SSC CGL Syllabus 2020-21 & Exam Pattern For Tier I, II, III, & IV

The SSC CGL syllabus and exam pattern for Combined Graduate Level Examination is set by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC). With the help of SSC CGL exam pattern and syllabus, candidates can make a strategy for the exam preparation in a systematic manner.

The latest SSC CGL pattern and syllabus is published in the official SSC CGL notification. Candidates can know further about the SSC CGL exam on the linked page.

SSC CGL Syllabus

In this section, we discuss in detail the latest tier-wise SSC CGL syllabus. For convenient preparation of the exam SSC CGL syllabus PDF free download is available for candidates. Let’s move ahead to Tier-wise CGL syllabus.

SSC CGL Syllabus Tier I

As per the SSC CGL exam pattern, the CGL Tier 1 exam is an online, multiple-choice based exam. The exam consists of 4 sections having 100 questions in total. The total marks assigned for Tier I exam is 200. The duration for the Tier I exam is 60 minutes (80 minutes for differently-abled candidates).

The SSC CGL Syllabus – Tier I comprises four sections:

General Intelligence & Reasoning
General Awareness
Quantitative Aptitude &
SSC CGL English Syllabus covers English Comprehension skills.

For the preparation of quantitative aptitude check the following links:

Shortcut Tricks for Squares & Cube Roots
Tips to solve Number Series
Maths Tricks for Competitive Exams
Quadratic Equation

The SSC CGL Tier I syllabus is given in detail in the table below:

General Intelligence & Reasoning	General Awareness	Quantitative Aptitude	English Comprehension skills
Symbolic/Number Analogy	History- Harappa Civilization, Vedic culture, Medieval India and their important systems; India’s freedom movement and their leaders	Number System Problems, Percentage, Ratio & Proportion, Square roots, Averages, Interest	Synonyms & Antonyms, One Word Substitution, grammar skills, spelling error, comprehension passages
Semantic Classification, Symbolic/Number Classification	Geography - about countries and their geographical details, Famous Seaport and Airport and their location.	Profit and Loss, Discount, Mixture,
Figural Classification, Semantic Series, Number Series, Figural Series	Polity- Administrative, Legislative and judiciary of our Country, Election, Important constitution bodies like CAG, Symbols of political parties, duties & responsibilities of the major persons in the Parliament	Time and distance, Time & Work, Basic algebraic identities of School Algebra & Elementary surds, Graphs of Linear Equations,
Problem Solving, Word Building, Coding & decoding	Economy-Budget related information and terminologies, Important persons involved in Economy of the Country and monetary institutions	Triangle and its various kinds of centres, Congruence and similarity of triangles, Circles
Space Visualization, Venn Diagrams, Drawing inferences	Physics- Laws, major Inventions and Discoveries.	Regular Polygons, Right Prism, Right Circular Cone, Right Circular Cylinder, Sphere, Hemispheres, Rectangular Parallelepiped, Regular Right Pyramid with triangular or square base,
Indexing, Address matching, Date & city matching, Classification of centre codes/roll numbers	Chemistry- Characteristics of gases, atoms, molecules Chemistry in everyday life.	Complementary angles, Heights and Distances, Histogram, Data Analysis
Critical thinking, Emotional Intelligence, Social Intelligence	Biology-Important discoveries, Interesting facts about human body parts, Nutrition in Animals and Plants, Diseases and their causes.
	General Knowledge, Current Affairs

SSC CGL Exam pattern – Important pointers:

Candidates should be careful while attempting any question as there is negative marking for wrong attempts.
As per the SSC CGL exam pattern, candidates can expect a deduction of 0.5 marks for each incorrect answer.
Candidates should be thorough with all the papers and practise a lot of question papers from the previous years.
Candidates should cover all important topics given in the SSC CGL syllabus for Tier 1.
The SSC CGL reasoning syllabus should be understood in-depth as it covers a vast number of topics.
Candidates should be very careful while going through the SSC CGL exam pattern as it is subjected to changes from time to time.
Candidates should take free mock tests based on the latest SSC CGL pattern. Solving mock tests will help candidates analyze their preparation for the upcoming SSC exams.
The SSC CGL syllabus for general awareness has a significant overlap with the UPSC Syllabus.

