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

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

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.

Also read:

Civil Services (Main) Examination 2010: Success rate of all Optional Subjects

Civil Services (Main) Examination 2009: Success rate of all Optional Subjects

Civil Services (Main) Examination 2008: Success rate of all Optional Subjects