Union Public Service Commission, or more famously, UPSC, is a Constitutional Body under Article 315 of the Indian Constitution. It conducts recruitment for various posts in the Central as well as All-India Services.

Civil Services Exam (CSE) is one of the many exams conducted by the UPSC. This exam is known to the common man by the name “IAS exam”. However, this exam is for recruitment to not just the IAS, but twenty three more services like the Indian Foreign Service, Indian Police Service, Indian Revenue Service, Indian Railway Traffic Service, among others.

The CSE is a three-round process (as of 2019). First, preliminary exam, widely known as “prelims” or simply, “pre”, is usually conducted in the month of June or July. About a million candidates apply for this round, out of which only around 10-15 thousand qualify for the next round. One important thing to keep in mind is that Prelims is just a qualifying/screening round and its score is not considered for the making of the final rank list. The preliminary exam has two papers conducted on a single day, usually a Sunday. The type of questions is multiple-choice-questions. More details on the Prelims page.

The second round is called “Main (Written)”, or colloquially the “Mains”. This exam comprises nine papers — English, an Indian language (Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, etc), Essay, four General Studies (GS), and two papers of optional subject. Of these, English and the Indian language papers are of qualifying nature. One needs to secure only 25% of marks in them (as in 2019, please check the notification for the latest update). The remaining seven papers decide one’s fate! Each of these has 250 marks and thus the Mains exam has 1750 marks in total. In this stage, out of 10-15k candidates, about 2000-3000 (roughly one-fifth) are shortlisted for the next round, depending on the number of total vacancy for that year. For detailed strategy for mains preparation, go to the Mains tab.

The third and the last milestone to cross is the Interview round, formally known as “Main (Personality Test)”. In this round, the shortlisted candidates are called to the Dholpur House (the UPSC headquarters in New Delhi) for interviews. The interview carries 275 marks in the total of 2025 (1750 + 275). Although this seems a small share, the interview has a huge sway in deciding one’s final rank. Of the 2-3k candidates interviewed, about 800 to 1000 (depends on the total vacancy) make it to the final list. To know more about Interview preparation and my interview transcript, go to the Interview page.