Civil Services Exam 2019

Nationality: For IAS and IPS, the candidate must be a citizen of India.
Age Limits: Minimum age a candidate must have attained is 21 years and maximum age limit is 32 years. Relaxations are applicable to the upper age limit for various categories like SC, ST, OBC, etc.
Educational Qualification: Candidate must have a degree in any stream from a University recognized by the University Grants Commission or must possess an equivalent qualification. Even students in their final year of graduation can appear for the exam.
Number of Attempts: A general category candidate can give a maximum of 6 attempts and the number of attempts changes based on the category of the aspirants.

The civil services exam is spread over a year with 3 levels of tests namely:

UPSC Prelims Exam
UPSC Mains Exam
Personality Test

UPSC Prelims Exam

Preliminary exam is the first stage of the Civil Services Exam. It is a screening test to select the students for the second stage of the exam that is the mains exam. The preliminary exam comprises two objective type papers of 200 marks each. Those who manage to score more than the cut off declared by the UPSC for that particular year will be summoned for mains examination. However, the marks scored in Prelims will not be counted for the final rankings.

UPSC Mains Exam

The UPSC Mains exam is the second stage of the Civil Services Exam. This stage comprises 9 descriptive type papers:

1 paper for Essay

4 papers for General Studies subjects

2 papers for the selected optional subject (of your choice to be selected from the Civil Services Exam Optional Subjects)

2 papers based on languages, English and a selection Indian regional language. (Marks scored in language papers will not be included to arrive at the final ranking order – however, candidates need to score at least 25% in each paper in order to qualify)

Personality Test or Interview Stage

Personality test, commonly known as the interview stage is the final stage of the Civil Services Exam selection process. Only those candidates who manage to get above the mains exam cut-off decided by UPSC are invited for the interview.

The objective is to assess the suitability of the candidate to the Civil Services by checking their mental alertness, the balance of judgement, intellectual and moral integrity, etc.

The Personality Test is conducted for a total of 275 marks and there is no cut-off decided separately for the last stage of the exam.

The marks scored by the candidate in the final stage of the exam I.e. interview stage is added with the marks scored in the mains examination stage and the final merit list is prepared. The rankings are given to candidates till the maximum vacancy to be filled that year which will be mentioned in the UPSC notification itself.

Prelims exam tests one’s awareness while Mains tests the analytical ability of the candidate. Though the approach for both Prelims and Mains exam is very different, it is essential for one to integrate the Prelims and Mains preparation. The facts you learn for Prelims can be used as fodder for Mains answer writing.

Though there is no specific book list to be read for the exam, you can customize your own list according to your knowledge and comfort level in each subject. Newspaper reading is a must. Select a newspaper of your choice, preferably “The Hindu” and read it thoroughly every day without fail!

To start off with the preparations, one can read the NCERT books for creating a solid base for each of the subjects.

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