What reforms would you suggest in the Civil Services Examination if you had a choice?

1) Focus more on the quality of main centres.

2) Integrate more services so that mains scores are more like JEE scores. Kuch na kuch to mile. My heart breaks when I see people with multiple interviews and no jobs.

3) Increase entry age to around 25.

Hello sir. We are asking the right questions. 

Before I began listing them, I would like to clarify at the outset thatmy suggestions have their origin in my own experience.

• With respect to the conduct of the exam itself- There is no level playing field here. The infrastructure provided varies drastically. I understand Prelims is for lakhs of people and it poses constraints. However, Mains is just for 10000 candidates approx. The commission could provide better infrastructure. My Mains'20 was in a school with dilapidated benches. This year it was in UPSC Bhavan. The best centre one could get for writing Mains. It doesn't matter in Prelims but Mains is a 5 day affair. It does affect performance. This kind of non-uniformity is seen in other aspects too likr the timeliness in paper distribution and collection. At some centres, students get papers 5-10 minutes earlier too due to poorly-informed invigilators. I guess it's difficult to achieve uniformity here unless the Commission decides to maintain their independent workforce to conduct the examination.

My ranting is over. 

Coming to the kind of questions that are being asked in Prelims. 

'Anything under the Sun' couldn't be more truer after seeing Prelims 2021 paper.

We are talking about the degree of randomness increasing every year. That's because UPSC fraternity trains in a specific manner on analytical aspects and not for factual, trivial GK questions that are being asked in PSCs and Banking exams.

However, this is a flawed strategy in my opinion. The exclusionary approach in our prelims strategy to focus only on analytical questions and not trivial GK is rendering us non-competitive in state PCS, RBI, NABARD etc. If UPSC doesn't work out, much of the time is wasted to start from the scratch for other exams. Many do not opt for such other exams due to this inertia of reading new and different things altogether that wouldn't help in UPSC.

But, only until now.

This year's prelims had many such out-of-the-box questions for those who are only preparing for UPSC until now. 3-4 of my friends who are preparing for state PCS (have earlier prepared for UPSC and are skipping or wasted their all attempts) found the paper moderate and scored 105-115 in this year's paper. Obviously, the sample size is very small but almost all of them said, it was the PCS preparation and doing topics like General Science, PYQs of State PCS helped them in Prelims 2021.

On the contrary, I found this year's prelims tougher than the ones I cleared in 2019 and 2020 because until now I've been invested in CSE preparation only.

If the Commission wants to carry on such a trend then, it is welcome. Atleast integrationist approach towards competitive exams will make it easier to pursue other exams if things don't work out in CSE.

I am not rooting for more randomness in paper but a tweak in our strategy so that it is in sync with other exams as well. Even with randomness, we will be ready. Traditional CSE questions will remain and trivial GK will be blended. It would still be difficult for 'only PCS/Banking' candidate who has not done CSE preparation to clear the paper. That's fair. 

In my opinion, coaching institutes should think about integrating UPSC CSE and State PCS exams in their approach.

1. Prelims: Conduct prelims twice a year. It's so frustrating people are lossing a year for a Russian roulette.

2. Mains: Reduce the number of questions. It has become a content vomitting contest. It should be made even more analytical to reduce the subjectivity of personality test.

3. Interview:  Reduce the marks variance.

Scrap it?

My Honest suggestions:-

1) Do away with CSAT ( bcz upsc is doing manmaani in answers of english and it is affecting both hindi and english medium aspirants.)

2) give prelims answer keys in a week ( aspirants k life ki keemat hoti hai, usko majaak mein 1 saal wait nhi karwaana chahiye in the name of impartiality and whatever reasons upsc has in the back of mind.)

3) do away with the optional paper 

( aspirants, teachers who have spent more than 3-4 yrs do understand ki kai baar kisi kisi subjects ki butchering hoti hai and it spans for 3-4 yrs)

4. If upsc insists, introduce 2 papers of adminstration covering syllabus of pol science, pub administration, sociology, philosophy,management or whatever is useful in day to day administration just like it introduced Ethics.

