- Hi, I'm Toby and welcome to another exam review video.
So imagine over a million students applying to take an exam
for which there are less than 1000 spots
waiting for them at the end.
This insane competitiveness is the reality for students
who are taking India's UPSC exam,
making it one of the toughest exams in the world.
So I have some of the UPSC exam papers here today,
but this isn't even all of it.
It's a huge exam.
It takes up to two years of preparation,
and when everything's said and done,
if you make it all the way through,
you would have sat 32 hours worth of exams.
I've covered some other tough exams coming out of India
like the JEE advanced exam for engineering,
or the NEET exam for medical students.
But this UPSC exam is different
in the fact that you need to be more on top
of all your subjects from technology
to current affairs to philosophy,
the scope is extremely broad.
UPSC stands for union Public Service Commission.
And the exam recruits graduates who have already done
a university degree who want to come and work
for the Indian Civil Services.
So that's basically working for the Indian government
in various administrative roles.
It's a highly sought after position,
and people who do really well on this exam
are really admired by their fellow peers.
So let's have a look at the kind of questions
that would be involved.
The exams held in multiple stages,
there is the prelims that are two papers,
general studies and an aptitude test.
And if you make it through that,
it's the main section.
Now the mains consists of nine papers each three hours long,
and this is what they cover.
There are two that are just qualifying an English exam
and an exam in an Indian language of choice.
But then we have an essay for general studies exams
and two papers of your choice.
These papers of your choice are on optional subjects
which range everything from physics, maths, philosophy,
engineering, but also basically every subject
you could imagine.
So, let's have a look at a few of these papers.
So I've got here the first general studies paper
this one covers Indian heritage, culture,
history, geography of the world.
And so everything written in Hindi and English.
There are 20 questions in this booklet
and all questions are compulsory
So let's have a look.
They're not joking that this is a lot of work.
All of these questions are little like mini essay questions.
Yeah, like this is kind of Indian history.
Things about an 1857 uprising.
The linkages between The 19th century Indian Renaissance
and the emergence of national identity.
So everything from that to the impact of global warming
on the coral life system.
What makes Indian society unique
and sustaining its culture discuss in 150 words.
So I think, what you really need to do
to prepare for an exam like this,
where it's kinda testing your general knowledge
and I've seen many preparing students talk about this,
it's actually reading newspapers.
And reading newspapers to prepare for an exam
seems kind of bizarre to me,
but it makes sense.
Newspaper should give you a pretty good idea
of what's kind of going on in the world right?
So this is another General Studies paper.
Number four, this one should cover ethics,
integrity and aptitude.
They wanna know what are the basic principles
of public life illustrate any three of these
with suitable examples?
What do you understand by the term public servant, right?
That's very relevant since
that's the job you're applying for.
But then, we even have some kind
of philosophical ideas over here.
An unexamined life is not worth living, socrates
discuss that in 150 words,
one from Gandhi, a man is but a product of his thoughts
what he thinks he becomes.
I'm left feeling that someone who's prepared for an exam
like this wouldn't just be good at sitting this exam
but they'd be a really knowledgeable
and smart citizen of the world.
You know what I mean?
Like questions like this on history, philosophy, geography,
general knowledge are that they have general
your tested on them kind of everyday in your life,
there are what allows you to contribute
to interesting discussions with random people that you meet,
and I don't think this knowledge would be lost
when you finish this exam.
I think some of these ideas
just help you understand the world better.
And even if you don't get in,
it's kind of like you haven't wasted your time.
You spend all this time becomes knowledgeable
about your country.
And I don't think that's something to be upset about.
So this is the essay paper of between 1000 and 1200 words
on something like wisdom finds truth
or biased media is a real threat to Indian democracy,
or the rise of artificial intelligence.
You see, some of these ideas are interesting to think about.
Now, that's kind of a look through the general studies
and my thoughts on those.
Let's have a look at some of the optional papers now.
So since this is basically a physics channel,
I picked a couple of the optional physics papers.
