How to reduce negative marking in SSC CGL | Prepare with Oliveboard

How to reduce negative marking in SSC CGL? – SSC CGL is one of the most competitive exams in the country. Around 15 lakh candidates appear for a few thousand posts. What will set you apart from other candidates is to answer as many questions as possible correctly and reduce the number of wrong answers. There is negative marking in SSC CGL. In order to clear the cut off, you need to reduce the negative marking to the maximum possible extent.

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How to reduce negative marking in SSC CGL

And like in every other competitive examination in India, there shall be a negative marking of 0.50 marks for every wrong answer. This means every 4 wrong answers cost you 1 (one) mark. Also, you get a 0 for every question that goes unmarked or unanswered. Let us break it down for you!

We know that there will be 100 questions in Tier -1. Say you mark 75. Out of the 75 marked, you mark 20 questions incorrectly. So, you have gotten 55 correct and 20 go unanswered.

Final Score = 110 – (20*0.5) = 100

The individual statement on the website – “There shall be negative marking of 0.50 marks for every wrong answer” – may not seem as rattling. However, the final outcome may be disastrous if we do not understand how to tackle negative marking in SSC CGL. Even 0.25 marks can mean selection for Tier-2 or not.

Tip#1- Play to your strengths

The very first tip to tackle negative marking in SSC CGL that you’ll find anywhere is to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Once you understand your SWOT through practice, sectional tests and full-length , learn to play to your strengths. “How”, you ask? By – 

1. Attempting the questions you’re most confident about first. It will boost you up when you’re able to solve most of the questions of a section while enjoying doing so, would it not?
2. Another strategy would be to attempt the “General Knowledge” first in Tier-1. In this section, you either know the answer or you don’t. This in turn means minimum chances for negative marking in SSC CGL. Another fact is that this section remains the most unpredictable among all 5. Solving this section first can give you an estimate of how much risk you an take in other sections. 
3. Next, you can move on to Quantitative aptitude section. The mathematics part of SSC CGL Tier 1 is one that you can be certain of scoring good at should you hold the taste for it. However, you must be thorough with the fundamentals, and even if you aren’t great with numbers, the fact that there are four answers after the question works in your advantage. If you are able to calculate a certain sum and arrive at a proper solution, it will be reflected in the alternatives provided in the paper. That alone should motivate you to maximise your score in this part. I can’t emphasise enough how crucial this area is in raising your overall score.
4. For English, ensure you know all grammar rules well. Revise the rules before the exam so you are able to recollect well in the exam.
5. Next, in the sections that you are least confident about, attempt the easier and familiar questions first. They build your confidence for the difficult ones. 
6. In the first iteration of the question paper, leave the questions which daunt you. They might end up eating your time, or worse make you earn a negative mark.

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Tip#2 – Calculated Guesses

There are some basic rules which you might follow here –

1. Make no blind guesses – Do not just randomly choose or mark your answer. Attempt the question only if you have at least a faint idea of the essence of the question.
2. Eliminate options – Once you’ve tried connecting the dots, see if you can eliminate any obvious wrong choices from the options. Attempt to guess the answer if and only if you’re able to eliminate at least 50% of the options. Especially in section like logical reasoning and reading comprehension, you might become heavily confused between 

Tip#3 – Revise your paper

The worst thing you can do to tackle the negative marking in SSC CGL is to leave your answer sheet unrevised. 

1. Leave questions for the second round – The nicest thing about the SSC CGL exam is that you may always leave a really tough question and return to it later. By quitting it when there’s still a significant portion to solve, you’ll save a lot of time by refusing to get irritated by how difficult it appears to be.
2. Make sure you read all the options in a question before choosing the correct answer – even if you are confident that you have found the correct answer in the first or second option you read, sometimes there may be subtle differences in “wording” in the options.

Tip#4 – Understand the type of questions 

Just like you should know the syllabus like the back of your hand, you should also remember the type of questions asked and the trick of examiners in every section.  Now adding to these, there are some extra tricks down the examiners sleeves. Some things you could watch out for to ensure that you adequately tackle negative marking for SSC CGL are –

1. “Wording of the question” – Pay very close attention to the wording of each question. For e.g. the question ‘Which of the following is the author likely to agree with’ would imply that there is only one option in line with the author’s arguments, while ‘Which of the following is the author likely to most strongly agree with’ would imply that there is more than one option that supports the author’s arguments, but one option in particular provides the strongest support to the author’s arguments.
2. Simpler Chunks – For questions in Quantitative aptitude. Break down the questions into parts if you are struggling with a questions and try to solve each part to arrive at the answer.

These are some of the ways how you can reduce negative marking in SSC CGL. Stay tuned to Oliveboard for more tips on SSC CGL Preparation.