Most aspirants can recite that SSC CGL deducts 0.50 marks for a wrong answer. Far fewer have sat down and worked out what that actually does to a score sheet - that every wrong answer is a 2.5-mark swing away from the right answer you could have marked, and that in Tier-2 the swing is four marks, not 2.5. That arithmetic is the whole reason two candidates with the same knowledge finish 40 marks apart. This page explains the marking scheme exactly as SSC applies it at each stage, then turns it into the only thing that matters in the hall: when to mark, when to eliminate and guess, and when to leave the question alone and move on.
The rows above are SSC CGL Tier-1: 100 questions, 200 marks, 60 minutes, two marks for a correct answer and 0.50 deducted for each wrong one. Nothing is deducted for a question you leave untouched, so a blank is always better than a blind tick. The gap between a correct and a wrong answer in Tier-1 is therefore 2.5 marks. In Tier-2 Paper-I the stakes rise: each MCQ carries three marks and a wrong answer costs one mark, a four-mark gap, applied across Section-I (Maths and Reasoning), Section-II (English and General Awareness) and the Computer Knowledge module. Tier-2 Paper-II (Statistics) and Paper-III (General Studies - Finance and Economics) carry 100 questions for 200 marks each with 0.50 deducted per wrong answer. The Data Entry Speed Test is a skill test and is not negatively marked. One more thing worth knowing: SSC releases a tentative answer key with a paid challenge window before the final key, so the key against which your deductions are computed can change slightly after the exam.
After each free mock, your accuracy is shown next to your attempt count, so you can see the point at which extra attempts started costing you more than they earned. A candidate at 90 per cent accuracy should attempt more; one at 62 per cent is handing marks back. The number that matters is yours, not a number from a video.
The AI reads every wrong answer and labels it conceptual, calculation, careless or time-pressure. A wall of careless and time-pressure errors in the last five minutes of a section is exactly where negative marking eats a score, and naming it is the first step to stopping it.
The Daily Practice Paper is ten questions a day with a streak and a leaderboard. Ten questions is small enough that you can consciously practise leaving one or two blank rather than guessing, which is a habit built by repetition, not by resolution the night before the exam.
Around 29,000 of the roughly 31,000 questions in the bank are genuine previous-year SSC questions carrying the Commission's own official answer keys. When a practice platform marks you wrong on its own invented key, your negative marks are fiction. Here they are not.
Tier-1 deducts 0.50 marks for every wrong answer, against two marks awarded for a correct one. The practical figure to hold in your head is 2.5 - that is the swing between marking a question right and marking it wrong. Four wrong answers wipe out one correct answer and then some. Unanswered questions attract no deduction at all.
No, it is harsher. In Tier-2 Paper-I each multiple-choice question carries three marks and a wrong answer costs one full mark, so the gap between right and wrong is four marks. Paper-II for Junior Statistical Officer and Paper-III for Assistant Audit Officer carry two marks per question with 0.50 deducted per wrong answer. Since the final merit is built from Tier-2, this is where reckless guessing does the most damage to a selection.
None. An unattempted question scores zero and deducts nothing. This is why a disciplined blank is a legitimate strategy rather than a failure of nerve, especially in General Awareness where you either know the fact or you do not. Do remember that under the sectional timer you cannot return to a section once its 15 minutes have elapsed, so a question you skip is usually a question you have left for good.
With two options eliminated, a random pick between the remaining two gives you a correct answer roughly half the time. In Tier-1 that works out to an expected gain of about 0.75 marks per such guess, so an informed two-option guess is usually worth making. A blind guess across all four options is close to break-even in Tier-1 and clearly loss-making in Tier-2, where the penalty is a third of the reward. Elimination is what makes guessing rational; hope is not.
It depends entirely on your accuracy rather than on any fixed number, because the cut-off moves with vacancies and paper difficulty each cycle. The useful way to look at it is per section: if you are attempting 22 questions in Quant and getting 14 right, the eight wrong answers have cost you four marks and roughly ten minutes you could have spent on General Awareness. Run a few mocks, watch what your attempt count does to your net score, and settle on the attempt range where your net peaks.
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