Detailed Analysis of UPSC Syllabus

Table of Contents

Introduction

A detailed analysis of the UPSC syllabus is essential for UPSC aspirants to understand the exam’s scope and decide what to read and what not to read. Given the vast UPSC syllabus, it become important to cover all important topics given in syllabus.

Even through UPSC has given a detailed syllabus for UPSC Mains Exam, but not for Prelims exam. This makes aspirant to study anything and everything under sun! Initially, aspirant reads everything but later it becomes hard to revise, and makes it difficult to remember in the final exam.

Thus, having a detailed blueprint of UPSC Syllabus in head saves time and efforts. This helps specially when you’re reading a Newspaper for UPSC Exam. You can easily skip unnecessary stuff that come on daily basis.

As you may know, the syllabus is divided into two parts: the Preliminary syllabus and the Mains syllabus. In this blog post we’ll decode UPSC Prelims & Mains Syllabus and analyse it in depth. I hope that this analysis will help aspirants prepare better for the exam and achieve their dream of becoming a civil servant.

Pre-requisite for this article

Make sure you have read UPSC Official Syllabus before or are familiar with it.
If you’re haven’t, we highly encourage you to do read it and come back. You’ll get more benefits.
If you don’t want read this article, just bookmark this page!

First of all, you have some questions in your head. Like,

“Shall I mug up/remember the whole syllabus?”
“I do not have the memory power to remember it, how should I go with that notion?”
“Every topper suggests remembering it, what if I don’t remember?”

Well, we’ll do Anti-thesis.

Is it important to remember the UPSC Syllabus? If so, why?

It’s not mandatory to remember it, but if you know the syllabus by heart; you have some competitive advantages. How?

While reading newspapers, you can easily eliminate unnecessary content. This will save time. You can revise Current Affair magazine in the meantime. You will feel less burdened.
You’ll know, your study material is more than enough to cover everything given in the syllabus. You will be less distracted from new study material that’s coming up everyday in the market. You’ll not become a “Material Collector”. Kudos to you! You can now utilise your energy efficiently.

Now, the big question is “How to remember it?”

Best way to Remeber UPSC Syllabus

Well, you do not need to mug up actively now and then. Instead, Before you start studying anything in a day, you can read the syllabus once in 2-3 days or once a week initially. When you read a syllabus like this, it forms pictographic memory in your head. And after 4-5 months you easily remember important topics and themes given in the syllabus.

I found that, if you read the syllabus and previous year’s questions(PYQs) together; you’ll notice some important themes from the syllabus. You can invest your efforts accordingly!

Now, let’s see prelims syllabus.

Anaylsing Prelims Syllabus

We notice that there are high-weighted and low subjects. Subjects like Polity, Economy, Geography, Modern History and Environment have high weightage in the Prelims exam as compared to other remaining subjects. Other subjects like Art & Culture, Ancient & Medieval, IR, Sci & Tech etc. are relatively low weighted.

Well, I will tell you a few things;

UPSC conducts Prelims Exam For both Indian Forest Services and Civil Services. Thus the importance of the Environment section can’t be ignored.
You should decide when you’re going to study exclusively for Prelims (i.e. Feb-March 202X, before 3 months) and in this phase, you do not need to prepare for subjects like World History, Indian Society, Security, GS 4 (Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude) and Optional etc. If you want, you can do 15 days or monthly quick revisions.
UPSC is a premium body and it wants aspirants who are aware of all major changes happening at the National and International levels that affect human life. Thus national events like Beti Bachao, Digital India, UPI and international events, financial crisis, terrorism, and climate change have been asked previously in specific times because of their importance.
Understand this and do a reverse question; “Can this topic be asked?” If so then where? Prelims, Mains or in an interview? If you do this exercise while studying, this will reduce your study material and you can give more time for revisions, ultimately better performance.

To be frank, there is nothing more than this post to analyse and understand about prelims syllabus.

I hope, you got where to focus more while looking at prelims syllabus. You can get more insights from the Mains Syllabus.

UPSC Mains Syllabus Analysis

In official terms, UPSC Main Examinations have two stages (Written and Interview), if you qualify for Mains Cutoff you’ll be called for your Personality Test. For Mains Paper, UPSC has given details topics to study. Before we go there, first understand UPSCs requirement.

UPSC Requirements

Let’s understand, What UPSC says w.r.t. Civil Services Mains Examination;

“The main Examination is intended to assess the overall intellectual traits and depth of understanding of candidates rather than merely the range of their information and memory.”
-UPSC Notification (2023)

Essay Paper

As per UPSC, candidates may be required to write essays on multiple topics. They are expected-

To keep closely to the subject of the essay
To arrange their ideas in orderly fashion, and
To write concisely.
Credit will be given for effective and exact expression.

