The Stenographer CBT is unusual among SSC papers: English Language and Comprehension alone carries 100 of the 200 marks, so the paper is effectively decided by one section while most candidates spend their prep time on Reasoning and General Awareness. If you are staring at that imbalance and wondering where to start, start by sitting a timed paper and finding out which of the three sections is actually costing you marks. SSCIntel's mock tests are free, use real previous-year SSC questions with the commission's own answer keys, and hand you a mistake breakdown afterwards instead of just a score.
The Stenographer CBT runs for 2 hours in total, with +1 for a correct answer and -0.25 for a wrong one. For the current cycle SSC has introduced sectional timing - roughly 30 minutes each for Part I and Part II and 60 minutes for Part III - so time can no longer be borrowed from Reasoning to finish English; confirm the exact sectional timings in the notification for your cycle. Candidates who clear the CBT then face a qualifying stenography skill test. Be clear about what SSCIntel does and does not replicate: our free mock is a 100-question paper in four sections of 25 with 15-minute sectional locks and +2/-0.5 marking, built to mirror SSC CGL Tier-1. It is not a 200-question Stenographer replica, and it does not contain a dictation or transcription test. What it does give you is heavy, honest, timed practice in the Reasoning, General Awareness and English question types that the Stenographer paper draws from the same SSC question culture.
Half the Stenographer CBT is English Language and Comprehension - 100 questions against 50 each for Reasoning and General Awareness. Most aspirants under-practise it because the CGL and CHSL habit is to treat English as one section of four. SSCIntel's bank lets you run English-only practice on error spotting, fill in the blanks, synonyms and antonyms, idioms, one-word substitution and cloze passages, all pulled from genuine SSC papers, so you can build the volume that a 100-mark section deserves rather than the volume a 25-mark section deserves.
Sectional timing changes the exam from a 200-question paper into three separate races. If you are used to leaving English unfinished and coming back with spare Reasoning time, that escape route is gone. Every SSCIntel mock enforces a hard 15-minute lock per section - once the timer ends, that section closes and you cannot return. The number of minutes differs from the real Stenographer paper, but the discipline being trained is exactly the one it now asks for: finish inside the window or lose the marks.
Of roughly 31,000 questions in the bank, about 29,000 are actual previous-year SSC questions carrying the commission's official answer keys, drawn from CGL, CHSL, MTS and other SSC papers. That matters for Stenographer because SSC recycles question construction and vocabulary across its exams - the same idiom, the same subject-verb agreement trap, the same static GK fact will surface in a Stenographer paper having already appeared in a CHSL one. You are practising the commission's actual taste in questions, not a coaching institute's imitation of it.
The stenography skill test is a 10-minute dictation followed by transcription on a computer, and no online MCQ mock can prepare you for it. Grade C is dictated at 100 words per minute and Grade D at 80 words per minute, with different transcription windows for English and Hindi. That stage needs shorthand practice and typing speed work, done separately and daily. Use SSCIntel to clear the CBT with a comfortable margin, and keep your dictation practice running in parallel rather than waiting for the CBT result.
Yes. Three full-length mock tests a week are free, with no card details and no trial expiry, plus unlimited 15-minute single-section papers and the Daily Practice Paper of 10 questions a day. The free tier also includes one AI mock analysis per week and 8 messages a day with the AI subject tutors. Paid plans start at Rs 499 per month or Rs 2,999 per year and remove those limits - unlimited full mocks, with the AI analysis on every one. The previous-year question bank itself is not paywalled.
No, and we would rather say so than pretend. SSCIntel's mock format is 100 questions in four sections of 25 with sectional locks, modelled on SSC CGL Tier-1. The Stenographer CBT is 200 questions across three parts with English carrying 100 of them. What transfers is the question material and the timed discipline; what does not transfer is the section count and the exact length. For Stenographer-specific volume, use the topic-wise practice to run long English sets separately.
It carries over almost exactly, which is a genuinely useful thing to know. The Stenographer CBT awards +1 and deducts 0.25, while SSCIntel's CGL-style mock awards +2 and deducts 0.5. Both penalise a wrong answer by a quarter of what a correct one is worth, so the break-even point is identical: an attempt is worth making once your realistic chance of being right crosses about one in five. That is why a confident two-option elimination is worth attempting and a blind guess among four is not.
Weight it to the marks. English is 100 of 200 marks in the CBT, so anything less than half your study time on it is under-investing in the section that decides your result. In practice a sensible split is around half on English, a quarter on Reasoning and a quarter on General Awareness, adjusted by where your mock analysis says you are actually losing marks. Reasoning is the fastest section to improve; General Awareness has the lowest return per hour, so do not let it eat your English time.
Yes. The stenography skill test is qualifying in nature, meaning it does not add to your merit score, but you cannot be selected without clearing it. It involves a 10-minute dictation followed by transcription on a computer, with Grade C dictated at 100 words per minute and Grade D at 80 words per minute, and separate transcription time limits for English and Hindi. Start shorthand and typing practice alongside your CBT preparation rather than after the result, because speed is built over months, not weeks.
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