UPSC CSAT Mock Tests – Chapter 4: Mock Test 3 – Standard Level (80 MCQs)

Passage 1

A household that puts solar panels on its roof buys less power from the distribution company, and often sells its surplus back to the grid at midday. For the household this is a saving; for the company it is the loss of its best customers. In many States, well-off urban households pay tariffs above the cost of supply, and that margin helps to keep power cheap for farmers and poor homes. When the households that paid the most begin to make their own electricity, the company must either raise tariffs for those who remain or seek a larger subsidy from the State. Rooftop solar is therefore not only a technical change; it is also a question of who pays for a grid that everyone still needs at night and on cloudy days.

Which of the following best states the central idea of the passage?

According to the passage, when the households that paid the highest tariffs begin to make their own electricity, the distribution company must:

The argument that rooftop solar strains the finances of the distribution company assumes that:

Three bells ring at intervals of 6, 8 and 12 minutes. They ring together at 9:00 a.m. At what time will they next ring together?

Which of the following numbers is divisible by 11?

How many prime numbers are there between 50 and 100?

For 36 and a second number, the LCM is 48 times the HCF, and HCF + LCM = 588. What is the second number?

Statements:

All roses are flowers.

Some flowers are red.

Conclusions:

I. Some roses are red.

II. Some red things are flowers.

Which of the following is correct?

In a survey of 120 families, 70 have a television, 55 have a two-wheeler and 25 have both. How many families have neither?

Passage 2

A heatwave is measured in degrees, but its cost is counted in lost hours of work. A construction worker or a street vendor cannot move indoors when the afternoon temperature crosses forty-five degrees. If he stops, he loses the day's wage; if he goes on, he risks his health. Shifting working hours to the cooler parts of the day, providing shade and water at work sites, and paying for days lost to extreme heat would all cost money. Not doing so also costs money, but that cost is paid quietly by the workers themselves.

Which of the following best reflects the author's argument?

In the last sentence, the word "quietly" suggests that the cost borne by the workers is:

What is the smallest number that must be added to 1,000 to make it a perfect square?

The recurring decimal 0.363636… (36 repeating) is equal to which fraction?

In a town, 60 per cent of the adults are employed, and 35 per cent of the employed adults are women. If 4,200 employed adults are women, how many adults live in the town?

Passage 3

For generations, people living in and around forests gathered fuelwood, fruit, honey and grass from them, and many managed common patches of forest by rules of their own. Forest law treated much of this use as an offence. Recognising the rights of these communities does not mean handing forests over to be cleared. Where communities hold secure rights, they have often guarded the forest against outsiders more closely than a distant department could. Rights without capacity, however, can be empty. A village council that has the right to manage a forest but no money, no training and no say in the market for its produce may find the right hard to use.

Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?

The author's attitude to recognising the rights of forest communities is best described as:

According to the passage, "rights without capacity" may be empty because:

If the train is late, Kumar misses the meeting. Kumar did not miss the meeting.

Which of the following must be true?

Of five friends P, Q, R, S and T, Q is taller than P but shorter than S. T is shorter than P. R is taller than S.

Who is third from the top in order of height?

Passage 4

In the dry plains of peninsular India, chains of village tanks were once built so that the surplus of one tank flowed into the next, and the village maintained the channels and removed silt from the tank beds every year. As canals, borewells and government departments took over, the village's duty faded, and many tanks silted up or were encroached upon. A tank that is not cleaned holds less water each year, so it fails in exactly the years when it is most needed. Repairing the stone and earth of a tank is easy compared with restoring the habit of looking after it.

According to the author, what is the harder task in reviving the tanks?

Why, according to the passage, does a neglected tank fail "in exactly the years when it is most needed"?

Starting from her house, Priya goes 10 km north, turns right and goes 5 km, turns right again and goes 10 km, and finally turns left and goes 3 km. Where is she now with respect to her house?

In a certain code, CLOUD is written as DNRYI. How is RIVER written in that code?

Fresh grapes contain 90 per cent water by weight, and dried grapes contain 20 per cent water. How much dried grape can be obtained from 50 kg of fresh grapes?

The cost price of 15 articles is equal to the selling price of 12 articles. What is the gain per cent?

