SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 3 · Quantitative Aptitude · Question 2 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The following pie-chart shows the distribution of students at graduate level in different institutes in a town. Study the given chart and answer the question that follows. Distribution of students at graduate level institutes If the total number of students at the graduate level is 2,46,000, then how many students of institutes A and B are studying at graduate level?

(a)76,260
(b)86,190
(c)78,370
(d)74,580

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Read only the two slices the question names.

A = 17%, B = 14%, so together they hold 31%
1% of 2,46,000 = 2,460
31% = 2,460 × 31 = 76,260

That is option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
86,190 — 86,190 is 35.04% of 2,46,000. The chart's two biggest slices are A and R at 17% each, so no pair of institutes can exceed 34%, which is 83,640.
(c)
78,370 — 78,370 works out to 31.86%, not a whole number of per cent. Every slice on this chart is printed as a whole percentage, so any sum of slices must be one too.
(d)
74,580 — 74,580 is 30.32% of the total, short of the 31% that A and B actually hold between them.

Concept

The pie chart divides one town's graduate-level students across seven institutes: A 17%, B 14%, N 12%, P 12%, Q 13%, R 17% and T 15%, which sum to 100%.

A percentage chart carries no absolute numbers of its own, so nothing is answerable until the question supplies a total. Here that total is 2,46,000.

The method is fixed: add the named slices first, then take that single percentage of the total. Adding first keeps the whole question to one multiplication.

1% of 2,46,000 is exactly 2,460, so every slice lands on a clean figure — A is 41,820 students and B is 34,440.

Working in that 1% unit is faster than computing two separate percentages and adding them, and it makes the check obvious: 41,820 + 34,440 = 76,260.

Key facts

Institutes A and B hold 17% and 14%, so together 31% of the graduate-level students.
1% of 2,46,000 is 2,460, so 31% is 2,460 × 31 = 76,260.
The seven slices A, B, N, P, Q, R and T account for the whole 100%.

Study next

Converting pie-chart percentages into degrees, where 1% is 3.6°Questions giving percentages in a chart and totals only in the sentence below itRatio questions on a pie chart, where the common total cancels out

Common traps

Converting each slice to students separately and then adding, which doubles the arithmetic.
Picking a slice by its colour or position instead of by its printed label.

SSC puts the percentages in the chart and the absolute total in the sentence below it, so the chart alone does not answer the question.

The same split appears at 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, Quant Q.6 (20,000 employees, one department) and at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, Quant Q.21 (240 blood donors, a ratio).

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