SSC CGL Tier-II Syllabus

As per the SSC CGL exam pattern, Tier II will have 4 papers-

Quantitative Aptitude– This will have 200 marks in total. The time allotted for this paper is 2 hours.
English Language & Comprehension- Total marks is 200 for this paper and the duration to complete the paper is 2 hours.
Statistics– Again candidates have to complete the paper in 2 hours carrying 200 marks in total.
General Studies- Finance & Economics– This paper will have 200 marks and 2 hours duration.

The detailed SSC CGL Tier-II Syllabus for CGL Exam is as mentioned below:

Quantitative Aptitude	English Language & Comprehension	Statistics	General Studies- Finance & Economics
Number System Problems Percentage	Spot the Error Synonyms /Antonyms Spelling, Idioms & Phrases One Word Substitution Improvement of sentences, The Active/ Passive voice of verbs, Conversion into Direct/ Indirect narration Shuffling of sentence parts in passages, Comprehension passage.	Data distribution, calculation, a diagrammatic representation of data	Finance-Fundamentals of Finance & Accounting
Ratio & Proportion, Square roots, Averages		Mean, Mode and Median
Profit and Loss, Discount		Deviation, Dispersion
Time and distance, Time & Work, Basic algebraic identities of School Algebra		Moments and relationships- skewness, kurtosis
Triangles, Polygons, Circles, Cylinders		Co-relation, regression	Economics-Macro & Micro Economics, Growth & Development Market analysis- production, demand, supply, Indian Economy, Economic reforms, Money and banking, Role of Technology in reforming the Economic domain
Bar graph, Histogram, Pie chart		Probability- theories, distribution
		Sampling theory, index numbers, time series analysis
		Variance

SSC CGL Tier-II Exam Pattern – Important Pointers:

Paper 4 – As mentioned in the SSC CGL exam pattern, Finance & Economics has a mark distribution of 80 and 120 summing up to 200 in total.
Paper-I and Paper-II are compulsory for all posts.
Paper-III will be for candidates applying for the post of Junior Statistical Officer (JSO) and who are shortlisted in Tier-I for this Post/Paper.
Paper-IV will be for only those candidates who are shortlisted in Tier-I for Paper-IV, i.e., for the posts of Assistant Audit Officer/ Assistant Accounts Officer.
Taking the SSC CGL pattern into account, candidates can expect negative marking of 0.25 marks for each wrong answer in Paper-II (English Language and Comprehension) and of 0.50 marks for each wrong answer in Paper-I, Paper-III and Paper-IV.

SSC CGL Syllabus Tier III

As per the SSC CGL Exam Pattern, the Tier 3 Exam is a subjective paper that will be taken offline via pen and paper mode.

As per the SSC CGL Tier III syllabus, the exam is to evaluate the candidates’ language proficiency, grammar knowledge, vocabulary usage, and writing skills in English/Hindi. Candidates are expected to write essays, précis, applications, letters, etc. The duration of the Tier III exam is 60 minutes.

SSC CGL Tier III Exam Pattern- Points to remember:

Candidates need to be careful while filling the choices as this paper has Hindi/English as the option.
This exam is comparatively easier than other exams but candidates need to score at least one-third of the total marks to pass this exam.
As per the latest SSC CGL exam pattern, the duration for differently-abled candidates is 80 minutes.

SSC CGL Syllabus Tier IV

The SSC CGL Tier 4 Exam comprises skill tests that are required for certain government posts. Candidates who secure at least the minimum qualifying marks in the examination (Tier I, II, III) can appear in the Skill Test.

The syllabus for the SSC CGL Tier-IV exam is as follows:

SSC CGL Test	Description	Post
Data Entry Speed Test	8,000 (eight thousand) Key Depression per hour on the Computer	Tax Assistants( Central & Excise)
Data Entry Speed Test	A passage of about 2000 (two thousand) key depressions for 15 (fifteen) minutes.	Tax Assistants( Central & Excise)
Computer Proficiency Test	Word Processing Spreadsheet Generation of slides	Assistant Section Officer of Central Secretariat Service (CSS), Assistant Section Officer (MEA), Assistant in Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Assistant (GSI) in the Ministry of Mines.

