Steps to clear UPSC CSE

Author: Als Onlive

What are the important things that a Civil Service aspirant should follow to clear UPSC CSE Examination?

Every year over thousands to lakhs of students apply and appear for the UPSC Civil Services Examination. Out of these, only a few thousand candidates are selected for Mains examination and a few hundred makes to the final list. The UPSC Civil Service Examination is considered to be the toughest examination. But, with the right direction, guidance, and consistency one can achieve success in the Examination.

The UPSC Civil Service Examination has 3 stages namely, Preliminary Examination, Mains Exam, and the Personality Test. The pattern of Preliminary Examination consists of two papers 200 Marks each Paper 1 is related to General Studies and Paper 2 is a qualifying paper and is related to the CSAT.

As we know that the Preliminary Examination is objective paper (MCQs) and an elimination stage where a large chunk of aspirants are eliminated one should keep few things in mind to clear this stage of examination. Mains examination is for 1750 Marks and is subjective and the Personality test is for 275 Marks. There is no doubt that as a Civil Service aspirant the focus of the preparation strategy should be in an integrated manner. Few things to be kept in mind are:

  1. As an aspirant, it is very much important that in which academic year you want to appear for the exam so that this will help in preparing a plan to proceed further.
  2. Go through the syllabus completely and memorize the syllabus. This will help the student while preparing not to go haywire or not to lose the track. An aspirant can find the syllabus on the official website or in any Online IAS Coaching platform.

3. Plans may be short-term (daily basis) or long – term (Fortnightly basis). Kindly prepare both plans, review whether you are carrying out the plan or not. Make changes if necessary. But carry out the plan in a disciplined manner. For, initiation kindly visit or go through the Best UPSC Online Coaching platform to get an idea. But keep in mind it is necessary to prepare a plan according to your convenience.

  1. Download Previous Year Question Papers from the official website or any IAS Online Coaching platform. And go through the paper, to get an idea of how the questions are asked and which dimensions and nature of the questions.
  2. Paper 2 which is related to CSAT is qualifying but the aspirant must practice the questions so that there won’t be any chance that an aspirant would fail to get the qualifying marks.
  3. There is a misconception that in Prelims facts are been asked and in Mains concepts and analysis. Even in Prelims the concepts and analysis of the topic are asked. Hence, it is important to have an integrated approach.
  4. As you analyze the Previous Year Question Papers one can find that the questions in recent years have been asked from Current Affairs section. Hence, as an aspirant, you should keep regular track of news and topics which are relevant from the examination point of view. Since Current Affairs is a huge domain one has to read a few select newspapers and visit the portal of the Best UPSC Online Coaching platform to get updates. As the UPSC Online Coaching platform will cover topics from a variety number of sources and put it on a single platform.
  5. Before appearing for exam the aspirant has to have done enough answer writing practice, so that the aspirant can deal with the stress in the examination hall.