A trader buys 20 kg of pulses at ₹30 a kg and 30 kg at ₹40 a kg. He mixes them and sells the mixture at ₹45 a kg. What is his gain per cent?

Passage 5

A false claim that is repeated becomes familiar, and what is familiar comes to feel true. Correcting a falsehood often means repeating it, which may spread it further. For this reason some researchers advise that a correction should lead with the fact rather than the myth, and should state the myth only once, clearly marked as false.

Which of the following corrections best follows the advice given in the passage?

Given A : B = 3 : 4, B : C = 6 : 7 and C : D = 14 : 15, find the ratio A : D.

Two numbers are in the ratio 3 : 5. If 9 is subtracted from each, the ratio becomes 12 : 23. What is the smaller number?

Passage 6

A forecast that gives a 70 per cent chance of rain is not proved wrong when the day stays dry. It said that, on days like this one, rain would fall about seven times in ten and not fall about three times in ten. Such a forecast can be judged only over many days: if, on all the days given 70 per cent, rain fell on roughly seven in ten, the forecaster did well.

Which of the following is implied by the passage?

Reasoning set 1

Five lectures – History, Geography, Polity, Economy and Ethics – are held on the five days from Monday to Friday, one on each day.

– Economy is held on the day after Geography.

– Ethics is held two days after Polity.

– Neither History nor Geography is held on Monday.

– Ethics is not held on Friday.

Which lecture is held on Wednesday?

How many lectures are held between History and Economy?

Which of the following statements is true?

Passage 7

A public library lends books, but in a small town it also lends a quiet room, a working light and a table to a student whose home has none of these. Its value is therefore not measured fully by the number of books it issues. When libraries are judged by circulation alone, those that serve the poorest readers – who come to sit and study rather than to borrow – look the least useful and are the first to be closed.

The author would most likely agree that:

The passage says that a small-town library "also lends a quiet room, a working light and a table". The author uses this phrase to show that the library:

The average weight of 8 persons rises by 2.5 kg when one of them, who weighs 65 kg, is replaced by a new person. What is the weight of the new person?

The average of five numbers is 18. When one of the numbers is removed, the average of the remaining four is 16. Which number was removed?

Passage 8

The Right to Information Act, 2005 lets a citizen ask a public authority for its records and expect a reply within a set time. Its power lies less in the answers it brings than in the questions it makes officials expect: a file that may one day be read by the public tends to be written with more care. This effect depends on the law being used and on replies being given in time. Where appeals pile up for months, the expectation weakens, and with it the care.

According to the passage, the main source of the Act's power is:

Which of the following would the author most likely regard as a threat to the Act's purpose?

The passage assumes that:

You are a Block Development Officer. A list of beneficiaries for a rural housing scheme, prepared before you took charge, must be sent to the district tomorrow. During a field visit you learn that some families on the list already own pucca houses and may be ineligible. What should you do?

Ten years ago, A was half as old as B. The ratio of their present ages is 3 : 4. What is the sum of their present ages?

The sum of three consecutive multiples of 7 is 357. What is the largest of them?

Passage 9

Adding iron or iodine to a food that everyone eats reaches the poor without asking them to change what they eat; iodised salt is the usual example. The method works, however, only if the people it is meant for actually buy that food from the source that fortifies it. A family that eats rice from its own field will not be reached by fortified rice sold in shops.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

The simple interest on a sum at 6 per cent a year for 4 years is ₹1,920. What is the sum?

A sum of money at compound interest amounts to ₹4,840 in 2 years and to ₹5,324 in 3 years. What is the rate of interest a year?

Passage 10

Old phones and computers contain small amounts of gold, copper and other metals, along with lead and mercury. In informal yards, workers burn cables to recover copper and soak circuit boards in acid, with little protection. Formal recyclers recover more metal and handle the poisons safely, but they pay less for scrap than informal dealers, because they bear the cost of safe handling. Unless the safe route is made at least as attractive to the seller, scrap will keep flowing to the yards.

According to the passage, why does much electronic scrap go to informal yards?

Which of the following policies is most in line with the passage?

Statement: The municipality has announced that from next week water will be supplied only between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., and has advised residents to store water.

