Hello Everyone,
UPSC has released the official cut off marks for Civil Services Examination,2015. The cut off marks have been released for all the three stages of the exam i.e. Prelims, Mains and Final. Please refer to the table below:
# Subject to 10% marks in each of the seven competitive papers i.e. Essay, GS‐I, GS‐II, GS‐III, GS‐IV, Optional‐I and Optional‐II.
From the above table, the following information can be extracted:
- The difference in cut off marks for General category as well as OBC in prelims is just 1.34 marks. This shows how the competition within the OBC category is cut-throat.
- The difference between the CS (Main) cut-off and CS (Final) cut off for General category is of 201 marks. This means that even the last general candidate in mains who scored 676 marks had a chance of making it to the final list if he gave a good interview. Contrary to the popular belief, you are never out of the race in UPSC Civil Services Exam, even if you are right there at the cut off. This holds true for all the categories and not only the General category.
Observe the following table which reflects the cut off trend for Civil Services Examination of the past five years:
By looking at the table one can observe that:
- Since the past 5 years the cut off marks for prelims have been in the range of 50 – 54% of the total marks with a one time spike of 60.25% of the total marks in the year 2013.
- Mains cut off in the past 3 years has hovered around 32 – 39% range. It can be safely assumed that anyone scoring 40% or more than the total marks in Mains has a great chance to be called for the interviews.
- Final cut off of the past 3 years has been in the range of 38 – 44%.
Also, the year 2015 was the first time when the marks for Prelims Paper II was of a qualifying nature and its marks were not counted in the selection for Mains. The cut off, therefore, stood at 107.34 marks (General). These marks had to be be scored entirely in Paper I (General Studies) of Prelims stage. This shows that overall importance of General Studies has grown immensely and one has to work hard any given day to have a score of 105+.
We hope that this analysis helps in shedding some light on the cut off trends and how one must adapt to the changing patterns.
All the best for your exams !
