If you have been refreshing ssc.gov.in every hour, here is the short version. On 12 September 2026 the Commission announced that CGL 2026 Tier-1 will be held as a Computer-Based Examination from 30 September to 30 October 2026, against 12,256 vacancies, with more than 28 lakh candidates having applied. What SSC has given is an examination window, not a list of names against dates. Your own date, your shift and your reporting time are decided by the Commission and printed on your admit card. Nobody, including us, can tell you today whether you sit on 1 October or on 28 October. The useful thing to do with that uncertainty is simple: prepare as though your paper is early in the window, and build a routine steady enough to survive it being late.
Tier-1 is 100 questions for 200 marks in 60 minutes: four sections of 25 questions and 50 marks each, +2 for a correct answer and -0.5 for a wrong one. Candidates eligible for a scribe under SSC's PwBD provisions get compensatory time as per the Commission's notice. The shape of the paper does not change with your date or your shift; only the question set does, and that is what normalisation exists to account for.
SSCIntel's free full mock is 100 questions across four sections of 25, marked +2 and -0.5, with a 15-minute lock on each section so the 60-minute budget is actually enforced rather than assumed. Because you do not yet know your shift, the most valuable thing you can do this fortnight is sit one of these at 9 am and another at 4 pm. The clock in your body matters as much as the clock on the screen.
The bank holds roughly 31,000 questions, of which about 29,000 are genuine previous-year SSC questions carrying the Commission's own official answer keys. Across a month-long window, question sets vary from shift to shift, but the Commission's style of asking does not. Working through real past papers is the closest thing available to seeing your own shift in advance.
After a mock, the AI sorts every mistake into conceptual, calculation, careless or time-pressure, then builds a seven-day plan from what it found. Free accounts get one analysis a week, which fits neatly into a two-week runway: one now, one after your next full mock. If your date turns out to be late in the window, the same plan simply repeats with fresh weak areas.
A month-long window punishes candidates who peak early. The Daily Practice Paper, with its streak and daily leaderboard, is designed for exactly this problem: twenty minutes a day that keeps reasoning and general awareness warm without burning you out before your turn arrives. It costs nothing and takes less time than the arguing you will otherwise do in Telegram groups.
Almost certainly not, unless your admit card says so. 30 September is the first day of a window that runs to 30 October 2026, and with over 28 lakh applicants the Commission will spread candidates across many days and multiple shifts per day. Treat 30 September as the earliest possible date for anybody, not as your date. Your actual date arrives on the admit card.
SSC has not published shift timings for this cycle yet, and some reports suggest the Commission may run four shifts a day rather than the usual three because of the volume of applicants. In recent CGL cycles the three shifts were 9:00 am to 10:00 am, 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm and 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm, with reporting roughly an hour and a quarter before the start and gates closing about half an hour before. Use those as a rough guide for planning travel and sleep only. The timing printed on your own admit card is the one that counts.
That is precisely what normalisation is meant to prevent. SSC normalises scores across shifts when an examination is held in more than one shift, and by its notice of 2 June 2025 the Commission moved to an equipercentile method for this. Your merit is decided on the normalised score, not the raw one. It does not mean a hard shift becomes painless, but it does mean you should not waste energy hoping for an easy slot.
In recent cycles the sequence has been: application status, then a city intimation slip roughly ten days before the paper telling you which city you travel to, then the e-admit card a few days before, released region by region. SSC has not announced the dates for those releases for this cycle. Check ssc.gov.in and your own regional office's site, and rely on nothing else, however confidently a coaching page states a date.
No. Once allotment is done, the date, shift and centre on your admit card are final, and SSC does not entertain requests to shift them for convenience. This is why the city intimation slip matters: it is your cue to sort out travel and, if the city is far, a place to stay the night before. Plan around the allotment rather than hoping to change it.
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