UPSC: The truth behind Toughest Exam
UPSC: The truth behind Toughest Exam, Prelims, Mains, Difficulty, Interview, other exams are Neet Jee Advance
UPSC: The truth behind Toughest Exam
Hi welcome back to We Aware You to another exam review. So imagine over a million of students applying to take an exam for which there are less than 1000 spots waiting for them at the end. This insane competitiveness is the reality for students who are taking UPSC exam, making it one of the toughest exams in the world.
So Today we discuss UPSC: The truth behind Toughest Exam.
It's a huge exam. It takes up to two years of preparation, and when everything's said and done, if you make it all the way through, you would have sat 32 hours worth of exams.
I've covered some other tough exams coming out like the JEE Advanced exam for engineering, or the NEET exam for medical students. But this UPSC exam is different in the fact that you need to be more on top of all your subjects from technology to current affairs to philosophy, the scope is extremely broad.
What is UPSC Exam ?
UPSC stands for Union Public Service Commission. And the exam recruits graduates who have already done a university degree, who want to come and work for the Indian Civil Services. So that's basically working for the Indian government in various administrative roles.
It's a highly sought after position, and people who do really well on this exam are really admired by their fellow peers.
So let's have a look at the kind of questions that would be involved.
Kind of Questions
The exams held in multiple stages, which are Prelims, Main & Viva (PPT) . Let's see one by one:
- PRELIMS ( PRE )
Prelims consists two papers, general studies and an aptitude test.
- MAINS
After clearing prelims we need to face the main section.
Mains consists of nine papers each three hours long.
Covers:
✔ There are two that are just qualifying an English exam and an exam in an Indian language of choice.
✔ But then we have an Essay for General Studies exams.
✔ Two papers of your choice.
These papers of your choice are on optional subjects which range everything from physics, maths, philosophy, engineering, but also basically every subject you could imagine.
Exam pattern
So, have a look at a few of these exam pattern.
- General studies paper I (Pre)
It covers Indian heritage, culture, history, geography of the world. Every question is bilingual i.e. written in Hindi and English. There are 100 questions and which makes total of 200 marks with negative marking for wrong answer,with a time duration of 2 hours.
So if we look. They're not joking that this is a lot of work. All of these questions are little like mini essay questions. Yeah, like this is kind of Indian history. Things about an 1857 uprising. The linkages between The 19th century Indian Renaissance and the emergence of national identity.
So everything from that to the impact of global warming on the coral life system. What makes Indian society unique and sustaining its culture etc-etc.
So I think, what you really need to do to prepare for an exam like this, where it's kind a testing your General knowledge and I've seen many preparing students talk about this, it's actually reading newspapers. And reading newspapers to prepare for an exam seems kind of bizarre to me, but it makes sense.
Newspaper should give you a pretty good idea of what's kind of going on in the world right?
2. General studies paper II (Pre)
So this is another General Studies paper. It cover ethics, integrity and aptitude.
They wanted to know what are the basic principles of public life any three of these with suitable examples?
What do you understand by the term public servant, right?
That's very relevant since that's the job you're applying for. But then, we even have some kind of philosophical ideas over here.
One from Gandhi, a man is but a product of his thoughts what he thinks he becomes.
I'm left feeling that someone who's prepared for an exam like this wouldn't just be good at sitting this exam but they'd be a really knowledgeable and smart citizen of the world. You know what I mean?
Like questions like this on history, philosophy, geography, general knowledge are that they have general your tested on them kind of everyday in your life, there are what allows you to contribute to interesting discussions with random people that you meet, and I don't think this knowledge would be lost when you finish this exam.
I think some of these ideas just help you understand the world better. And even if you don't get in, it's kind of like you haven't wasted your time. You spend all this time becomes knowledgeable about your country. And I don't think that's something to be upset about.
3. Paper 1 Essay (Mains)
On this exam we need to write two essay of between 1000 and 1200 words on topic something like wisdom finds truth or biased media is a real threat to Indian democracy, or the rise of artificial intelligence, are few of examples. There is a lot of choice.
4. Optional papers
We need to choose a optional subject (out of 48) like law (you can read blog on law) physics, public administrative, maths , polity, history etc. There are 2 exams which holds 250 marks each.
5. GS Paper I , II, III (Mains).
These 3 paper consists of in depth question from Indian Culture , Modern History , World history , Events, Indian Society, Constitution, Polity, Economy etc.
6. Language Paper (Mains)
It consists of two papers One for Chosen Indian Language & other for English.
Interview (after all this)
If you make it through all of these papers, you make it through the main round, then there is an interview and that interview would be a bit of a personality test.
So even if you ace all of these, I guess it's still possible that you're not quite what they were looking for. And that interview is probably maybe one of the most subjective parts of all it's hard to put a number on someone's personality.
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The truth behind Toughest Exam
The truth behind Toughest Exam which is its difficulty which make its the toughest exam of country. Well, we covered everything from philosophy to physics. That's a pretty big scope. It gets an A and a plus.
Difficulty well, it's a tough exam I'll give it an A. I guess the difficulty will depend on your strengths and weaknesses and how prepared you are feeling and how much preparation you've done for it. Time pressure, well, it's kind of a test of stamina, this is such a long process. Like I said, you would have done 32 hours of examinations. If you've done all of these papers, the interview, the mains,that prelims, that's intense.
In terms of actual time pressure yet, you have three hours to answer heaps of questions I'll give it an A as well. Now the big one competitiveness. This is the most competitive exam I've ever covered on the channel. I thought NEET was competitive, but students here are competing for only hundreds of spots. So this is going to be A never before seen rating of A plus plus, plus plus. And that's what makes this one of the most difficult exams. If you want me to compare it overall to the JEE advanced exam, I would say that UPSC is tougher on the basis of selection, but JEE advanced was probably tougher on the basis of the questions, but they are two totally different exams, testing different things for different people who want different jobs.
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