CSE 2023 Optional Subjects

UPSC exam is conducted in three stages- Prelims, Mains and Interview. The Mains examination stage comprises of several papers. One of the paper is of Optional Subject conducted on 5^th day of Mains exam.

Optional subject is the subject which the candidate has to choose himself/herself based on his or her interest out of the list of optional subjects provided by UPSC.

There are 2 papers for each Optional Subject. For example, if your optional subject is Public Administration, then there will two papers of Public Administration- Paper 1 in morning shift and Paper 2 in afternoon shift. Each of these paper carries 250 marks.

Below is the list of Optional Subjects offered by UPSC

How to choose an optional subject?

Optional subject is one of the deciding factors of the final ranking that a candidate gets in IAS exam. Hence, optional subject must be chosen with utmost care and consideration before filing the UPSC application.

Below is a list of few criteria’s which students may consider while choosing the optional subject:

• A subject for which superior coaching services can be found.
• The subject that aligns with their educational background.
• The subject should be scoring
• The length of syllabus of the subject (more the length, more time it will take to cover the syllabus)
• The subject that is widely chosen by students.
• A subject that is straightforward or captivating to them.
• The subject that has abundant study resources and materials available.
• The optional subject that many aspirants have used to pass the IAS mains exam.
• Interesting to study or that holds candidates interest
• Subjects with high syllabus overlap with General Studies

Below is the list of UPSC optional subject success rate for the year 2017

Optional Subject	No. of Candidates Appeared	No. of Candidates Recommended	Success Rate Percentage
Assamese Lit.	3	0	0
Nepali Lit.	1	0	0
Commerce & Accountancy	224	28	12.5
Bodo Lit.	1	1	100
Punjabi Lit.	39	6	15.4
Agriculture	89	11	12.4
Gujarati Lit.	101	8	7.9
Kannada Lit.	115	4	3.5
Marathi Lit.	17	0	0
Medical Sciences	313	32	10.2
English Lit.	21	2	9.5
Urdu Lit.	26	5	19.2
Tamil Lit.	107	5	4.7
Animal Husbandry	23	2	8.7
Economics	233	16	6.9
Psychology	193	21	10.9
Anthropology	880	85	9.7
Public Administration	1165	119	10.2
Sanskrit Lit.	70	5	7.1
Management	86	7	8.1
Malayalam Lit.	111	8	7.2
Physics	140	14	10
Political Science & IR	1246	117	9.4
Telugu Lit.	72	1	1.4
Geography	2669	147	5.5
Hindi Lit.	267	19	7.1
Sociology	1421	137	9.6
Chemistry	126	11	8.7
Geology	37	2	5.4
History	1074	59	5.5
Electrical Engineering	193	19	9.8
Law	304	43	14.1
Mechanical Engineering	170	19	11.2
Botany	44	5	11.4
Manipuri Lit.	13	1	7.7
Maithili Lit.	78	5	6.4
Philosophy	755	53	7
Zoology	55	1	1.8
Civil Engineering	124	11	8.9
Mathematics	441	26	5.9
Bengali Lit.	3	0	0
Oriya Lit.	5	0	0
Sindhi Lit.	2	1	50
Statistics	3	0	0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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