Syllabus
RPF — What the syllabus covers
- General Awareness
- Current events of national and international importance, Indian history with an emphasis on the freedom struggle, geography of India and the world, Indian polity and the Constitution, economics, art and culture, sports, general science at approximately class 10 level, and static general knowledge including awards, books, important days and organisations. Around forty per cent of the paper — the largest section by a clear margin.
- Arithmetic
- Number systems, whole numbers, decimals and fractions and relationships between numbers, fundamental arithmetical operations, percentage, ratio and proportion, averages, interest, profit and loss, discount, mensuration, time and work, time and distance, tables and graphs. Entirely arithmetic — there is no advanced algebra or trigonometry requirement.
- General Intelligence and Reasoning
- Analogies, similarities and differences, spatial visualisation and orientation, visual memory, discrimination, observation, relationship concepts, arithmetical reasoning, verbal and figure classification, arithmetic number series, non-verbal series, coding and decoding, statement and conclusion, and syllogistic reasoning. Verbal and non-verbal in roughly equal measure.
The general awareness section is where an RPF candidate’s marks are most efficiently earned. It is recall-based, its themes repeat across cycles, and unlike arithmetic it does not depend on a skill that takes months to build. A daily habit of static revision plus current affairs will move this score further than an equivalent investment anywhere else in the paper.
How to read a syllabus weighted this way
- General awareness is fifty of a hundred and twenty marks — more than arithmetic and reasoning combined. Any study plan that gives it a third of the time is mis-weighted before it starts.
- Arithmetic is school-level and finite — number systems, fractions and decimals, percentage, ratio, average, profit and loss, interest, time and work, time and distance, and basic mensuration. Nothing conceptually demanding.
- Reasoning is largely mechanical — analogies, series, coding and decoding, spatial visualisation, visual memory and the figure-based families. Improves with volume rather than with study.
- The general awareness list is broad but shallow — history with the freedom movement emphasised, polity, geography, economics, general science and current events. Recall rather than analysis throughout.
The efficiency argument for general awareness is unusually clean here. It is the largest section, it is recall-based, its content is finite for the static portions, and it is the section where a candidate starting from a low base can improve most. Forty minutes a day for four months will move a general awareness score considerably further than the same time spent making already-adequate arithmetic slightly faster.
General science sits inside general awareness
Class 10 physics, chemistry and life sciences supplies a reliable share of the largest section, and it is finishable in a way current affairs is not. Covering it systematically is one of the few places in this preparation where you can mark a body of material as genuinely complete.
