Syllabus
CDS — What the syllabus covers
- English
- Comprehension passages, spotting errors, sentence improvement, synonyms and antonyms, fill in the blanks, ordering of words and sentences, idioms and phrases, and vocabulary in context. The paper tests command of the language rather than literary knowledge, and it is common to all four entries.
- General Knowledge
- Current events of national and international importance; Indian history with an emphasis on the freedom movement; geography of India and the world; Indian polity and the Constitution; economics; general science across physics, chemistry and biology; defence-related awareness including services, ranks, equipment and exercises; and sports and culture. Common to all four entries, and the section where defence-specific awareness genuinely helps.
- Elementary Mathematics
- Arithmetic covering number systems, fundamental operations, HCF and LCM, decimals and fractions, square roots, percentage, ratio and proportion, average, profit and loss, simple and compound interest, time and work, time and distance; algebra covering basic operations, factorisation, linear and quadratic equations and simultaneous equations; trigonometry covering ratios, identities, heights and distances; geometry covering lines, angles, triangles, circles, quadrilaterals and loci; mensuration of plane figures and solids; and statistics covering the collection and presentation of data, measures of central tendency, and graphs. Applies to the IMA, INA and AFA entries only — not to OTA. Pitched at approximately class 10 level.
The general knowledge paper has a feature worth exploiting: it consistently includes defence-related questions on services, ranks, equipment, exercises and recent operational developments. This is material a general competitive-exam guide will not cover, and it is entirely learnable, which makes it some of the most reliably available marks in the paper.
How the three subjects behave in practice
- English is the most reliable scoring paper — a hundred marks in every entry, drawn from a mechanical and repetitive set of question types. It responds to practice more predictably than either of the others.
- General Knowledge is broad but not deep — history, polity, geography, economy, science and current events at general level, with a distinctive defence and security seam running through it that general guides do not cover.
- Elementary Mathematics is class 10 in content and a speed test in practice — nothing conceptually difficult, and two hours in which to work through a substantial number of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry questions.
- The three do not need equal time — a graduate candidate usually needs least work on mathematics, most on the defence and current affairs strand of general knowledge, and steady daily maintenance on English.
For OTA candidates the syllabus reading changes completely. With mathematics absent, English and General Knowledge carry a hundred marks each and there is nowhere to hide a weak subject — a candidate who is strong in mathematics and weak in general knowledge, which is a common profile among engineering graduates, has lost the paper that would have carried them. Confirm which entry you are applying for before you allocate a single study hour.
The defence awareness strand is learnable and rarely prepared
Questions on service structures, ranks and insignia, major exercises, indigenous equipment programmes, defence organisations and recent acquisitions appear consistently in the General Knowledge paper. Almost no general competitive-exam guide covers this ground, which means the candidates who follow defence news specifically are competing for marks most of the field has conceded without noticing.
