Who doesn't dream of IAS?
Chartered Accountancy is one of the qualifications which is accepted to be eligible to appear for Civil Services. That means, you don't need any other degree if you have CA to be eligible to appear for the exam.
It requires unflinching attitude and tremendous hard work to come out successful in Exam.
If you have any queries to be clarified regarding Civil Services, you can reach me at:-
sidharthapillai @ yahoo.in
Scheme of the Exam
A graduate in any discipline is eligible to appear for the Civil Services Exam if he has not crossed the age of 30 and is above 21.
Certain age relaxation of 5 years/3 years is provided to those belonging to SC/ST and OBC categories respectively. Those who are physically challenged can also have age relaxation as specified every year in the UPSC notification.
The number of attempts is restricted to 4 for General Categories and there are 7 attempts allowed for OBC candidates and for SC/ST there is no limit provided the age restriction is applied, ie, an SC/St candidate cannot attempt the exam after 35.
The notification for the Preliminary Exam is published in UPSC website and leading newspapers tentatively in the months of December/January of the year previous to the year of Exam.Preliminary Exam is usually conducted in the second half of May the year next to the year of notification. For Eg, if the exam is notified in Dec 2012 in the UPSC website, the Preliminary Exam will be scheduled in May 2013.
The results of the Preliminary Exam is declared around July in the year of Exam, in our case July 2013. The pass per centage is decided based on 10 to 12 times the number of candidates who will be declared success ful in Main Examination. For eg, if 1500 students are to pass Main Exam and become eligible for the Interview, 15000 candidates will be declared successful in the Preliminary Exam based on rank list, reservations will apply.
Preliminary Exam is objective type and is a screening test. Main Exam is essay type written exam and Interview is personality test.
Main exam is conducted in November, in our case November 13.
Those who are success ful in Main will be eligible to appear for Interview to be conducted in March/April of the following year which is the final round, in our case April 2014. Results of the exams are declared somewhere in May, ie. May 2014.
There are about 23 services in the Civil Services for which exams are conducted. IAS, IPS and Indian foreign services are All India Services, there are group A and B services as well.
Syllabus and Marks
Preliminary Exam consists of 2 papers of 2 hours duration consisting of 200 marks each. First paper tests the general awareness, current affairs awareness and the second paper tests reasoning, arithmetics and decision making skills. Preliminary Exam marks are not counted for final evaluation.
Main Exam consists of 9 papers out of which 2 are qualifying exams of English language and regional language proficiency test whose marks will not be counted for final evaluation.
Out of remaining 7 papers,
1 Essay paper of 200 marks
2 papers of General Studies of 300 marks each.
4 papers consisting of 2 papers each of 300 marks each of 2 optional papers to be chosen by the candidate. There are about 25 optional papers out of which Commerce and Public Administration are optionals.
Interview consists of 300 marks.
Magazines to be referred for Preliminary Exams:
1.Civil Service Chronicle
2. Competition Success Review
3. Frontline
4.Wizard
Reading of The Hindu paper is a must.
Websites to be browsed
CAclubindia
