IAS Exam Pattern

anujjindalUPSC
3 min readNov 25, 2021

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Basically, to ace the UPSC exams also, knowing the UPSC exam pattern is of utmost importance. Everything that you’ll ever learn and prepare for during your IAS preparations will have to ultimately be calibrated to the IAS exam pattern. That’s how important the topic of the UPSC exam pattern is.

So, to get to the real thing the UPSC exam is comprised of 3 stages. The first stage as per the examination pattern is the Prelims round, which is essentially an elimination round designed to filter out a majority of unsuitable candidates.

Then comes the second phase as per the examination pattern or the Mains round, which is basically the core of the UPSC exams and the most important step of selection.

Lastly, comes the third stage as per the examination pattern, or the Personal interview round, which is designed to test your personality and your acumen as a bureaucrat. We’ll go through each stage in detail.

IAS Exam Pattern for UPSC Prelims

The Prelims stage IAS exam pattern basically consists of 2 papers, both conducted on the same day. The question type in both papers is objective with one right answer out of several multiple choices.

The prelims paper, as I have mentioned before is essentially a qualifying stage designed to filter out the unsuitable candidates from the exam process.

The remaining candidates get to appear for the Mains exam. Also, important to note down is that the marks secured in the prelims paper will not be counted when the final merit list of successful candidates is prepared.

Having said the aforementioned, I don’t even for a moment mean to imply that the prelims papers are less important or are easy to crack.

I would even go so far as to say that clearing the prelims is even tougher than clearing some of the other eminent exam prelim papers in the world.

This is mostly because the UPSC cut offs for the Prelims exams depend on the average score every year and are known to be notoriously unpredictable.

IAS Exam Pattern for UPSC Mains

The UPSC exam pattern for the Mains paper involves 9 papers that are conducted over a time period of 5–7 days.

The UPSC Mains exam will be available for you to appear, if and only if you are able to clear the Prelims exams.

This means scoring above the declared cut off marks for Paper 1 and scoring a minimum of 33% in paper 2 of the Prelims exam.

Having said that it should be duly noted that, unlike the Prelims exam, the Mains exam consists of only Descriptive/subjective type questions of a total of 1750 marks, meaning you’d have to elaborately write your answers instead of choosing the right ones from among a host of choices.

UPSC Exam Pattern for UPSC Interview Round

The interview round is the final stage of the UPSC exams. If you are able to make it into this round, know that you did so by clearing through the written segments of one of the toughest exams in the world, and give yourself a pat on the back.

However, you should not rejoice as yet, because the war’s not yet won.

You still have to clear the last round or the Interview round.

In this round, a panel of unbiased and competent individuals will take your interview in order to test your personality.

The maximum marks allotted for the interview round for a candidate is 275, which brings the maximum marks of the final merit list to 2025 (1750 of the Mains exams + 275 of the interview round)

With this, we come to the end of the topic of exam pattern. Now that you know about the exam pattern, you should also go through the IAS syllabus once.

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Source BY: https://www.anujjindal.in/upsc-exam-pattern-apply-online-admit-card/

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