allowed an extra time of 20 minutes at each paper. And even Physically Challenged people will get extra time of 40 minutes.
• It is mandatory for the candidate to appear in both the Papers of Civil Services (Prelims) Examination for the purpose of evaluation.
• If the candidate has qualified in Paper – II (CSAT) then only their Paper-1 (GS) paper will be evaluated.
• There will be a cut off marks to qualify for the next level i.e. Mains Examination. That will be determined according to the number of posts, number of candidates who appeared for the exam, and the average of the candidates who appeared for the exam, and the level of difficulty of the question paper in average. The marks scored by the candidates in the preliminary examination are not counted for the final score