Highest marks in UPSC, paper by paper

The highest final score in our data is 1,099 of 2,025, by Aditya Srivastava (AIR 1, CSE 2023). That is 54% of the maximum. Nobody becomes a topper by scoring close to full marks. UPSC is marked hard, and a rank is won by being a little better than everyone else in almost every paper.

Paper by paper, the ceilings are lower than most aspirants think: 149 in Essay, 143 in Ethics, 137 in GS II, 121 in GS I and only 111 in GS III. In the optional, the best combined score was 334 of 500. In the interview, 215 of 275.

Your rank comes from two numbers: the written Mains, out of 1,750, and the interview, out of 275. Together that is 2,025. Prelims only decides whether you sit Mains; its marks never reach the final list.

Across these years, AIR 1 finished between 96 and 146 marks above the last General-category selection. Spread over eight papers, that is roughly 12 to 18 marks a paper. The difference between "selected" and "AIR 1" is not genius. It is a steady extra 10 to 15 marks in nearly every paper.

Cut-offs: UPSC final results for CSE 2022, 2023 and 2024 (General category, out of 2,025; Mains out of 1,750: 748, 741 and 729).

Between the median AIR 1–10 and the median rank below 300, the written gap is 94 marks. 64 of those come from the four GS papers and 21 from the Essay. The optional and the interview add 16 and 16.

So the top 10 are not people with one brilliant paper. They are people with no bad paper. And even they have a weak spot: 62 of the 70 top-100 rankers in our data scored below 100 in at least one GS paper.

Read this table carefully before you pick an optional for that reason. A higher median usually means a smaller, self-selected group of candidates with a strong background in the subject, not an easier paper.

Full optional subject marks analysis →

Same year, almost the same written marks: 800 and 798. A 71-mark difference in the interview put one at AIR 85 and the other at AIR 765. Near the middle of the list, ranks are packed so tightly that every mark in the interview is worth several places.

The interview is 275 marks you can prepare for. Your detailed application form, your home state, your graduation subject and the news of the last six months cover most of what you will be asked.

After each final result, UPSC publishes the marks of every recommended candidate. We take the paper-wise marks of rank holders from those lists and count a marksheet only when every paper is present and adds up. That leaves 236 complete marksheets: 125 from CSE 2022, 105 from CSE 2023, 4 from CSE 2024, 2 from CSE 2025.

Two honest limits. First, this is a sample of toppers, not every candidate, so medians here are higher than for the full list. Second, “highest” means highest in this data. UPSC does not publish an all-time record, and an unlisted candidate may have scored more in a single paper.

Our data methodology →