Most SSC candidates do not lose on syllabus. The syllabus is modest and nearly everyone finishes it. They lose on the clock, and since 2026 the clock is stricter than the one most people are still preparing for.
This page gives you the official pattern, the three or four things it forces on your preparation, daily timetables for the hours you actually have, and a twelve-week shape to hang them on. The free Lighthouse Prep planner turns them into a daily routine of timed sessions.
What is live right now
| Exam | Stage | Date |
|---|---|---|
| CGL 2026 | Tier-I (CBE) | 30 September to 30 October 2026 |
| CHSL 2026 | Applications | Open until 7 October 2026, 23:00 |
| CHSL 2026 | Tier-I (CBE) | To be notified |
Sources: SSC's important notice of 12 September 2026 for the CGL Tier-I schedule, and the Combined Higher Secondary (10+2) Level Examination, 2026 notice for the application window. Dates move — check ssc.gov.in before you fix your plan around them.
The paper you are actually sitting
CGL and CHSL Tier-I are the same shape: four subjects, 25 questions each, 2 marks a question.
| Subject | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| General Intelligence and Reasoning | 25 | 50 | 15 minutes |
| General Awareness | 25 | 50 | 15 minutes |
| Quantitative Aptitude | 25 | 50 | 15 minutes |
| English Comprehension | 25 | 50 | 15 minutes |
| Total | 100 | 200 | 60 minutes |
Source: the Combined Graduate Level Examination, 2026 notice, published on ssc.gov.in on 21 May 2026. CHSL 2026 uses the same four parts, with English Language first and Quantitative Aptitude set at basic arithmetic. Questions are set in English and Hindi except the English paper, and there is negative marking of 0.50 marks for each wrong answer.
What the fifteen-minute sectional timer changes
This is the part worth sitting with. Each subject gets its own 15 minutes, and the timer moves on whether you are ready or not. Fifteen minutes for 25 questions is 36 seconds a question, and you cannot rescue a slow Quant section with the time you saved in English.
Three things follow, and they should change what your week looks like:
- You cannot have a weak section any more. Under one shared hour, strong candidates used to pour spare minutes into Quant. That route is closed. A section you are slow at now simply ends unfinished.
- General Awareness is the best-paid fifteen minutes in the paper. It is 50 marks of pure recall, and most of it is answered in seconds or not at all. Candidates who leave GA to the last month are giving away the one section where speed is free.
- Practice has to be sectional. A 60-minute mock with no section locks no longer rehearses the real thing. Practise 25 questions against a 15-minute clock, one subject at a time, and know your own count per section.
A useful target before the exam: 22 to 24 attempts in Reasoning and GA, 18 to 20 in Quant, 20 to 22 in English — with accuracy above 90%. Work backwards from those numbers rather than from hours studied.
What a wrong answer costs
A correct answer is worth 2 marks and a wrong one costs 0.50, so four wrong answers cancel one correct answer. In CGL Tier-II Paper-I, where questions carry 3 marks, a wrong answer in Sections I, II and III costs 1 mark.
Then there is normalisation. SSC runs these exams in many shifts, and both 2026 notices state that marks in a multi-shift computer-based examination are normalised using the procedure the Commission published on 2 June 2025, with the normalised scores deciding merit and cut-offs. You are not punished for drawing a hard shift — but you are still punished for guessing in it. Attempt what you know; leave what you do not.
Tier-II is where CGL is decided
CGL Tier-I only qualifies you. The marks that make your rank come from Tier-II.
| Paper-I, Session-I | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section-I: Mathematical Abilities + Reasoning | 30 + 30 | 180 | 1 hour (30 minutes each) |
| Section-II: English Language and Comprehension + General Awareness | 45 + 25 | 210 | 1 hour (40 + 20 minutes) |
| Section-III: Computer Knowledge Test | 20 | 60 | 15 minutes |
Source: the CGL 2026 notice. The practical consequence: English and General Awareness are worth 210 marks in Tier-II against Mathematics and Reasoning's 180. Candidates who treat English as the section they will "manage" are conceding the largest block of marks in the exam.
Daily timetables that fit real hours
Keep the order of the blocks; move the clock times to fit your day.
3 hours: working or in college
| Block | Session | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 45 min | Quant | One topic, then 15 questions against a clock |
| 30 min | Reasoning | One topic, sectional set of 25 in 15 minutes |
| 30 min | English | Grammar rule of the day, then vocabulary or a cloze set |
| 30 min | General Awareness | Static topic plus the day's current affairs |
| 25 min | Revision | Whatever is due today from previous weeks |
5 hours: full-time candidate
| Block | Session | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 90 min | Quant deep work | The day's topic taught properly, then 25 questions |
| 45 min | Reasoning | A sectional set at exam pace, then error review |
| 45 min | English | Reading comprehension one day, grammar the next |
| 45 min | General Awareness | Static syllabus in the morning, current affairs at night |
| 45 min | Sectional practice | One timed section from a past paper, analysed |
| 30 min | Revision | Spaced revision of earlier topics |
8 hours: the last six weeks
Two Quant blocks instead of one, a full-length mock every second day, and the whole afternoon on analysing it — not on sitting another one. A mock you have not analysed is a mock you have not taken.
A twelve-week shape
| Weeks | What you are doing |
|---|---|
| 1–4 | Build: every Quant and Reasoning topic taught once, with 15 questions each. English grammar rules, one a day. GA static syllabus started. |
| 5–8 | Speed: every topic revisited against a clock. Sectional sets daily. Current affairs becomes a daily 20 minutes, not a monthly panic. |
| 9–11 | Papers: two full-length mocks a week, each one analysed the same day. Previous-year papers by section. Weak topics rebuilt, not reread. |
| 12 | Taper: revision only, one mock mid-week, GA and formula sheets daily. Nothing new. |
What usually goes wrong
- General Awareness is left for the end. It needs months of small daily contact, not a final fortnight.
- Mocks get taken but not analysed. The score is not the point; the list of why-I-got-it-wrong is.
- Reading replaces solving. Watching a solution is not the same skill as producing one in 36 seconds.
- Revision is left to memory. Topics finished in week 2 are gone by week 8 unless something brings them back.
- The plan is built for a perfect day. One bad week and the whole timetable is abandoned rather than resized.
How the free planner turns this into today's sessions
Lighthouse Prep is where the shape above becomes a routine you actually run.
- A daily plan from your exam and date. Pick CGL, CHSL, MTS, GD, Stenographer or JE, set the date, and the AI weights your sessions across Reasoning, Quant, English and GA by what recent papers ask.
- Timed sessions, not a checklist. Each session carries a topic and a duration; the timer keeps running when your phone locks, and on Android Focus Shield silences the phone while a session runs.
- Mock tests on the real pattern, with sectional timing. Before you start, the paper shows every section, its marks, its negative marking and its sectional lock — the same constraint as the exam. Your first test is free.
- Spaced revision that escalates. Topics come back on a spaced schedule with a harder question each time you clear them, so week 2's work is still there in week 12.
- A wastage report. Session by session, it shows the minutes you planned against the minutes you actually studied — which is usually where the missing hours are.
- A plan that shrinks instead of breaking. Fall behind for several days and it offers to resize the routine to what your best days show you can sustain, pausing sessions rather than deleting them.
Start with today
Set SSC and your exam date, and the first session is ready. If your CGL Tier-I is in the next few weeks, skip the build phase and go straight to the taper: sectional sets at exam pace, one mock analysed properly, and General Awareness every single day.