DFCCIL MTS common mistakes
DFCCIL MTS · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending 20–25 minutes on General Awareness questions and leaving only 30 minutes for the 100-question Reasoning and Quantitative sections, so the last 15–20 questions are answered by random ticking.
General Awareness feels easy because the questions are short and there is no calculation, so candidates keep reading and re-reading them instead of moving on. Many also believe GA carries more weight because it is listed first on the paper.
What to do instead
Before the exam, fix a section order and a time budget on paper, for example GA 8 minutes, Reasoning 40 minutes, Quantitative 35 minutes, Language 15 minutes, with 7 minutes for review. In the first 60 seconds of the test, write the section start times on the rough sheet and check them after every 10 questions. Practise this with three full-length mocks so the habit is automatic.
Guessing on current affairs from memory of headlines without checking the year, so an answer about a scheme, award, or appointment from two years ago is marked instead of the current one.
Most candidates prepare GA from general reading and old PDFs, and questions about appointments, sports hosts, summits, and schemes repeat in format but change in content every year. Under time pressure the older, more familiar fact surfaces first.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page date-stamped GA sheet covering only the 12 months before the exam window: appointments, awards, summits and host cities, sports events, defence exercises, schemes, and books. Revise only that sheet in the final week. In the exam, if a GA question mentions a specific year and you cannot place it, skip rather than guess.
Solving reasoning puzzles and seating arrangements first because they look familiar, then discovering that 12 minutes have gone into 3 questions and the easy series and coding questions are still untouched.
Puzzles give a strong sense of progress while solving, so candidates stay with them past the point where they are stuck. The time lost is invisible until the section ends.
What to do instead
Set a hard 90-second rule: if a puzzle has not started to break open in 90 seconds, mark it and leave. Do one full pass of the section answering only single-step items (series, analogy, coding-decoding, direction, blood relation, odd-one-out), then return to puzzles with the remaining time. In mocks, count how many puzzles you abandoned and confirm that the easy marks were secured first.
Solving series, analogy, and odd-one-out questions by feel, then being unable to decide between two options and changing the answer at the last second.
Candidates learn these topics through practice without writing down the underlying rule families (differences, squares and cubes, alternating series, letter-position shifts, prime positions), so under pressure they rely on intuition and lose confidence.
What to do instead
Build a rule checklist and apply it in a fixed order for every series: check differences, then ratios, then squares/cubes plus or minus a constant, then alternating or two interleaved series, then digit-sum or product patterns. For letter series, write A=1 to Z=26 and compute positions. For analogy, state the relationship in words (for example 'worker : workplace') before looking at the options.
Leaving simplification, percentage, average, and ratio questions unattempted because they look calculation-heavy, while spending the same time on one difficult data interpretation set.
Candidates see numbers and assume long division, but most elementary arithmetic questions in this exam are designed for approximation and cancellation. Meanwhile DI feels high-value because it carries several marks, so it absorbs disproportionate time.
What to do instead
Drill approximation and percentage-to-fraction conversion (12.5% = 1/8, 16.66% = 1/6, 6.25% = 1/16) until they are instant, and use options to eliminate instead of computing exactly. In DI, read the question first and extract only the two or three values needed rather than studying the whole table.
Losing marks on time-and-work, trains, boats, and pipes questions by applying the wrong formula because the units or the direction of flow were not written down.
These topics have several similar-looking formulas, and candidates memorise them as text rather than as relationships. Without a written setup, the mind substitutes the nearest familiar formula.
What to do instead
For every such question, write one line before calculating: for work, 'total work = LCM of days'; for trains, 'relative speed = sum if opposite, difference if same direction'; for boats, 'downstream = b + s, upstream = b − s'; for pipes, 'fill is positive, empty is negative'. Then substitute. Do 15 questions per topic with this written setup until it becomes automatic.
Answering English grammar questions by choosing the option that 'sounds right' when reading silently, and missing errors of subject-verb agreement, article use, and preposition that only appear when the sentence is parsed.
Fluent reading fills gaps automatically, so the ear corrects the error. This exam tests formal written grammar, where the error is often a small function word that silent reading skips.
What to do instead
For error-spotting and fill-in-the-blank, read the sentence aloud in your head one clause at a time and check four things in order: subject-verb agreement, tense consistency, article and preposition, and pronoun reference. For synonym and antonym questions, place the option back into the sentence and test whether the meaning holds.
In the Hindi section, confusing similar-looking matras and choosing a wrong option in spelling, synonym, and muhavara questions without checking the full word.
Hindi spelling questions turn on a single matra or a halant, and candidates read quickly and pattern-match to a familiar word. Idiom questions are also answered from the literal meaning rather than the accepted figurative meaning.
What to do instead
For spelling questions, write the four options on the rough sheet and compare them letter by letter. For muhavara and lokokti questions, recall the standard figurative meaning and reject any option that gives the literal sense. Maintain a list of 100 common idioms with meanings and revise it weekly.
Marking answers on the OMR sheet in blocks at the end of the exam instead of question by question, then running out of time to transfer 30 or more answers.
Candidates believe block transfer saves time during the paper, and many practice only on question booklets without an answer sheet, so the transfer step is never timed.
What to do instead
Transfer the answer immediately after solving each question, or at most in blocks of five, and check the question number against the bubble each time. In every mock, use a real OMR-style sheet and include transfer time in the total. Keep 5 minutes at the end only for verifying that no bubble is blank or double-marked.
Ignoring negative marking and guessing on every unknown question, ending with a net score lower than the number of questions actually known.
Candidates fear leaving blanks and treat an attempted paper as a better paper. Without tracking, they do not see that random four-option guesses on unknown items cost more than they gain.
What to do instead
Use a two-pass rule: in pass one answer only questions where you are confident, in pass two attempt only questions where you can eliminate at least two options. Leave pure guesses blank. In mocks, compute the net score with and without guessing to see the difference, and set a personal guessing policy you follow in the exam.