Understanding Civil Services Exam

Indian Civil Services Exam is considered as one of the tough screening test in the world. Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is responsible for conducting this exam.

With notification of Civil Services Exam (CSE), 2016 is expected to be released on April 23, Saturday. Here are details that will aid civil aspirants in understanding CSE.

The selection process is divided into three stages; Stage I Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination which is also called as Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), Stage II Civil Services (Main) Examination and Stage III interview (personality test).

Every year UPSC gets more than 8 lakh applications out of which, around 1200 candidates will be selected for various services like IAS, IFS, IPS based on their overall performance in the Main Examination and Interview.

Interview
Final stage of the selection process is interview; candidates who have scored well in the Mains Examination are called for interview which decides the ranking and post of the candidate.

Eligibility:
Age: A candidate must have attained the age of 21 years and must not have attained the age of 32 years on August 1, 2016 i.e. he/she must have born not earlier than August 2, 1984 and not later than August 1, 1995. Upper age limit is relaxable by five years for SC/ST, 3 years for OBC and as per rules in force for other categories.

Education Qualification:
The candidate must hold a university degree or equivalent. Those who have acquired the degree through correspondence/distant mode are also eligible. There is no minimum percentage of marks specified. A mere pass in degree is eligible.

Number of Attempts:
Every candidate appearing at the examination, who is otherwise eligible, shall be permitted six attempts at the examination. For SC/STs, there is no ceiling on number of attempts whereas OBCs will have nine chances.

The aspirants are advised to apply online soon after the advertisement is released, i.e. on or after April 23. The candidates from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states can select any one of the four cities Hyderabad, Tirupati, Vijayawada or Visakhapatnam.

The applicants should note that there will be a ceiling on the number of candidates allotted to each of the centres. Allotment of centres will be on the ‘first-apply-first-allot’ basis.

And once the capacity of a particular centre is attained, the same will be frozen. Applicants, who cannot get a centre of their choice due to ceiling, will be required to choose a centre from the remaining ones. According to experts, there will be some more advantage, if application is made early.

The Young Hans will bring out a series of articles in the forthcoming editions in order to guide the readers as to how they could prepare themselves for all the three stages of the selection process, beginning with “How to prepare for CSAT”, next week.

Main Exam
Candidates who have cleared the Prelims Examination are eligible for Mains examination which is theory based and consists of two Language papers that are qualifying in nature and seven theory papers (scoring).

#	Paper	Subject	Marks
1	Paper A	Indian Language(Qualifying and not counted for merit)	300
2	Paper B	English (Qualifying and not counted for merit)	300
3	Paper I	Essay	250
4	Paper II	General Studies - I	250
5	Paper III	General Studies - II	250
6	Paper IV	General Studies - III	250
7	Paper V	General Studies - IV	250
8	Paper VI	Optional Subject Paper 1	250
9	Paper VII	Optional Subject Paper 2	250

Total:

1750

Interview (Personality Test)

250

Grand Total

2025