Points to note:

Orthopedically Handicapped (OH) candidates for the post of Tax Assistant in CBDT need not appear for the skill test.
OH candidates opting for post of Tax Assistant in CBEC are required to attend the Skill Test.

SSC CGL Exam Pattern

The SSC CGL Exam gives the candidate a golden opportunity to get into reputed offices, departments and organizations under the Government of India.

The CGL exam pattern for all tiers (I, II, III, IV) is as follows:

SSC CGL Tier	Mode/Type	CGL Syllabus Topics
Tier I	Online, Multiple Choice questions	General Intelligence &, Reasoning, Quantitative Aptitude, General Awareness, English Comprehension
Tier II	Online, Multiple Choice questions	Quantitative aptitude, English Language & Comprehension, Statistics, General Studies- Finance & Economics
Tier III	Offline, Descriptive type- Hindi/English	Statistics, data analysis
Tier IV	Wherever applicable	Data Entry Speed Test, Computer Proficiency Test Document Verification

SSC CGL Pattern – Salient Points

Tier I exam is for all.
Tier-II exam- Paper 3 (Statistics) is for Junior Statistical Officer post, & Paper 4 (Finance & Economics) is for Assistant Auditor & Assistant Accounts Officer post.
Tier IV- Data Entry Speed test is for Tax Assistants, Computer Proficiency test is for posts under Ministry of Corporate Affairs & Ministry of Mines.

The exam dates for SSC CGL 2020 is announced with the official notification of the SSC CGL exam, which is released by the Commission on December 29th 2020. Further details on SSC CGL Exam Dates can be found in the link provided.

The process of SSC CGL 2020 exam commenced on 29th December 2020. Aspirants of the SSC Combined Graduate Level Exam can refer to detailed SSC CGL Exam Analysis for their preparation.

Candidates should refer to the SSC CGL notification for updates on the SSC official website( https://ssc.nic.in/) daily.

Frequently Asked Question – SSC CGL Syllabus & Pattern 2021

Q. What are the subjects covered in SSC CGL Syllabus?

Aspirants of SSC CGL exam have to prepare the following subjects: Reasoning Ability, Verbal Ability, Quantitative Aptitude, and General Awareness.

Q. What are the topics covered in SSC CGL Tier III Syllabus?

As per the SSC CGL Tier III Syllabus, Candidates are expected to write essays, précis, applications, letters, etc in the Tier III exam. Tier III is a subjective exam and evaluates the candidates’ language proficiency, grammar knowledge, vocabulary usage, and writing skills in English/Hindi.

Q. Is it possible to crack SSC CGL exam in just three months?

SSC Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Exam is one of the most sought-after exams and requires a high level of preparation strategy to get a good score. Three months is an ideal time to prepare for this exam. Important tips and strategies for SSC CGL preparation are given in detail.

Q. What is the minimum SSC CGL salary offered to a candidate on qualifying the examination?

The current SSC CGL salary varies from a minimum of Rs. 18,000 to Rs. 2,50,000 (including perks), based on different posts. Apart from the salary, SSC provides various other benefits to its employees that attracts a lot of aspirants to join the Staff Selection Commission. Check the detailed break up of SSC CGL Salary here.

Q. Is there negative marking for wrong attempts in SSC CGL exam?

Taking the SSC CGL Exam pattern into account, candidates can expect negative marking of 0.25 marks for each wrong answer in Paper-II (English Language and Comprehension) and of 0.50 marks for each wrong answer in Paper-I, Paper-III and Paper-IV.

Q. Tell a few books recommended for the preparation of reasoning section in SSC CGL exam?

The important books for SSC CGL Reasoning are Modern Approach to Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning by Dr R.S. Aggarwal, Analytical Reasoning by M.K. Pandey, How to prepare for Logical Reasoning by Arun Sharma and Logical and Analytical Reasoning by A.K. Gupta. Check SSC CGL Preparation page for more books and strategies to prepare for CGL exam.