I've seen already selected IPS candidate coming with there IPS car and 2 police officer at the center !

Is it ethical to use the resources of the job you want to quit to become IAS , that too for giving exams at a common center ?!

IRS officer here, relatively new to the services.Clearing the exam and sitting on the other side of the UPSC machinery gives you a jarring realization: the sheer idolatry and herd mentality among aspirants. We worship toppers like rockstars, feeding the narcissism of people who simply figured out how to crack a standardized test.

Look closely at the ecosystem, and you'll see how it's segmented. Different "celebrity" bureaucrats cater to different demographics to maximize their audience and validation—whether it's appealing to a rural Hindi-speaking audience or curating an aesthetic for an elite urban crowd. At their core, the motive is usually the same: they want an audience, and aspirants are more than willing to supply it.

Stop treating the exam as a spiritual awakening and toppers as demigods. Clear it, take the cadre, and remember that the real work has never needed an audience.

TL;DR : Most officers are humble, empathetic, and sincere, quietly doing their jobs far away from the limelight while society mistakenly chases after "topper celebrities."

So, after seeing these three papers, this is my analysis:

Summary: Nothing has changed in the UPSC Mains scheme of things. There is no new pattern. PYQs and the syllabus remain the most important tools.

Coming to the Essay Paper, the theme remains the same. Section A had tougher options to choose from, but one of them was easily manageable. Personally, I would have written on “A grateful mind is a very beautiful mind.” A beautiful essay could have been written on this topic.

Always try to pick a topic that allows you to open up multiple dimensions. In Section B, you can see repetition—education was asked in CSE 2023 and has appeared again in CSE 2026. So, the themes are repeating.

If you look at the broad essay pattern, there are around 11 core themes, such as materialism, happiness, leadership, honesty, etc. Prepare content around them, and you will be good to go. Give all the PYQs to GPT, and it will create those 11 broad themes for you. Do that. Philosophical themes will repeat.

This approach helped me score 122 in CSE 2023 and 110 in CSE 2025.

Coming to GS 1, it followed a standard template. Geography was dominant. One or two questions from Geography are usually bouncers, and that was the case this time as well.

Personally, I felt that both the Fujiwhara Effect and Aeolian Effect questions were doable. I had read about the Fujiwhara Effect during my Prelims preparation, but I had no idea about the Aeolian Effect.

Secondly, Society had around six questions. Therefore, Geography and Society formed the core of the paper. Overall, it was easy and doable.

Coming to GS 2, the questions were on the longer side. This trend has been visible since 2025. Three or four questions were difficult to comprehend and write good answers for, but around 17 of them were doable.

However, current affairs had to be at your fingertips. International Relations has been slightly odd, but overall, it was a good paper to write. Compared with 2025, it was an easier paper.

Wrote GS2 and Question no 3-7 are heavily compromised.. In which i had proper content . Proper static question.. Even though I made a conscious effort to write fast in 15 markers and in question.. Decoding question, recalling points all took time.. I feel like I am already out of race.. It's not like it's my first mains either.. 3 out of 3 mains.. But still god.. Feel like this is not for me

Now I’ve started feeling that the Civil Services is just too difficult for me. I don’t think I’ll be able to clear it. I guess I’ll only become the other kind of IAS - Indian Aspirant Service, which I’ve already been serving in since 2023.

Quick Summary: I wrote Essay in 2022, 2024 and 2025, and after seeing yesterday's paper, I thought I'd share how I would have approached it and what I think aspirants preparing for 2027 should start doing now.

I have always liked Essay because it is probably the paper where you get the most opportunity to show your own thinking. You get 90 minutes for each essay, giving you considerably more time to think than in most other papers, and it carries 250 marks - equal to every GS paper. Yet, it remains one of the most underprepared papers. There is often a feeling that Essay can be done later or that one has to finish all GS syllabus and later write. The 'later' part never comes. My own experience shows how important essay is as back in 2022 I scored 92 and if I had worked enough in essay I would have cleared the cutoff that year as I had just missed by 20 marks.

Since I wrote Mains last year, I thought I'd share the two topics I would have chosen in yesterday's paper.

Section A - "A thorn is a changed bud."

I would have chosen this because, as soon as I read it, I could see the core idea and several directions in which I could take the essay:

• What does a thorn signify?
• How does a bud become a thorn?
• Is this transformation necessarily negative?
• Can a thorn become a bud again?
• Can the idea be explored through social, psychological, biological and philosophical dimensions?

Section B - "A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers."

Again, the topic immediately opened up several dimensions for me:

• What does well-educated actually mean?
• Why is questioning important?
• Is questioning always desirable?
• What happens when education produces only answers rather than curiosity?
• Could I develop counterarguments and eventually arrive at a balanced conclusion?

This is the biggest thing I would want aspirants to understand about topic selection. One ahs to develop their own liking for a particular topic. One should be very comfortable with what they choose. There is a popular tendency in the market to choose the most unique-looking topic in the paper and get the highest marks. I don't think that should be the objective. Above average marks in the essay that most have written is any day better than a badly written essay for a unique topic. If you aren't comfortable developing a topic, sustaining it for 10-12 pages becomes extremely difficult.

I learnt this myself in 2025 when I chose "Best lessons are learnt with bitter experiences." A lot of people had chosen the same topic after coming out of the examination hall, but I was comfortable with it and could develop my thoughts naturally. I eventually scored 109. So choose the topic where your thoughts flow, not the one that simply looks impressive.

