CDS Exam Syllabus: Subject-wise Pattern for IMA, INA, AFA and OTA

The CDS exam syllabus starts with your academy choice. An OTA-only candidate prepares English and General Knowledge. A candidate seeking IMA, INA or AFA also prepares Elementary Mathematics. That difference changes the written maximum, the study workload and the papers you need to practise. It does not mean OTA is easier to qualify for: it means its written examination has a different structure, and the SSB and the other selection requirements still matter.

This guide uses the official Combined Defence Services Examination II, 2026 notification as its basis. The sitting took place on 13 September 2026; the scheme below is a verified reference for preparation, not an announcement that a later sitting has identical eligibility or vacancies. ProSyllabus is an independent preparation website. Official means the fact comes from UPSC; our plan and our calculation describe editorial suggestions and arithmetic.

CDS exam pattern: the academy determines the papers

Official: each listed subject carries 100 marks and lasts two hours. Written papers are objective. General Knowledge and Elementary Mathematics are set in Hindi and English; the English paper tests English. The Mathematics standard is matriculation, while the other papers are approximately at the level expected of a university graduate. UPSC can set qualifying marks in any or all subjects. A strong aggregate therefore does not excuse missing a subject requirement.

If you include an academy requiring Mathematics among your valid preferences, do not use the OTA row to remove Mathematics from your timetable. The chooser describes papers for one academy, not your complete application. Similarly, a woman planning the notified OTA women’s course should use its actual entry conditions rather than selecting another academy in a dropdown and assuming an application is possible. Academy preference, eligibility and paper preparation are connected decisions, but they are not interchangeable.

Subject-wise syllabus: what is official and what is a study breakdown

English: turn a short syllabus statement into a useful practice system

UPSC’s English description is deliberately broad. It does not publish a fixed chapter-by-chapter allocation in this notification. A long coaching list may be useful as a practice checklist, but it should not be presented as a guaranteed paper blueprint. Separate your preparation into understanding a passage, recognising a correct sentence, choosing an appropriate word and reconstructing an ordered idea. Then check which of those tasks caused mistakes in an actual official paper.

For vocabulary, learn the sentence around a word rather than collecting isolated meanings. Record whether your mistake came from a near-synonym, a register mismatch or an unfamiliar usage. For grammar, write the rule responsible for an error, then look for the same structure in your reading. For comprehension, return to the passage and identify the phrase supporting the answer; a response that sounds plausible outside the passage can still be wrong. These are our study methods, not UPSC subtopics or predicted question counts.

Review speed and understanding separately. If you finish a set quickly with many careless errors, the repair is a slower evidence check, not another speed target. If you understand it untimed but leave questions unanswered under exam conditions, practise short timed blocks before moving to an entire paper. Keep a separate note for options you eliminated incorrectly. That record is more actionable than a single overall score because it shows whether the error arose before or after you understood the sentence.

General Knowledge: breadth with a reason for every fact

The official description links current events with knowledge an educated person can draw from everyday observation and experience, including scientific aspects. It also names Indian history and geography. Build a compact topic map and place your mistakes on it. A history error may reflect a confused sequence, a geography error a confused relationship, and a science error an unfamiliar principle. Reading a news digest again will not necessarily repair any of those gaps.

Use official past papers to discover the level of explanation required. When a question concerns an event, identify the static concept behind it: location, institution, scientific process or historical background. Add a short source note beside that concept. This keeps current-affairs preparation tied to understanding rather than an expanding list of names and dates. Do not interpret the absence of a topic in one paper as permission to drop it; a small sample cannot establish the next paper’s distribution.

A practical revision sheet has a prompt on one side and the reason or relationship on the other. Test recall before opening the answer. Where two facts are easily confused, compare them directly instead of writing two disconnected notes. If you cannot explain why a statement is true, return to the underlying source. The objective is to make your next review narrower and more useful, not to produce a larger notebook. This advice is our plan; UPSC does not prescribe this note-taking format.

Elementary Mathematics: six areas and a method checklist

Official: calculators are not permitted in the objective papers. Practise the arithmetic as part of solving, rather than treating a calculator result as proof that you can execute the method in the examination. A formula sheet is useful only when you can identify which situation matches each formula. Keep conditions beside formulas: whether a rate is annual, whether a triangle is right-angled, whether a dimension is a radius or a diameter. These small checks often explain mistakes that a longer solution would hide.

