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Civil Services (Main) Examination 2011: Success rate of all Optional Subjects

admin Last Update on: 17 Jun 2020

Optional subject selection is tough and requires a lot of analysis before you take the final decision. While it requires a lot of factors, for majority of candidates optional subject’s past performance and success-rate is one of the first things that they look for. Based on this parameter, following table will help you in short-listing optional subjects and making strategies for preparation. [Source – 63rd Annual Report, Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)].

Although, the new pattern for Civil Services (Main) Examination has only ‘ONE’ optional subject; still, optional subject selection is an important decision. The past performance of the optional subject and success-rate gives some conviction about the subject and for a lot of candidates, this has been one of the factors on which they short-list optional subjects for final consideration.

A glance at the following table reveals the performance of the candidates with the optional subjects in Civil Services Examination 2011. For your benefit, we have bifurcated Literature of languages optional subjects so that you can explore the performance of each optional subject.

Before we analyse, we would like to remind you that Civil Services Examination 2011 was staged with some changes in Preliminary Examination pattern (optional subject was removed) and that has impacted the result trends for some of the most popular optional subjects for sure.

Continuing the trends, in CSE 2011 Public Administration remained the most preferred subject among the optional subjects chosen by the candidates. Geography and Sociology are at 2nd and 3rd spot.

Surprisingly, History once used to be the most popular choice has dropped to the 4^th spot.

Psychology is the 5^th most popular choice while Philosophy has seen a huge drop thus pushed back to the 6^th place (1866 in CSE 2010 to only 900 in CSE 2011).

Political Science & International Relations occupies the 7^th place.

Distribution of Candidates who Appeared vis-à-vis Recommended by Optional Subjects Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2011

S.No.	Optional Subject	Number of Candidates		Success Rate (Percent)
S.No.	Optional Subject	Appeared	Recommended	Success Rate (Percent)
1	Medical Science	205	48	23.4
2	Anthropology	463	61	13.2
3	Agriculture	132	16	12.1
4	Psychology	1365	143	10.5
5	Geology	40	4	10
6	Animal Husbandry & Veterinary Science	50	5	10
7	Political Science & International Relations	866	84	9.7
8	Physics	323	31	9.6
9	Chemistry	123	11	8.9
10	History	1761	150	8.5
11	Mathematics	337	28	8.3
12	Sociology	2152	177	8.2
13	Philosophy	900	74	8.2
14	Law	226	18	8
15	Public Administration	6276	497	7.9
16	Geography	4096	313	7.6
17	Zoology	269	19	7.1
18	Commerce & Accountancy	232	16	6.9
19	Mechanical Engineering	103	7	6.8
20	Botany	135	9	6.7
21	Management	266	15	5.6
22	Economics	354	20	5.6
23	Electrical Engineering	171	9	5.3
24	Statistics	19	1	5.3
25	Civil Engineering	59	2	3.4
Performance of Literature of Languages as Optional Subject
26	Literature of Urdu Language	22	9	40.9
27	Literature of French Language	3	1	33.3
28	Literature of Santhali Language	3	1	33.3
29	Literature of Malayalam Language	99	27	27.3
30	Literature of Assamese Language	4	1	25
31	Literature of Kannada Language	93	23	24.7
32	Literature of Manipuri Language	27	6	22.2
33	Literature of Bengali Language	5	1	20
34	Literature of Gujarati Language	65	11	16.9
35	Literature of Punjabi Language	48	8	16.7
36	Literature of Marathi Language	38	6	15.8
37	Literature of English Language	73	11	15.1
38	Literature of Pali Language	356	50	14
39	Literature of Tamil Language	82	11	13.4
40	Literature of Hindi Language	406	53	13.1
41	Literature of Sanskrit Language	51	6	11.8
42	Literature of Maithili Language	69	7	10.1
43	Literature of Telugu Language	85	7	8.2
44	Literature of Oriya Language	14	1	7.1
45	Literature of Kashmiri Language	2	-	-
46	Literature of Arabic Language	1	-	-
47	Literature of Persian Language	1	-	-
48	Literature of German Language	1	-	-
49	Literature of Russian Language	1	-	-
50	Literature of Bodo Language	1	-	-
51	Literature of Dogri Language	1	-	-

Take utmost care while taking into account the success-rate

Don’t get confused with number of candidates appearing with a particular optional subject as blend has a mixed luck for many optional subjects. So, you need to compare it with previous year’s data.

While one can take some clue about success-rate from the result of the most popular optional subjects; but, one needs to be careful in taking reference of the data for some not as much popular optional subjects for deciding your optional subjects.

The result and the success-rate of these subjects may vary year to year resulting in big surprises when data is compared year-on-year.

To illustrate this we take Agriculture result for example. In CSE 2008 it had a success-rate of 18.6 per cent which dropped down to 10.6 per cent in CSE 2009 and in CSE 2010; it has a success-rate of only 1.5 per cent. But, again, in CSE 2011, it has shown a success-rate of 12.1 per cent.

Such variation comes as the number of candidates appearing is low and any drop in result impacts the success-rate.

More attention is needed while analysing success-rate of literature of languages

As the trend is, the majority of candidates get influenced by the most popular optional subjects with whom candidates appear and similarly, get fascinated by those with the highest success-rate.

Some of the literature of languages have produced wonderful results and occupy the chart with high success-rate.

You can spot many Literature of Languages subjects on top of the list on Success-rate among all optional subjects. The high success-rate may attract you; but, you need to look at the number of candidates appearing with these subjects and the number of candidates recommended for selection.

Final Conclusion

Every subject is good and you will find that with almost all subjects, candidates achieve success. Every subject has specific demands and as long as you can make justice to the choice, you may think of taking subject you prefer.