How should I prepare for the UPSC interview?

How should I prepare for the UPSC interview?- The UPSC IAS Interview is the final step in the journey of the UPSC Civil Services Examination. This stage of IAS interview has the potential to change your life and make your dream of becoming a bureaucrat true. Out of the 2075 marks, the UPSC IAS Interview stage or the personality test is 275 marks. There are no minimum qualifying marks for the IAS personality test. Statistically, the IAS Interview accounts for 275 marks out of a total of 2025 marks. This means it has a weightage of only 13.5% in the entire scheme of examination. However, the influence of the UPSC Interview in determining the overall merit is more than 30% as the IAS Personality test has the potential to get proportionately more marks than the written marks.

The interview as defined by the UPSC notification is “The candidate will be interviewed by a Board who will have before them a record of his/her career. He/she will be asked questions on matters of general interest. The object of the interview is to assess the personal suitability of the candidate for a career in public service by a Board of competent and unbiased observers. The test is intended to judge the mental caliber of a candidate. In broad terms, this is an assessment of not only his intellectual qualities but also social traits and his interest in current affairs.”

Considering all the other stages of the UPSC preparation like UPSC Prelims or Mains, the UPSC Interview is that part of your preparation wherein if you prepare well, you will more enough marks! The effort – result payoff in UPSC Interview is more than that of the Mains subjects.

The first is to understand what the UPSC wants to know from you in the UPSC Interview. When you understand the purpose of the question, it will be easy for you to project in a way that feeds you more scores. You may have heard many times about ‘being you’ in the UPSC interview. But there can be times when you need to project yourself as a proper candidate for the Civil Services rather than just being YOU to score better.

Ideally, one should start the UPSC interview preparation from the DAF. Prepare a question bank of the most probable questions from your DAF. Your goal must be to pre-empt as many questions as possible. If you prepare well for the expected questions, it will give you the confidence to tackle unexpected questions in the UPSC interview.

UPSC personality test syllabus is not a defined one. Everything under the sky will be falling under the UPSC Personality test syllabus. However, the major aspects which can be said to fall under the USPC Personality test syllabus which is suggested to have a detailed insights are:

• Personal details
• Educational background
• Present career
• Places you lived
• Current Affairs
• Scenario-based
• Real Issue based

In fact before out UPSC mock interviews, we regularly take special sessions on each of the sub topic mentioned above to aid the candidate in giving their best shot at the UPSC CSE Interview. The sessions for IAS mock interviews are handled by staff from various fields to give the best idea to our candidates. Such UPSC mock interviews gives the candidates a perfect feel on the board and it was a pleasure hearing from the candidates after the UPSC CSE interview that the questions were exactly the same as the IAS mock interviews conducted by us.

Always start your preparation well in advance. Once your Mains exams are completed, you get to know yourself and how well you have attempted. Even if you feel you have a very small percent of clearing, do not wait for the results of your UPSC interview preparation. A large proportion of the questions asked by the interview panel in the UPSC IAS Interview can be prepared for in advance. If you do not prepare these answers, it will be obvious to the UPSC interview panel who may think you are not taking the UPSC CSE interview as seriously as you should. Prepare for the tough UPSC CSE interview questions in particular. You will be getting information about the marks awarded by various boards through various sources. You might form opinions about various boards. Don’t believe this. Trust yourself. Many other factors affect a person’s IAS interview marks. Whatever may be the board, you can always score your best. You need to develop confidence for the UPSC CSE interview.