Question : Is There Any Biasness InOptional Scoring?

Answer :

• UPSC does not favour or punish any optional in any year. There is no discrimination among any of the optionals involved. Rather, at the end, scaling is done to keep the marks of all the optionals in a uniform manner.
• There is no set criteria for high scores in optional subjects but certain prediction can be made based on scores by various toppers in Civil Services Exams in respective years. From past few years, students are getting decent scores in subjects like Sociology, Philosophy and History. Subjects like Public Administration & Geography in 2015 had scores on the lower side. Basically subjects are of two types: Science (Technical) subjects and Social Science subjects.

• Science subjects have fewer candidates, generally students avoid these since subjects due to huge syllabi and guidance too is not available in general. But scores can be exceptionally high as seen in trends.
• Social Science subjects are on the safer side which if given with decent efforts can allow students to get selected.
• Always remember - the trends of score changes every year so that should not be an ideal way for choosing an optional.