5. Interview marks should be reduced to 200.( else at times the leveraging power of a 20 minute test increases exponentially)

6. UPSC should not do dadagiri in prelims answers( should provide cogent reasons for a particular answer in case of doubts) and it must try to have questions which has a specific answer from its options.

Based on my experience:-

1. People giving interview who don't get into the final list should not be put through the entire exam cycle without any benefit. There is a serious loss of talent happening given that only ~800 people find their names in the final list. 

2. I feel UPSC doesn't ensure quality of benches/infra at all in the mains. It should be a prime concern because it is not a 1 day affair. In this year's mains, we had 84 people writing in a small room at the Patna center. Optional paper had 2 people of same optional writing on the same bench. And this is after assurance of taking all precautions by the UPSC.

3. 1-2 years of preparation should not be invalidated by a 2 hours prelims test. Even if you have a 10-15 minute distraction in the exam [which may not be under your control], you are essentially out of the race.

4. It is extremely difficult to ensure parity of marks in different optionals. That, in my opinion in an inherent flaw.

5. There has to be some regulation on the amount of irrelevant stuff that is dumped on YouTube in name of UPSC preparation. This is not in UPSC's domain but still!

Remove job Security from government exams . 

After that all problem are solved automatically. 

Prelims:

1. CSAT IMO is quite useless given that it is only qualifying in nature. Prelims as a stage requires minimal human input for correction. If someone is anyway going to scan all the CSAT papers in an OMR reader and then the OMRs for paper 1 of those that qualified, isn’t it much easier to just scrap CSAT altogether and just scan all the OMRs for paper 1. It reduces the randomness to a large extent as well and the amount of logistical expenditure.

Mains:

1. writing 2 language papers is redundant. Instead there should only be 1. For those who chose English as a medium should have to write an Indian language and those who chose other indian languages as their primary medium should write an English paper. Most of us already write 2 full essays in the essay paper and answers across the rest of the papers in one or the other medium, which makes one of the language papers entirely redundant. 
2. I feel optional papers could be done away with (despite really enjoying my optional). I find it just drags the exam over the course of two weekends which btw is really unfair for aspirants from less fortunate economic circumstances who require to travel to their centres and stay in hotels to give the exam. 

General:

1. Centres need to have uniformity with regards to their infra, which I’ve already seen some people mention here. After giving 4 prelims and 2 mains I’ve seen the disparity in the infrastructure of the centres. The first centre i gave my prelims had dimly lit classrooms with entire chunks of desks missing (yep you read that right) and barely had functional washrooms for girls. While the centre i gave my mains in had really nice facilities. A good centre does wonders for your mental composure.
2. Reduce either the age or the number of limits. Even though this would adversely affect a lot of older aspirants like me, but I seriously feel that too many people put in far too much of their time and continue out of sheer sunk cost fallacy.
3. People in service should be allowed to write for rank improvement only if they do not join service (like in the case of IAS or IFS). I feel it would make the system much fairer for 1st attempters.

I feel only one recommendation is needed:

They should let a draw of lots determine the selection and i should be made the incharge of the draw of lots. No RTI to apply. Only one chit to be drawn at one time, rest to be thrown away without seeing. 

(DM me if you want to be friends with me)

My Recommendations

Prelims

• Scores of both GS and CSAT should be included. A 60:40 (or similar) weightage scheme can be used
• CSAT should be standardized and should include English, Reasoning and Quant sections.

Mains

• Prelims score should be valid for a certain period(say 2 years). Mains should be biannual so a student can write multiple mains and improve his scores without having to go back to first stage every time.
• Optionals should be scrapped and so should the compulsory English language paper

Other suggestions:

• Increase the number of selected candidates after interview stage who should then be assigned an intern role starting at lower level with the Govt. 
• Final selection as well as allocation of services should be based on eventual performance in the internship period.

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