UPSC Civil Services Exam Pattern, Preliminary & Mains, Interview/Personality Test

UPSC Civil Services Exam Pattern: UPSC Offers Civil Services / IAS Examination so that the right candidate can hold the post to serve the nation. The examination consisted of preliminary as well as mains. If you have applied for the examination by filling the application form and looking with positivity to appear in the exam then make sure that you are aware of the examination pattern. If you are not known for the examination pattern then it could cause severe hurdles and you fail to meet the requirements easily. Sometimes, you prepare hard for the exam because due to lack o the exam pattern, you need to face lots of difficulties. Thus collect whole info about the pattern in which question paper appears. The pattern of the exam implies different sections in the examination and marks associated with them.

UPSC Civil Services Exam Pattern:

The Civil Services Examination comprises two successive stages:

• Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination (Objective Type) for the selection of candidates for Civil Services (Main) Examination.
• Civil Services (Main) Examination (Written and Interview/Personality Test) for the selection of candidates for the various Services and posts.

Preliminary Exam Pattern:

Prelims consisted of Objective Type questions consisted of two different papers such as General Studies Paper and CSAT. The General Studies paper is used later for screening to the Main exam and the CSAT exam is considered as the minimum qualifying in nature.

• The Exam will be conducted through Offline mode.
• The candidate will have to give 2 Papers that are objective-based.
• The first exams are of general study and the second of CSAT, which is also known as the civil service aptitude test.
• The exams are 200 marks each and the duration of the exam is 2 hours each.
• The question papers will be set both in Hindi and English.
• one-third (0.33) marks will be deducted for every wrong answer.
• The candidate qualifying both the exams will appear for the mains examination.

Papers	Subject	Marks	Duration
Paper-I	General Studies	200	2 Hours
Paper-II	CSAT (Civil Service Aptitude Test)	200	2 Hours
Total		400	4 Hours

Main Exam Pattern:

• The Civil Services (Main) Examination will consist of a Written Examination and an Interview/Personality Test.
• The Main examination consisted of nine papers overall which include two optional papers. These two options papers are descriptive.
• The written tests consisted of 1750 marks in all and personality tests consisted of 275 marks. Overall marks are 2025 in all.

Paper	Subject	Marks
A	Indian languages are listed below, The language will be select by the candidate	300
B	English (Qualifying)	300
I	Essay	250
II	General Studies I	250
III	General Studies II	250
IV	General Studies III	250
V	General Studies IV	250
VI, VII	2 Papers on the Optional subject from the list 250 marks each paper	500
Sub Total (Written Test)		1750
Personality Test (Interview)		275
Total Marks		2025

List of optional subjects for Main Examination:

• Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science
• Anthropology
• Botany
• Chemistry
• Agriculture
• 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
• 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.

Interview/Personality Test

The 3rd stage is an interview. It is conducted to check your personality. The interviewer checks for your intellectual skills, communication skills, mental ability, and way of responding. It will be like a natural conversation. The candidates must be aware of the current things happening around them national as well as international.