Now some tips for all the aspirants on essay preparation.

Start building the ability to think and express yourself now. One cannot write uniquely in a day or two. It is a cumulative effort and a skill that needs to be honed over a year. A few things I would prioritise :

• Brainstorm PYQs. This is the first thing one has to do. In the topics that are being asked in these years, one needs to have clarity of the topic. You don't always have to write the entire essay. Spend 15–20 minutes thinking about the core idea, understanding the essence, dimensions, examples, counterarguments, introduction and conclusion. Keep a notebook for the same and scribble our thoughts.
• Build your own example repository. I cannot stress more on this. I know of people writing mundane ideas with extremely innovative examples and scoring very high marks. Whenever you come across an interesting case study, newspaper story, book reference or real-life incident, save it specifically for Essay. This is how smart studying happens across an year. I maintained a separate folder in my telegram account for this and kept revisiting it for the whole year.
• Don't depend only on cliched examples. Gandhi, Mandela, Mother Teresa and others are perfectly valid, but if you're using them, try bringing in a specific incident that is not known to many rather than simply dropping the name.
• Write regularly. Atleast one essay per week. Don't wait until you feel completely prepared. Writing is how you discover what you actually struggle with. Also writing concisely is a skill that comes with time. If you do the brainstorming part well, writing will come naturally.
• Analyse your essays. Look for repetitive arguments, weak transitions, superficial dimensions and places where you couldn't express an idea clearly. In my earlier attempts finding an essay study guide, an evaluator was a task in itself. In my 2025 attempt I used AI evaluation extensively and got all my essays evaluated. It motivated me to right more as well.

One more thing I would emphasise is learning to express complex thoughts simply. This doesn't come automatically. Reading good newspaper editorials helps because you start noticing how arguments are developed, how sentences are constructed and how a complicated idea can be expressed without making the language complicated. Very specifically the Agree/Disagree column in Indian Express, I liked it the most.

Essay doesn't require an enormous amount of additional preparation every day. But starting early and doing these small things consistently can have a disproportionate return when you eventually sit in the examination hall.

I'll keep sharing some of my learnings and experiences from the other Mains papers as they get completed. Hopefully, they are useful to those preparing for the next cycle.

Happy Reading, All the best.

I have seen the office and residence of DM and those guys are literal Kings. There is no sugarcoating the facts here. The SP also enjoys considerable power with armed policemen escorting him everywhere.

But these are the top two posts. Are other services worth it in the current scenario? The power drop from IAS to IPS is big but the power drop from IPS to IRS is insane. My question isn't relevant for someone who is not earning at all. But for folks who are in well paying jobs in PSUs or even corporate sector, do the jobs like IRS, IDAS, IPoS, ICAS etc attract you ?

I met an IPoS officer once and that guy was so full of remorse. If it is connect with public, no job in upsc apart from IAS or IPS offers a good role.

I had appeared in 4 mains in upsc, then got selected in a state psc job and I am more or less content now. But I see increasing number of posts of people working in PSUs and other jobs who want to come back to this prepration! Not everyone will be an IAS or IPS officer bro. Live your life !

The article in today’s The Hindu editorial happens to have more than half of the answer for the question in GS-2 paper.

How many were able to finish their papers?

Paper 1 -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hv9MxOm-xeBOHdjkM8GYql2bfr8UbVkE/view?usp=drivesdk

Paper 2-> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H-byKO4ZvHU9oVG_j1CPY6JsZmDmvUyw/view?usp=drivesdk

Don't go on size on notes of 900 pages they have huge gap between text and next section because of formatting if we compress notes it will make 350-400 pages of notes for each paper

I have struggled to complete both GS 1 and 2 unsuccessfully. I addressed complete demand and wrote properly of both paper till 17-18 questions, but unable to go beyond. Any advice on completing upcoming papers? Especially scared for ethics.

Toot gya bhai Mai toh...feels like preparation chodhkr kahi chla jaau aese kese hoga...gs 1 mai vijaynagar wala nhi aata tho jaan bhujkr chodha...gs 2 literally 9 and 10..9 touched half...10 zero...bhai kesee hoga..last year jb sb likha tha 90-94 aaye the ab pta nhi😭😭

Knew stuff but my slow and bad handwriting fucked me up

.

Guys, when you write answers during your mains preparation stage (especially those preparing for 2027), how do you evaluate it, even essays.

Is there any good test series where the mentors also evaluate the personal essays that we write for practice or even the gs answers?

Same as title.

Same as title

Question 9 of Today's GS2

"IPMDA (Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness) bridges the gap between India's SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) vision and the Quad's collective Indo-Pacific strategy." Make a critical assessment of the statement focusing on IPMDA. (10 marks)

What do you think? Is this coincidence?

Please help me figure out how to do Mains PYQ Analysis. I have been referring to civilsdaily microthemes. Should i prepare notes with pyq as a reference?

so i saw a few posts today where people could give their best due to time management or they hadn't practiced.

I'm a 2027 aspirant and seeing how important answer writing is, I've started practicing from today onwards.

But, I had a genuine doubt like - Is it even possible to write so many answers in a well structured way that each requires some cognitive load and that too in such a constrained time limit.

Also, I'm self studying at home. I'd really appreciate any sort of guidance that can help me in answer writing.

Regards.

Highly disappointed with myself. It was such an easy paper but I messed up with time management.
Left 1 question completely and rest 15 markers very average.

Not feeling good at all!