[Official] Prelims 2020 Answer Key (All Sets) by ForumIAS + Live Paper Discussion + Score Calculator

@root @Neyawn when will the score calculator give out scores?

Galat baat hai sahab, aaj to aaram milna chahye :/

UPSC had to Google questions to set 2020 Prelims paper! They are pushing students to do guesswork instead of asking quality questions in Prelims. Prelims paper was difficult but good till last year, this time it was way off track.

I got D series, midway through the paper I doubted whether I am sitting for an Agriculture University exam & I reminded myself of sitting for the right Bureaucracy exam. I understood the pattern of the Prelims very very well, I could anticipate the topics that will be asked. BUT, either marked wrong answers for the questions I knew or marked too many in the second round. This reduced my score. The mains questions & the kind of analytical study required for UPSC Civil Services is brilliant. BUT, the Prelims paper just insulted the hard work of students. 2020 Prelims was solely made by keeping Agriculture, Geography optional students in mind & the paper was a screening test for Forest Officers, not Administrative/Revenue/Police, etc. officers. Why would an IAS/IPS/IRS want to know the budding or netting crop growing system of Sugarcane or what term was used for which occupation centuries ago? The scope of syllabus is so vast that they don't need to ask "out of syllabus" questions like this time to make it difficult. There are a 1000 ways to make it difficult even if they ask any detail about a NP, WLS, Historical figures, etc.

All the best to the students going forward. This is a reality & accept it as it is. Bus apna tel nikal do iss exam mein and be satisfied with your work & ALWAYS be in sync with real Prelims Paper of UPSC not test series. See test series for only CA or topics out of context. Check VisionIAS sources for every question & preferably do those sources apart from our regular standard books. Do your own Google for S&T, Depts/ministries/Acts, Schemes from PIB. Make notes from Hindu newspaper for Polity & IR, NOT for S&T, Hindu BusinessLine for Agriculture, ET for Economics, History from books given by VisionIAS in their previous year prelims question sources, S&T from BBC but mainly simply google concepts & see recent "terms" or new "technologies" like Google "germ line genes" or "BT GMO" or "Data transfer wireless" etc and Google all such terms combinations to know recent developments in Biotech, Mobile Tech, GMO, Genes, etc. The complete syllabus of Prelims is not what is in test series or Notification but previous prelims paper. See the areas of questions asked for every subject in previous papers & do those areas thoroughly. I have that made extensively some in handwritten notes, some online. If possible, I will make it all online & upload it on a blog specially made for it. Will try to spread the link as much as possible. Else do it yourself. This is CRUCIAL & give syou a scope of syllabus & type of CA questions asked.

Regarding Prelims - Divide it into 2 rounds. 1st round do all that you have read & know 100% sure. This will be 35-45 questions as UPSC ALWAYS throws in easy questions for students to get some questions right. Rest 50 questions will contain either unknown areas or unconventional areas of known topics so this needs second look. Practice not marking any question wrong in round 1. Practice again and again on getting 2nd round max correct, no incorrect and choose right questions by leaving what you dont know. Round 1 gives you 90 marks in current difficult trend of Prelims. Round 2 should be overall positive marks and it pushes you over the cutoff boundary mark. Round 2 is done in various strategies by students i.e. segregate them into questions based on no. of options you don't know like 0 options known, 3 unknown, 2 unknown. OR you just do it all in 1 go. Also, the BEST strategy that worked brilliantly for me was to segregate the entire exam into subject areas. So whatever I didn't knew, I used to quickly write question no., topic asked under heading of Geo/Polity/S&T etc. in the Space for rough work at the back of the paper book. This is extremely easy to go back to the question and choose which questions you want to do in each subject & this helps immensely in picking the right questions. For round 2, UPSC has a set way of putting wrong questions which is also told by Youtube toppers extreme words or only/none etc which everyone would know already. There are other tricks also employed by it like generally in Art & Culture questions if you eliminate the known option, rest all are correct, Scheme is. given by "X" ministry/dept is many times wrong, "X" is an organ of "Y", any no. mentioned is wrong etc. But practicing the tests is when you will get it. I did 14 correct questions in round 2 just because of this practice when I had no clue about it. Many have shared their strategies too, just Google/Youtube it & analyze options & words in prelims papers yourself.

All the best dear hard working students. Life is all about experiences. Live this experience well and go on for another experience. God Bless!

calculator is working with B set key please allow it for all sets

@forumiasacademy -

Please look into question no. 57 and 58 of set B . I marked Answers as "A" and "B" respectively which are correct as per forum ias Key but in calculator its showing wrong

We are sorry for the delay. The keys have been put on the blog.

We are asking concerned faculty for taking up discussions for the questions so that all doubts are removed.

This thing may take till end of day today.

For the current balance, service export etc. wala question this is the source: 

https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1638804

Iske baad bhi ek quarter ka Aya hai but that is only an estimate and came days before exam.

Here merchandise balance and service balance, current account are positive so (c)3 only should be the answer

Guys, the question on AI applications. I feel the answer should be "1, 3 and 4". Because:

(1)the question asks applications at "present state of development".  

(2)wireless transmission of electricity utilizes RFID/magnetic field coils which itself is a nascent technology and AI has no bearing on it at present.

(3)AI can write formulaic stories at present which can help for news reporting. Experts predict only by "2060" it would be able to write "bestsellers".

@root any chance forumias is coming up with csat key as well?