A few months back, a candidate from Nagaon — I’ll call her Priya since she’d rather stay anonymous — messaged me in a bit of a panic. She’d scored 92 in APSC CCE Prelims and was convinced she was through, because “last year’s cutoff was 87.” What she didn’t realise was that “last year” for her was 2022, not 2023 — and in the space of that one year, the General category cutoff had jumped from 74.5 to 95. She missed the Mains by 3 marks.
That gap — between what candidates think the cutoff is and what it actually turns out to be — is the single biggest reason APSC aspirants lose a year without even realising why. So instead of giving you another recycled table copied from an old PDF, let’s actually walk through what the numbers have done over the last decade, why they move the way they do, and what a realistic “safe” score looks like if you’re eyeing the 2027 cycle.
Prelims Cut-Off Trend (General Category, Paper-I only)
| Year | General (Male) | Format |
| 2018 | 263 out of 400 | Old pattern |
| 2020 | 122.5 out of 200 | Current pattern begins |
| 2022 | 74.5 out of 200 | Current pattern |
| 2023 | 95.0 out of 200 | Current pattern |
| 2024 | 87.5 out of 200 | Current pattern |
Notice something? It’s not a straight climb. 2022 was a genuinely tough paper and the cutoff fell to 74.5. The very next year, 2023, it jumped back to 95 — a 20-mark swing in twelve months. That single data point should tell you everything about why “the cutoff was X last time” is a dangerous benchmark to plan your preparation around. Paper difficulty swings the number far more than category or competition does.
Category-Wise Prelims Cut-Off (2020–2024)
This is where most guidance articles get lazy and just give you the General figure. Here’s the actual category spread, side by side, so you can see how the gap between categories has behaved over the years.
| Category | 2020 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
| General/OC | 122.5 | 74.5 | 95.0 | 87.5 |
| OBC/MOBC | 101.5 | 54.5 | 80.0 | 76.0 |
| SC | 95.0 | 50.5 | 74.5 | 71.5 |
| ST(P) | 90.0 | 49.5 | 75.5 | 70.5 |
| ST(H) | 84.5 | 38.5 | 60.5 | 60.0 |
One pattern that holds steady across every single year here: the General-to-ST(H) gap sits somewhere between 25 and 40 marks, fairly consistently, regardless of whether the overall paper was easy or brutal. So even when the raw numbers bounce around, the relative distance between categories stays fairly predictable. That’s actually more useful for planning than the absolute number itself.
Mains Cut-Off: The Number That Actually Decides Your Fate
Prelims gets all the anxiety, but Mains cutoff is where selection is really won or lost — and it’s released post-wise, not just category-wise, which trips up a lot of candidates who assume one number applies to every service they’ve applied for.
Here’s the comparison between the 2023 cycle and the 2025 cycle (which corresponds to the CCE 2024 exam, results out in early 2026) for a few of the most competitive posts:
Assam Civil Service (Jr. Grade) — Male, out of 1500
| Category | 2023 | 2025 | Change |
| OC | 804 | 873 | +69 |
| OBC/MOBC | 766 | 856 | +90 |
| ST(P) | 757 | 839 | +82 |
| ST(H) | 730 | 823 | +93 |
Assam Police Service (Jr. Grade) — Male
| Category | 2023 | 2025 | Change |
| OC | 770 | 855 | +85 |
| OBC/MOBC | 760 | 854 | +94 |
| ST(P) | 731 | 837 | +106 |
| ST(H) | 720 | 820 | +100 |
Sit with those numbers for a second. This isn’t a gentle upward drift — the OBC cutoff for Assam Police Service moved up by 94 marks in one cycle. Candidates who prepared assuming “760 is roughly what I need” would have missed the Mains cutoff by nearly a hundred marks despite matching what would’ve been a comfortable score two years earlier.
Why the jump? Partly fewer vacancies (78 posts advertised for the 2026 cycle versus 289 in the 2024 cycle, per APSC’s own notifications), partly a genuinely large applicant pool, and partly the fact that once WhatsApp groups and coaching institutes start circulating “expected cutoff” numbers, a chunk of borderline candidates over-prepare specifically to clear that number — which then pushes the real cutoff even higher the following year. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling spiral.
So What’s a Safe Score for 2027?
I’ll be straightforward: nobody, including APSC itself before the exam, knows the exact number in advance. Anyone promising you a precise figure for a cycle that hasn’t even been notified yet is guessing dressed up as certainty. What we can do is build a realistic range using the last five years of movement, and that’s genuinely useful for target-setting.
Prelims — Paper I, out of 200 (projected safe zone for 2027)
| Category | Realistic Target |
| General/EWS | 100–110 |
| OBC/MOBC | 90–98 |
| SC | 82–90 |
| ST(P) | 78–86 |
| ST(H) | 68–76 |
I’ve deliberately pitched these a shade above the highest recent year (2023’s 95 for General) rather than the average, because with vacancies shrinking and competition rising, the safer assumption is that the trend line keeps climbing rather than reverting to the softer 2022 numbers.
Mains — out of 1500, General category, across major services
Based on the 2025 cycle range of roughly 820–873 for OC across different posts, a candidate targeting 2027 should realistically be aiming for 880–920 to sit comfortably clear of the cutoff rather than hovering right at the edge. For OBC/MOBC, the equivalent safe zone is around 860–890, and for ST(H), somewhere near 830–860.
None of these are official — treat them as a training target, not gospel.
A Preparation Note That Actually Matters More Than the Number
Here’s what I tell every candidate who comes to me obsessing over the exact cutoff figure: chasing last year’s number is preparing for a paper that already happened. The smarter approach is to prepare to be in roughly the top 8–10% of scorers for your category, because that’s what a “safe” score actually represents — not an absolute mark, but a relative position. Whether that translates to 88 or 108 in a given year depends on how the paper sets, which nobody controls.
What Priya did after that near-miss, for what it’s worth, was stop tracking the cutoff altogether and start tracking her own accuracy percentage in mock tests instead. She cleared the next cycle with a comfortable margin — not because she predicted the cutoff correctly, but because she stopped trying to.
Quick Answers:
Is the APSC CCE cutoff the same for Prelims and Mains?
No. Prelims cutoff is based only on Paper-I (General Studies); Paper-II (CSAT) just needs a 33% qualifying score and doesn’t count toward the merit cutoff. Mains cutoff is a completely separate, much larger number out of 1500, and it’s released post-wise.
Does the cutoff differ between male and female candidates?
Sometimes marginally, sometimes not at all — it depends on the number of female vacancies specifically notified for that post in that cycle. In several posts and years, the two cutoffs are identical or within a mark or two of each other.
Why did the 2025 Mains cutoff jump so much compared to 2023?
Mainly a steep drop in the number of advertised vacancies combined with a growing applicant base — fewer seats, same or larger pool, higher bar.
Where can I check the official cutoff instead of relying on aggregator sites?
Always cross-check on apsc.nic.in under the Results section — that’s the only source that matters when you’re finalising your own preparation target.Quick Answers:
Hi, I’m Palash, the person behind AssamInfoHub — an independent platform helping Assam citizens understand government schemes, pensions, and welfare programs in simple language. Information published here is compiled from official government notifications, district-level practices, and Panchayat-level verification methods. My goal is to reduce misinformation and help families follow the correct procedures without depending on agents.