Assistant Grade Examination is conducted by Staff Selection Commission (SSC). The examination aims to recruits assistant personnel to different Government cadres. The examination is conducted once a year in two stages – Prelims and Mains. Usually the notification is issued during the month of September and the Main exam is held in July of next year.
Why to Take the Assistant Grade Exam?
Staff Selection Commission recruits Grade II, IV category personnel to Government Services.
- Grade II Cypher Assistant of the Cypher Cadre of Indian Foreign Service Branch
- Grade IV Assistant in the General Cadre of the Indian Foreign Services
- Assistant Grade of the Railway Board Secretariat Service
- Assistant Grade of the Central Secretariat Service
- Assistant Grade of the Armed forces Headquarters Civil Service
- Assistant Grade in Indian Government office Departments and Organizations which are not mentioned in the above list.
Assistant Grade Exam Eligibility
Read about Assistant Grade Exam
Indian citizen who is between the ages of 20 to 25 with Graduation degree is eligible for the exam. Age relaxation is provided for SC/ST, OBC, PH candidates. The age limit is also relaxed for the candidates in government service in various departments or office of Government of India. Any Graduation Degree from a recognized university or equivalent is the academic eligibility criterion.
Assistant Grade Exam Pattern
The Preliminary exam is objective type with duration of 3 hrs. The paper includes 300 questions of 300 marks. Reasoning Ability, General Awareness, Arithmetic and Language Paper (English/Hindi) are tested in the exam. Marks for the Language test are not counted while short listing the candidates for the main examination.
Main Examination is descriptive type. It consist two sections – Language Comprehension and Arithmetic. Language comprehension includes General English and Communication/Writing Skill. The duration of the exam is 3 hrs. The total marks are 300. General English, which is of 50 marks, has to be qualified for the correction of rest of the paper.
How to Apply Assistant Grade Exam?
Candidates have to follow the Employment News for the notification, usually during September for the next year examination. The blank application can be found in the notification. The filled application must be sent to the Department of Personnel and Training of Staff Selection Commission. Passport size photograph and fee related documents must be attested to the filled application.
How to Prepare Assistant Grade Exam?
- Read the news paper regularly which improves General Awareness as it aims the topics like Current Events, Culture, History, Geography, and general Polity etc.
- For Arithmetic, High School Mathematic text books are very useful for getting cleared with basics.
- Knowledge of basic grammar and vocabulary would help in the language test
- Reading English News paper helps to improve vocabulary and the correct usage of words.
- Several publications are providing practice papers which would give the knowledge of questioning pattern
- Mock tests and previous papers help to improve the time management.