The Union Public Service Commission submitted its 66^th Annual Report to the President of India as required under Article 323(1) of the Indian Constitution. The report covers the period from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016. It contains details of the work done by the UPSC during that period. It also contains some interesting facts about the civil services exam, which is one of the many examinations the commission conducts in the country. This article talks about some of the numbers and facts mentioned in the report which might be of interest to IAS aspirants.

UPSC 66th Annual Report

Prelims Data

The report gives details about the number of candidates who applied and the number of candidates who appeared for the 2014 UPSC prelims exam; and the number of candidates who qualified to take the 2014 IAS mains exam.

Out of a total of 9,47,428 candidates who had registered only 4,46,623 appeared for the UPSC prelims 2014. That means, about 53% of those who had applied did not take the prelims exam.

16933 cleared the prelims out of the 4,46,623, which gives a pass percentage of approximately 3.8% in the IAS prelims 2014.

Mains Data

The next table gives you the information about the number of candidates who appeared for the IAS mains 2014, and also the number of candidates who were interviewed and then recommended for service by the commission.

As you can see, even though 16933 candidates had been declared eligible for the mains, only 16286 took the 2014 UPSC mains. Out of this number, 3303 were selected for the interview and interviewed. Finally, 1363 candidates were recommended for service.

Based on the numbers, the pass percentage for the IAS mains (written) exam in 2014 was 20%. In the interview round, the pass percentage was 41%.

From the UPSC prelims to the UPSC personality test/interview, the pass percentage was just 0.3% in 2014.

Vacancies

UPSC also gives the number of vacancies in the services from 2005 till 2014. In 2014, there were 1364 vacancies the UPSC wanted to fill.

Success Rates

Educational Qualification of the candidates

The report also gives success rates with respect to the broad stream of disciplines of the candidates.

As is evident from the table, the success rates do not vary much among graduates and post-graduates or higher degrees.

Optional subjects

The report also gives the success rates of the different optional subjects in the 2014 UPSC mains exam.

The most popular optional subject in 2014 was Geography with 3515 takers. It was followed by Public Administration (2852) and Sociology (1819).

For subjects with more than 100 takers, the highest success rate was registered for Law with 17%. Out of 235 candidates with the law optional, 40 saw success in the UPSC 2014 exam.

The success rates of the three most popular subjects are mentioned below:

Age and gender-wise distribution of recommended candidates in 2014 UPSC exam

The following table gives the age and gender-wise distribution of candidates who were selected for service:

From the table, the following can be inferred:

The highest percentage of male candidates who were successful was from the 26 – 28 years age group. 25.5% of the male candidates cleared the IAS exam in 2014.

For female candidates, the age group that saw the most successes in 2014 was the 24 – 26 years with a success percentage of 29.4%.

Candidates recommended for IAS and IFS by age

A total of 180 candidates were selected for the IAS and 32 for the foreign services.

Number of attempts

As per the report, 59.2% of the candidates who took the 2014 prelims exam were first-timers. However, among the successful candidates, only 10.4% of the candidates could clear the exam in the first attempt. 22.3%, 24.3% and 19.6% of the candidates cleared the 2014 UPSC exam in their second, third and fourth attempts respectively.

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