So, to good marks in essay, you need write concisely, effectively on given topic without going away from main topic.

GS Papers

The nature and standard of questions in the GS papers will be such that a well educated person will be able to answer them without any specialised study.

By this, UPSC meant

to test a candidate’s general awareness of a variety of subjects, which will have relevance for a career in Civil Services.
The questions are likely to test the candidate’s basic understanding of all relevant issues, and ability to analyse, and take a view on conflicting socio-economic goals, objectives and demands. The candidates must give relevant, meaningful and succinct answers.

Compulsory Papers

Its aim is to test the candidate’s ability to read and understand serious discursive prose, and to express his ideas clearly and correctly, in English and in the Indian language concerned.

Optional Papers

The scope of the syllabus for optional subject papers is broadly of the honours degree level (means a level higher than the bachelors’ degree and lower than the masters’ degree). And in the case of Engineering, Medical Science and law, the level corresponds to the bachelors’ degree.

Now, you have understood the requirements of UPSC; But how to maximise out of it?

Here are some tips and strategy to boost your score:

3 Strategies to to Crack UPSC Requirements

1. Prioritise those subjects which you are good at!

2. Prioritise those subjects you are bad at!

3. Well, I have to do everything! then prioritise rationally.

In first strategy you capitalise those subjects

Sometimes in order to impress paper evaluators, we tend to write great theories from Scholars in our GS Paper. Don’t do that. Because I just don’t understand it. Can’t resonate.

Well, I have to do everything; then prioritise rationally! Why do I say so? It’s highly probable that in order to cover everything; you collect a lot of stuff and you can’t comprehend them all. In the Main Examination hall, you need to have everything ready in your head in order to completely write a paper within a given time.

Do not study for Essay initially. Once you have completed your GS (Optional, if possible) you have developed some knowledge base, analysing & reasoning ability. Once you have all GS knowledge/ raw material in your head; you can focus on writing an Essay in a continuous flow and organising that data into a concise & effective essay. You can score 120+ easily in an essay. If you are not good at English, don’t worry! You just need basic Grammar & some Connecting Words. You can download it from our Website. Just Search “Connecting Words”
Well you don’t need to study specifically for Compulsory Papers. You can just go through some PYQs and see if you can answer them easily. Here is a list of topics from the Compulsory English Paper that are repeatedly asked.
Score good in Optional

Well if you have gone through the syllabus and PYQs, you will notice that;

There are very few questions asked in areas like Post Independence, World History. And there are areas like Indian Society, Governance, Security, Sci & tech, Disaster Management, whose syllabus is relatively less but the questions are asked every year. Sometimes, while emphasising more on important subjects like Polity, Economy, History; we neglect those rewarding subjects. Don’t do that!
We generally study GS topics separately like
- Physical Geography(GS1) & Disaster Management(GS3),
- But if you integrate them, you can save your time; Like you are studying
- Study the geomorphological features of earthquakes in the Physical Geography section and then directly link it with its management part, NDMA guidelines on the same notes.
- International relations are governed by national interests(Energy Security, Defence & Terrorism, Financial Stability, Sovereignty or Democratic values etc.)
- If you understand that Oil or coal is essential for energy security then you can study oil related grouping (i.e. OPEC +)
- Defence and Balance of Power(i.e.NATO, QUAD)
- Financial or Trade Relations (BRICS, SEO, ASEAN, RPEC or WTO, IMF)
- You can also link all these groupings with the Mapping Section of Geography.
- You can just remember things by applying simple logic & reasoning.
Now, you can integrate all GS Understanding into your Essays. How?
- You can create anecdotes from Historical events like Anecdotes on Peace from 2 World Wars, Idea of Freedom from French Revolution or inspiration for Bloodless Struggle for Independence from Indian Freedom fighters.
- You can integrate political Ideas of Democracy, Socialism, Secularism or concepts like Natural justice, Freedom of Speech, Right to Privacy or Life to draw significance of these values in human society.
- You can mention statistical data from your Economy Section or from Welfare programmes to justify your arguments.
Above all, when you integrate your understanding, you need not to mug up everything. This is it; You’re studying smartly!
Mapping Section(GS1) & International Relations (GS2)
Natural Resources Distribution(GS1) & Energy and Infrastructure (GS3)
Fundamental Rights, Governance(GS2) & Ethics(S4)