I've got physics paper one and physics paper two.
And so let's have a little bit of a look through these.
They're starting off not too difficult.
What is the central force give two examples.
How does Reynolds number help in the study of fluid motion?
What I noticed straight away is that these
are not multi choice questions,
which was the case
for some of the other Indian exams I looked at.
This page is pretty interesting Section B.
You answering these physics questions
in about 150 words each,
so you have to really be good
at your communication of scientific ideas.
For example, we're asked to discuss in brief
the ultraviolet catastrophe.
How did Planck solve this problem?
Alright so that's paper one of the six.
Let's have a little look at paper two
before we make any judgments.
This is starting off with some quantum mechanics questions.
Again, a lot of explainer type questions.
How do you define density of states?
Define mathematically the Bohr radius.
Calculate the numerical values for the hydrogen atom.
I should mention that if you make it through
all of these papers, you make it through the main round,
then there is an interview and that interview
would be a bit of a personality test.
So even if you ace all of these,
I guess it's still possible that you're not quite
what they were looking for.
And that interview is probably maybe one of the most
subjective parts of all it's hard
to put a number on someone's personality.
Just like I did in my in my NEET exam
I'll give this exam, a little rating.
So name UPSC the scope.
Well, we covered everything from philosophy to physics.
That's a pretty big scope.
It gets an A and a plus.
Difficulty well, it's a tough exam
I'll give it an A.
I guess the difficulty will depend on your strengths
and weaknesses and how prepared you are feeling
and how much preparation you've done for it.
Time pressure, well, it's kind of a test of stamina,
this is such a long process.
Like I said, you would have done 32 hours of examinations.
If you've done all of these papers,
the interview, the mains, that prelims, that's intense.
In terms of actual time pressure yet,
you have three hours to answer heaps of questions
I'll give it an A as well.
Now the big one competitiveness.
This is the most competitive exam
I've ever covered on the channel.
I thought NEET was competitive,
but students here are competing for only hundreds of spots.
So this is going to be A never before seen rating
of A plus plus, plus plus.
And that's what makes this one of the most difficult exams.
If you want me to compare it overall
to the JEE advanced exam,
I would say that UPSC is tougher on the basis of selection,
but JEE advanced was probably tougher
on the basis of the questions,
but they are two totally different exams,
testing different things for different people
who want different jobs.
I wanted to finish this video with a little story.
So I printed out these UPSC exam papers at the library.
And while I was doing so,
there was some of the pages got caught in the printer
and there was a little printer jam
you might be able to see this page here
is a bit crinkled.
Anyway, one of the staff members at the library
came over to help.
And as he was fishing these pages out
from inside the printer,
he recognized the exam and he asked me,
"are you preparing for UPSC?"
You see, he said he was from India
and he himself had prepared for the UPSC.
I told him that "no I wasn't preparing for it."
And it was a little bit hard to explain
what I was doing printing it out
if I had no interest in sitting it myself.
But he ended up telling me his story
about how he'd done a lot of preparation himself
when he used to live in India,
and he'd gotten quite far through the exam.
He's done quite well, but he didn't make it
all the way to the end.
So he'd faced the disappointment
of not getting through the UPSC.
But life had taken him on a different journey.
He'd gone to university in India and studied languages
and even done a PhD.
I guess that PhD had allowed him to apply for a job
in Australia at the library and he was living
a happy life here.
So it was kind of a coincidence for me to bump
into a UPSC alumni here in Australia.
But there were two things I kind of took away from it.
One was that UPSC is so widely known in India
and so many people apply for it
that you might bump into people who have done it
anywhere around the world,
but also that UPSC and passing it
is not everything and that
there are multiple paths to happiness.
Even if you try really hard to pass an exam
and you think you want to take your life
in a certain direction.
There are other directions that life
could take you even if you don't get what you want.
Sometimes not getting what you want
can even be a wonderful stroke of luck.
So keep that in mind.
And thank you for watching.
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