About Civil Services Examination

Commonly known as UPSC Exam or IAS Exam, the UPSC Civil Services Examination(CSE) is one of the examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission to recruit suitable candidates into civil services of India including IAS, IPS, IFS, and other allied services. The examination is conducted in three phases namely UPSC Prelims, UPSC Main, and the personality Test or UPSC Interview.

The first phase of IAS Exam is UPSC Preliminary Examination which is the screening test and thus is qualifying in nature. The score obtained in the UPSC Prelims exam is not calculated in the final merit. However, the score in General Studies Paper-I is essential to determine the cut-off of UPSC Prelims Exam. The IAS Prelims Exam paper consists of two papers that are objective-type MCQ-based as opposed to UPSC Civil Services Mains Exam. The UPSC Mains Exam is a descriptive exam consisting of nine papers.

The Civil Services Examination will consist of two successive stages :

• Stage 01 - Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination (Objective type) for the selection of candidates for the Main Examination
• Stage 02- Civil Services (Main) Examination (Written and Interview) for the selection of candidates for the various Services and posts