UPSC: How Indians crack one of the world’s toughest exams – Saudi Gazette

UPSC: How Indians crack one of the world’s toughest exams – Saudi Gazette

NEW DELHI — For close to three years, Gamini Singla stayed away from friends, did not go on a vacation and avoided family meetings and celebrations.

She stopped binging on takeaways, going to the cinema and stepped away from social media. Instead, at her family home in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, she woke up at the crack of dawn, pored over textbooks and studied for up to 10 hours a day. She crammed, did mock tests, watched YouTube videos of achievers and read newspapers and self-help books. Her parents and brother became her only companions. "Loneliness will be your companion. This loneliness allows you to grow," Singla says.

She was preparing for the country's civil service exams, one of the toughest tests in the world. Rivaled possibly only by Gaokao, China's national college-entrance exam, India's Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams funnel young men and women every year into the country's vast civil service.

A million candidates apply to appear in the grueling three-stage exam every year. Less than 1% make it to the written test, the second stage. In 2021, when Singla sat for the exam, the success rate was the lowest in eight years. More than 1,800 made it