Examination Pattern

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conducts the Civil Services Examination every year for recruitment to various prestigious positions in the Government of India. This WRITE UP aims to give the reader an overview of the UPSC exam pattern and syllabus for CIVIL SERVICE EXAM - 2021.

The UPSC Civil Services Examination, commonly known as the IAS exam due to the aura and popularity of the Indian Administrative Service as a career option. It is considered to be among the toughest examination in India. It has earned this moniker partly due to the intense competition and partly due to the VAST UPSC CIVIL SERVICE SYLLABUS. Apart from that, the exam pattern for UPSC CSE is quite complicated, and a typical examination cycle lasts for almost a year from the preliminary exam until the final results are declared.

UPSC Exam Pattern

THREE-STAGE EXAM

The UPSC examination is officially divided into The three stages,

• Preliminary
• Main Examination (candidates who clear the Prelims are eligible for Mains for that particular year)
• The interview stage (candidates who clear the Main reach the interview stage for that particular year)

IAS Exam Pattern for UPSC PRELIMS

The UPSC exam pattern for the Preliminary stage consists of

• Two papers ( COMPRISES OF MCQ based questions),
• Both conducted on same day.
• Both the papers comprise of objective type questions with multiple choice of answers.
• The prelims examination is a qualifying stage to filter candidates for the mains exam. The marks secured at this stage are not counted towards the final merit list.The details of UPSC Prelims Exam are given below:

 

Marks: 200

Duration:  2 hours

Marks: 200 marks

Duration: 2 hours

1. Reading Comprehension

2. Interpersonal skills including communication skills;

3. Logical reasoning and analytical ability

4. Decision making and problem-solving ability

5. General mental ability

6. Basic numeracy (numbers and their relations, orders of magnitude, etc.) (Class X level), Data interpretation (charts, graphs, tables, data sufficiency etc. - Class X level)

7. English Language Comprehension skills (Class X level).

8. Questions relating to English Language Comprehension skills of Class X level (last item in the Syllabus of Paper-II) will be tested through passages from English language only without providing Hindi translation thereof in the question paper.

Exam pattern for IAS Mains - 

The UPSC exam pattern for the Mains stage consists of 9 papers conducted over a week. Only those candidates who secure at least the declared cut off in General Studies I and 33% in General Studies II in Prelims will be eligible to appear for the Mains Examination in that particular year. Cut off at times depends on the number of vacancies in a particular year, as 12-13 times aspirants sit for the mains exam as compared to the declared vacancies. As per the exam pattern of UPSC Mains, all of the papers consist of descriptive answer type questions with assigned word limit. The details of UPSC Mains Exam are given below:

Paper	Subject	Duration	Total marks
Paper A	Compulsory Indian language	3 hours	300
Paper B	English	3 hours	300
Paper I	Essay	3 hours	250
Paper II	General Studies I	3 hours	250
Paper III	General Studies II	3 hours	250
Paper IV	General Studies III	3 hours	250
Paper V	General Studies IV	3 hours	250
Paper VI	Optional I	3 hours	250
Paper VII	Optional II	3 hours	250

• All of the mains papers except for the language papers A and B are of a merit ranking nature.
• Paper A and B are of qualifying nature and candidates must score at least 25% in each for the marks from their Paper I – Paper VII to be given weightage.
• Paper A is not compulsory for candidates from the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim as well as candidates with hearing impairment, provided they can prove that they have been exempted from such 2nd or 3rd language courses by their concerned board or university. The Indian Language paper covers any of the languages included in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.

The subjects which are covered by the General Studies Papers in Mains Exam are:

General Studies I	General Studies II	General Studies III	General Studies IV
Indian Heritage and Culture	Governance	Technology	Ethics
History and Geography of the World	Constitution	Economic Development	Integrity
Society	Polity	Bio-diversity	Aptitude
	Social Justice	Environment
	International relations	Security and Disaster Management

Sl. No.	Name of Paper	Syllabus	Marks
1	Essay Paper	Any Topic/Topics (Current issues)	250
2	GS Paper I	Indian Heritage and Culture, Indian History, World History, World Geography, Indian Society, Important Geo-physical phenomena	250
3	GS Paper II	Governance, Indian Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations, Welfare Schemes, Statutory, regulatory and quasi-judicial bodies, Role of civil services in a democracy, India’s relation with neighbour countries, International institutions,	250
4	GS Paper III	Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Indian Economy and its various sectorsGovernment BudgetingLand ReformsInclusive GrowthSecurity and Disaster Management	250
5	GS Paper IV	Ethics and Human Interface Attitude Aptitude Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence Public/Civil service value Probity in Governance Case study on above topics	250
6	Indian Language Paper	(i) Comprehension of given passages (ii) Précis Writing (iii) Usage and Vocabulary (iv) Short Essays (v) Translation from English to the Indian language and vice-versa	300
7	English	Comprehension of given passages Précis Writing Usage and Vocabulary Short Essays	300
8	Optional Paper I	As opted by Candidate	250
9	Optional Paper II	As opted by Candidate	250

The Optional subjects for Paper VI and VII of the mains examination have to be any one of the subjects from the following list:

Agriculture	Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science	Anthropology	Botany	Chemistry
Civil Engineering	Commerce and Accountancy	Economics	Electrical Engineering	Geography
Geology	History	Law	Management	Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering	Medical Science	Philosophy	Physics	Political Science and International Relations
Psychology	Public Administration	Sociology	Statistics	Zoology
The literature of any one of the following languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and English.

ISSUE OF WRITING LANGUAGE IN MAINS

• All the papers except the Language papers A and B can be answered in English or any of the languages listed in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India.
• The optional papers can be answered in English even if none of the other papers has been answered by the candidate in English