Ras Exam Pattern: A Beginners Guide

By Author: Ajay Sharma
Total Articles: 2
Comment this article

RAS exam is conducted by RPSC in Rajasthan state for selection of Group A and Group B officers in state administration.

Lakhs of students appear for this extraordinary exam but only a few are successful. The high competitiveness of the exam and the turnaround questions make it hard to qualify for the exam.

Most of us don’t know the exam pattern and are preparing for the exam. In this article, we will discuss the exam pattern of the RAS exam.

The exam is conducted in three stages- the prelims, the mains, and the interview. We will now discuss them one by one in little deep.

Prelims exam pattern

RAS Prelims is a screening test, just qualifying in nature. Anyone with a bachelor’s degree in any stream is eligible to apply.

The highlight of the exam is:

- There is a 200 marks general science and general knowledge combined exam.
- The total time duration of the pre-exam is 3 hours.
- There are a total of 150 questions that are of objective type.
- There is also ...
... a negative marking of 1/3rd of the marks of the wrong question. No marks are awarded or deducted for not attempting a question.

The in-brief syllabus for the pre-exam is:

1. History, Culture, Art, Heritage, Tradition of Rajasthan.
2. Ancient, Medieval, Modern History of India.
3. Geography of both India and the World.
4. Geography of Rajasthan.
5. Indian Constitution, Political System, and Governance.
6. Administrative System of Rajasthan and the Political System.
7. The Economy of Rajasthan.
8. Science and Technology.
9. Mental Ability and Reasoning.
10. Current Affairs of Rajasthan, National, International importance.

The questions are of graduation level in the pre-exam.

Ras Mains Exam Pattern

Once a student qualifies for the cut-off in the pre-exam he is eligible to appear in the mains exam in RAS.

The marks obtained by a student in the mains are used to calculate the final merit list.

Let’s see the highlight of the mains paper:

- There are four papers in total i.e. General studies-1, 2, 3, and General English and Hindi. A student has to appear in all the papers.
- The Mains is a descriptive type paper with short, medium, and long answer types.
- Each paper is of 3 hours duration.
- The maximum marks are 200 for each paper.

The question paper consists of 3 types of questions.

- Short answer type – 2 marks and 15-word limit.
- Medium answer type – 5 marks and 50-word limit.
- Long answer type – 10 marks and 100-word limit.

More details of the syllabus for the mains paper are given below.

Paper 1: Short Questions-25, Medium Questions-16, long Questions- 7, Total Questions-48, Total Marks-200.
Syllabus: History, Economics, Sociology, Accounting

Paper 2: Short Questions-15, Medium Questions-14, long Questions- 10, Total Questions-39, Total Marks-200.
Syllabus: Science and Technology, Administrative Ethics, Earth Science.

Paper 3: Short Questions-25, Medium Questions-16, long Questions- 7, Total Questions-48, Total Marks-200.
Syllabus: Current Affairs, Indian and World politics, Sports and Laws, Concepts of Public Administration, Yoga.

For the fourth paper,
Syllabus for General Hindi and General English:
Comprehension, Essay Writing, Grammar, Translation.

RAS Interview

The Interview is 100 marks. It is a viva-voice where the student has to be ready to face any type of question.
Apart from questions, the behavior, character, personality, dressing sense is evaluated.

The final marks are a total of mains and interview marks and the merit list is released.

We have discussed the complete pattern of the exam in this article.

Every student should keep in mind the details mentioned above before starting their preparation. Many institutes will guide you in your preparation, but I will highly recommend The Thought Tree for RAS exam preparation as they provide mentorship to every student.