Assumptions:

I. Residents have some means of storing water.

II. Water will never again be supplied in the evening.

Which of the following is correct?

Statement: Using a mobile phone while driving has been banned, and those who break the rule will be fined.

Conclusions:

I. Using a mobile phone while driving is considered dangerous.

II. There will be no road accidents from now on.

Which of the following is correct?

A is the sister of B. C is the mother of B. D is the father of C. E is the mother of D. How is A related to D?

A is twice as efficient as B. Working together, they finish a job in 14 days. In how many days can A alone finish it?

10 men or 15 women can finish a job in 30 days. How many days will 5 men and 6 women take to finish it?

Passage 11

A city can add a lane to a busy road, and within a few years the new lane fills with cars, as people who once avoided that road at peak hours begin to use it. A bus carries fifty people in the space taken by two or three cars. Cities that wish to reduce congestion therefore find that more buses, running often and on time, do more than wider roads. The difficulty is that a road is a visible gift, completed once and opened with ceremony, while a reliable bus service must be run well every single day.

According to the passage, why does a widened road fill up again?

The claim that more buses do more than wider roads assumes that:

One term of 1, 4, 10, 19, 31, 45, 64 breaks the pattern of the others. Which one is it?

What comes next in the series Z1, X4, V9, T16, …?

At what time between 4 and 5 o'clock are the hands of a clock exactly opposite each other?

The calendar of 2027 will be used again, exactly, in which year?

Passage 12

Employers say that graduates lack the skills they need; graduates say that employers will not train them. An apprenticeship breaks this deadlock by letting the young learn on the job while being paid a stipend, so that the employer trains people it may later hire and the learner gains experience that no classroom gives.

Which of the following best expresses the main point of the passage?

A car covers a distance in 5 hours at 60 km/h. At what speed must it travel to cover the same distance in 4 hours?

Two cyclists start at the same time from towns 300 km apart and ride towards each other at 40 km/h and 35 km/h. After how many hours do they meet?

A thief runs away at 8 km/h. A policeman starts chasing him 10 minutes later at 10 km/h. How many minutes after starting will the policeman catch the thief?

Passage 13

When sea water stays too warm for too long, corals expel the algae that live in their tissues and turn white. A bleached reef is not yet dead: if the water cools in time, the algae return and the coral can recover. Recovery, however, takes years, and when warm spells come every year or two, a reef is struck again before it has healed.

Which of the following follows most directly from the passage?

A wire bent into a square encloses an area of 121 cm². If the same wire is bent into a circle, what area will the circle enclose? (Take π = 22/7.)

Passage 14

A dam holds back a river's water, and with it the river's silt. The reservoir slowly fills with sediment, while the delta downstream, no longer fed with silt, begins to shrink as the sea eats into it. Both effects are slow, so neither appears in the year the dam is built.

Which of the following is the most logical corollary of the passage?

How many diagonals does a regular octagon have?

A card is drawn at random from a well-shuffled pack of 52 cards. What is the probability that it is a king or a heart?

Three-digit numbers are written with digits taken from 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4, no digit used twice. How many such numbers are there?

Passage 15

When a device can be opened only with special tools, and spare parts are sold only to authorised centres at high prices, a small fault becomes a reason to buy a new device. The waste that follows is often blamed on consumers' taste for the latest model, though much of it is built into the way the device is designed and sold.

The author implies that:

A standard die has its opposite faces adding to 7. It rests on a table with 3 on top and 2 facing you. If it is rolled once away from you, which number will be on top?

A colleague from another department asks you several times to share a file containing confidential tender details, "just to save time", before the tenders are opened. What is the best response?

About how many seconds are there in an ordinary year of 365 days?

Data set 1

The table shows the electricity generated in a State from different sources (in billion units). The figures are for practice only.

Which source showed the largest increase in generation from 2022 to 2024?

Approximately what share of the total generation in 2024 came from solar?

By about how many percentage points did the combined share of wind and solar in total generation rise from 2022 to 2024?

Question: What is Ravi's present age?

Statement 1: Ravi is 4 years older than Sita.

Statement 2: The sum of the present ages of Ravi and Sita is 30 years.