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Welcome to Educrat IAS Academy! We are here to provide you the complete UPSC syllabus for the Civil Services Examination (CSE) conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). The Civil Services Examination (CSE) is widely considered as one of the toughest and the most prestigious examinations conducted in India among all other competitive examinations. And, we will help you understated the pattern of IAS exam.

To get the detailed syllabus click here.

To download the syllabus for IAS 2021 click here.

List Of Contents

The Civil Services Exam is conducted in three stages:

1st Stage: Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination (Objective Type)
2nd Stage: Civil Services (Mains) Examination (Descriptive Type)
3rd Stage: Personal Interview (Personality Test)

1st Stage: Prelims

Paper	Subjects	Total Marks	Duration
I	General Studies (GS)	200	2 hours (9:30 AM to 11:30 AM)
II	CSAT	200	2 hours (2:30 PM to 4:30 PM)

Broadly, the UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination consists of two papers of objective type, each of 200 marks (hence totaling 400 marks) and of two hours duration. To qualify for the Civil Services Mains, a candidate must attempt both the papers.

I. Further, the UPSC General Studies (GS) paper consists of 100 questions, while the CSAT paper consists of 80 questions. Both papers have negative marks for wrong answers marked to the tune of 1/3rd of the total marks assigned to that question.

a) To further illustrate this, each correctly answered GS question will be awarded 2 marks. So, 0.66 marks would be deducted from the total for every question that is wrongly marked.

b) Similarly, in the CSAT paper, since we have 80 questions for 200 marks, correctly answered CSAT question would attract 2.5 marks each, while every wrongly marked question would attract a penalty of 0.833 for each such wrong answer, which will be deducted from the total.

II. Questions that are not attempted will not attract any negative marks.

2nd Stage: Mains

NO.	SUBJECT	MARKS	DURATION	PAPER PATTERN	ATTENTION ASPIRATION
1.	PAPER I – INDIAN LANGUAGE (QUALIFYING)	300	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 25%
2.	PAPER II – ENGLISH (QUALIFYING)	300	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 25%
3.	PAPER I – ESSAY	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
4.	PAPER II – GENERAL STUDIES I	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
5.	PAPER III – GENERAL STUDIES II	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
6.	PAPER IV – GENERAL STUDIES III	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
7.	PAPER V – GENERAL STUDIES IV	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
8.	PAPER VI – OPTIONAL PAPER I	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%
9.	PAPER VII – OPTIONAL PAPER II	250	3 HOURS	DESCRIPTIVE	MINIMUM 10%

NOTE: There are two qualifying papers and they carry 300 marks each, they are as follows:

a) Any Indian Language
b) English Language Paper

3rd Stage: Personality Test

1. Candidates who qualify in the UPSC Mains Exam will be called for the ‘Personality Test/Interview’.
2. These candidates will be assessed by the Board appointed by UPSC where a board of competent and unbiased observers will be present.
3. The Civil Service Interview is held in the UPSC Office at Dholpur House, Shahjahan Road, New Delhi.
4. The objective is to assess the personal suitability of the candidate for a career in the civil services.
5. The objective of this stage/ IAS interview is to assess the ability of candidate’s prompt decision making, knowledge, mental health, candidate’s capabilities, motivation for the role as a Civil Servant.
6. The interview is more of purposive conversation intended to explore the mental qualities and analytical ability of the candidate.
7. The Interview test will be of 275 marks and the total marks for written examination is 1750. This sums up to a Grand Total of 2025 Marks based on which the final merit list will be prepared.

Educrat IAS Academy
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+91 91632 28921
+91 89101 54148
info@educratias.com

Pattern

The Civil Services Exam is conducted in three stages:

1st Stage: Prelims

2nd Stage: Mains

3rd Stage: Personality Test

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