“There is thus no better way of cracking the prestigious Civil Services Exam than Learning Actively from the GURUS themselves!” Learn from the masters....save your precious time and attempts.

Fact 1: 10 lakh plus candidates apply for the exam, out of whom around 5 lakh ultimately appear for the prelims. And only around 10,000 (ie around 2 per cent of total candidates) qualify for the second tier – the Mains. From there, around 2,000 candidates are shortlisted for the personality test, filtering away roughly another 8,000 candidates. Finally, only around 800 candidates are selected for various services, the overall success ratio (selected to appeared) being at 0.15 per cent!

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Fact 2: Many of these aspirants do study hard, undertake online/offline coachings, join test series, download apps, write daily answers, solve MCQ's and will undertake 3-4 more attempts without any certainty of selection. 

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Fact 3: The loss of the prime years of a candidate’s life is only one aspect of the problem. Preparing for the civil services is also a fairly costly affair for any middle or low-income individual. It includes coaching classes, materials/technology and study groups, as well as spending substantial sums of money on rented apartments/lodges in costly cities such as Delhi/Pune/Bengaluru/Hyderabad/Lucknow/Chennai/Mumbai.

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Fact 4: Another aspect of this process, and perhaps the most underrated, is the personal and social costs associated with this preparation. Candidates usually maintain a limited social circle. Tight schedules between coaching classes and studying mean that there is hardly any space for healthy social interactions. As years progress and anxieties increase with every unsuccessful attempt, the pressure associated with the preparation grows almost exponentially. This takes a huge toll on the mental and physical health of many aspirants.

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Fact 5: India is a young nation with the gift of demographic dividend. The culture of “preparing” for government job exams has meant that a large part of this dividend or “youth capital” remains invested in a risky and unproductive venture. The  obsession with the ‘sarkari naukri’ is becoming a sort of addiction with high socio-economic costs, and it’s now being well cashed by commercialised coaching institutes/Apps. 

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Fact 6:  Most aspirants end up making tight schedules and try to ‘squeeze-in-squeeze-out-time’ whenever possible. They tend to think less about their health and more about how to reach their goals. After having studied for long hours at a stretch, one might start feeling physically and emotionally exhausted. Suffocation, helplessness, recurring headaches, fever and fatigue, are some of the other common symptoms of a burnout. 

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Fact 7: Preparation for UPSC is a tough task. The exam is academically very tough and demanding. The world knows this. But very few people know how mentally challenging this exam is. Many aspirants lose their mental peace in the process and it becomes very traumatising for them. It can be safely assumed that for 80-85% of aspirants, the journey is not easy.

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Fact 8: Even in using educational apps and websites/videos, students mind makes them believe that they are learning/growing/studying but in reality, they are aimlessly wandering often.

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Fact 9: Sadly, the above situation is emotionally cashed by coaching institutes, where many times, faculties have no experience of appearing for UPSC Interviews (that's possible only after clearing Mains, a crucial step), and coaching is the only bread-butter for them.