From 30 September to 30 October 2026, SSC CGL Tier-1 runs as a Computer-Based Exam across a month-long window. That means dozens of shifts, and within hours of each one the internet will fill up with analyses: difficulty levels, "good attempts", lists of questions supposedly asked, and confident predictions about the cut-off. Some of it is useful. Most of it is noise, and a fair amount of it will quietly make you worse at the exam you still have to write. You are reading this in one of two situations. Either your shift has not happened yet and you want to know what is coming, or your shift is done and you want to know whether what you scored was good enough. Those need two completely different kinds of reading, and this page separates them. It also explains the one thing most shift analyses skip: that raw scores from different shifts are not comparable at all, because the Commission normalises them before anything is decided. With 12,256 vacancies and over 28 lakh applicants, the temptation to read every analysis is real. Read them for topic information. Ignore them for prediction.
Tier-1 is 100 questions for 200 marks in 60 minutes, four sections of 25 questions each. Marking is +2 for a correct answer and -0.5 for a wrong one; unattempted questions cost nothing. For the 2026 cycle the Commission has moved to sectional timing: each section gets its own 15-minute window and closes when that window ends, so you cannot bank time from one section to another or return to a section you have left. This is the single most important thing to remember when you read shift analyses written in earlier cycles - their advice on attempt order and "come back to it later" no longer applies. SSC has announced an examination window, 30 September to 30 October 2026, not per-candidate dates; your own date, shift and centre appear on your admit card. Confirm every schedule detail on ssc.gov.in.
Our free full mock is 100 questions, four sections of 25, with the 15-minute sectional lock the Commission has introduced this cycle, +2/-0.5 scoring and the same 60-minute total. That matters when you read a shift analysis: attempt counts quoted from older cycles came from a free-navigation paper. Your own attempt data from a locked-section mock is a far better benchmark than a stranger's number from a different format.
After a mock, the AI sorts your mistakes by type - conceptual, calculation, careless, or time-pressure - rather than telling you the paper was "moderate". If a shift analysis says Quant leaned heavily on arithmetic, that is only useful if you know whether arithmetic is where you lose marks. This turns a public opinion about the paper into a private fact about you.
"Good attempts" is a coaching estimate with no official standing. After a mock, our AI estimates your All-India rank against real 2020-24 cut-off data, so you get a position rather than a folk number. It is still an estimate, and we say so on the screen - but it is anchored to published cut-offs rather than to what a few hundred people posted online.
When an analysis says a topic "appeared again this year", you can test it. Our bank holds roughly 31,000 questions, about 29,000 of them genuine previous-year SSC questions carried with the Commission's own answer keys. Filter by topic and see for yourself whether it actually recurs across cycles, instead of re-planning your last fortnight around one memory-based post.
There is no evidence for this and SSC does not publish a difficulty rating for any shift. The belief spreads every cycle because candidates in later shifts read weeks of analyses first and arrive more anxious than the people who wrote on day one. What is true is that different shifts get different papers of broadly similar standard, and the Commission normalises scores across shifts precisely so that an unlucky draw does not decide your result. Prepare for your own date and treat claims about a "tough second week" as gossip.
Good attempts is an estimate published by coaching platforms of how many questions a competitive candidate probably got right in a given shift. It is not an SSC figure and no official body endorses it. It can be loosely indicative when many shifts agree, but it is built from self-reported data by people who volunteer their scores, which skews high. Use it as weather, not as a measurement - and remember that with sectional locks new this cycle, attempt figures quoted from previous years were produced under different rules.
No. SSC normalises marks across shifts for multi-shift examinations, and by a notice dated 2 June 2025 it moved to the equipercentile method, which compares candidates by their percentile rank within their own shift rather than by raw marks. In plain terms, someone who beat 80 per cent of the candidates in a hard shift is treated on par with someone who beat 80 per cent in an easier one. You will not be punished for the paper you were handed. Wait for your normalised score in the official scorecard rather than comparing raw marks with a friend from another shift.
Only if you have another exam to prepare for. Nothing in any analysis can change a paper you have submitted, and reading twenty shift reviews looking for reassurance is a reliable way to spend three weeks feeling worse. The sensible plan is to note what you found hard, leave it, and start on Tier-2 groundwork or your next exam. Come back when the Commission releases the response sheet and tentative answer key, which will tell you the truth about your own paper.
From the Commission itself, when it uploads the tentative answer key along with your individual response sheet on ssc.gov.in, accessed by logging in with your registration number and password. That sheet shows every question you were given and the option you marked, which is the only authoritative record. Memory-based question lists circulated in the first days after a shift are assembled from recall and routinely contain errors in both the question and the answer. Download and save your response sheet as a PDF the day it opens, because the login window closes after a set number of days.
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