For a weak area, work through the method in an untimed review and explain each step. Then return to a mixed official paper where the topic is no longer announced in the heading. If you can solve only when someone tells you the chapter, classification is the missing skill. Mark that separately from a calculation slip. Revise the smallest broken step first and retest it later. This is our revision method, not an official allocation of study time or a claim about which chapter will dominate.

Negative marking: a fraction of the question’s marks

Do not turn the rule into a universal deduction of one third of a mark. It is one third of the question’s assigned marks. Read the paper’s instructions and use its actual question count and marks when estimating a raw score. A scoring shortcut copied from another subject can be wrong if the marks per question differ. The table states the official response rule; any personal score estimate is your calculation and remains provisional until the official evaluation.

What the latest official paper can tell you about weightage

The 2026-II English paper is used below as a single-paper descriptive audit. Counts are our calculation from the printed section headings and question ranges; they are not a UPSC guarantee for future sittings. The notification itself gives English and GK broad descriptions and Mathematics topic lists without fixed topic percentages. A paper audit can show where that one paper placed its questions, but it cannot turn one sitting into a permanent syllabus quota.

Our count: the booklet has twelve consecutive task blocks of ten questions, covering all 120 items without overlap. Each block is 8.33% of this paper, rounded to two decimals. The category labels summarise the printed directions; they are our classification. Vocabulary appears in several formats, so treating only the synonym block as vocabulary would undercount the work. The two comprehension passages together cover questions 111–120. These observations describe booklet A of CDS-II 2026 English, not a five-year trend and not the Mathematics or GK distribution.

CDS-II 2026 academy-wise vacancies: context, not a forecast

The vacancy table belongs to a specified examination notification. It does not describe the number of places in every CDS sitting or your probability of selection. Course reservations shown as included must not be added again. Vacancies can change under the notice’s conditions. Use this table to understand the course context, and consult the next applicable notice for a new application. A larger course does not automatically mean an easier cut-off because the eligible applicant pool and the selection stages also differ.

Eligibility changes deserve a fresh read

Official: for IMA and OTA the notice specifies a recognised university degree or equivalent. For INA, the 2026-II notice allows an Engineering degree or a B.Sc. with Physics as a core or elective subject, with Physics and Mathematics at the 10+2 level. For AFA it specifies a recognised degree with Physics and Mathematics at 10+2, or a Bachelor of Engineering. This is why the paper chooser makes no eligibility claim: knowing which papers an academy uses does not establish that your qualification meets its entry route.

Age, nationality, marital status, final-year proof and medical standards require their own checks in the applicable notice. Use the notification’s exact date-of-birth boundaries rather than an approximate age band. Final-year applicants must meet the stated proof deadlines; being allowed to apply before graduation is not permission to postpone proof indefinitely. Keep your document checklist separate from the syllabus checklist so that a strong preparation record does not mask an unresolved application condition.

After the written exam: what SSB adds

Official: SSB has two stages. Stage I uses Officer Intelligence Rating tests and the Picture Perception and Description Test; only candidates clearing that stage proceed. Stage II includes the interview, Group Testing Officer tasks, psychological tests and the conference, conducted over four days. The notice describes holistic assessment rather than independent published weightages for each test. Do not buy a preparation plan on the assumption that one task can be ignored because it supposedly carries fewer marks.

The written and interview maximums are equal for each academy, as shown in the first table. They measure different parts of the selection process. Preparing the written syllabus does not replace the SSB, and an SSB recommendation does not remove medical and other entry conditions. A useful preparation record keeps written errors, communication practice and document readiness distinct, so you can see which next action is actually needed. This guide explains the sequence; it does not promise a recommendation or an academy seat.

A revision loop you can repeat

Our plan: choose the valid academy route, download the official papers, attempt one under its printed instructions and make an error list by cause. Repair a method or knowledge gap, then retest it in a mixed set. Review the same area again later without looking at your notes first. Keep English and GK active together; add Mathematics when your valid academy preferences require it. Adjust the next block from evidence in the error list rather than a generic high-weightage claim.