Which Stream is helpful within the UPSC IAS Exam - Arts, Commerce & Science?
A student, moving to class 11th or joining a graduate course, who has decided to undertake UPSC Civil Services Exam, invariably faces a choice dilemma regarding which stream to settle on, i.e. between Science, Commerce, and Humanities (Arts), which might convince be most helpful within the UPSC IAS exam?
This dilemma is even more complex for those students who are a science or commerce students till class 12th but are now eager to shift to the Humanities stream in graduation considering that the syllabus for CSE is taken into account to be heavily biased towards Humanities subjects.
Although it's as long as it's not the stream the approach of the candidate towards exam which increases the probability of success there's no denying the very fact that Humanities students certainly have a foothold having studied subjects which are recurrent themes across all stages of the CSE.
For e.g. subjects like History, Public Administration, politics, Geography, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, etc form the main syllabus of General Studies’ papers (which have the utmost weightage across the Prelims and therefore the Mains stages of the CSE).
Not only that, the majority of those subjects, also figure within the Optional Subject List of UPSC. All of the subsequent subjects which the Humanities stream offers also are available as optional subjects to be elected by students at the Mains stage of CSE:
Political Science
History
Geography
Economics
Psychology
Sociology
Public Administration
Philosophy
(The list of those subjects doesn’t end here and is sort of exhaustive as different schools and boards offer different numbers and combinations of those subjects. Normally, students are required to settle on five compulsory and one additional (optional) subject in school 11th and 12th).
The 68th UPSC annual report also contains statistics about the distribution of candidates who appeared at this exam vis-à-vis those that were selected (recommended for selection by UPSC), by Optional subjects in CSE 2016 (Pages 118 & 119 of the report). For the sake of brevity, the whole data isn't being put here but the essence of this analysis as given within the UPSC report is given below:
(i) As far as academic backgrounds of the recommended candidates are concerned,59.3% were from Engineering, followed by 21.9%, 10.3%, and 8.5% from Humanities, life science, and Science respectively. However, 84.7% of optional subjects opted by the recommended candidates were associated with Humanities (including the literature of languages), followed by 6.8%, 5.4%, and 3.1% associated with Science, life science, and Engineering respectively. This shows that the majority of the candidates have made a cross-domain shift from their original stream (i.e., Engineering, Science, and life science ) to humanities.
(ii) Geography was the foremost preferred subject among the optional subjects chosen by the candidates, followed by Sociology and Public Administration.
(iii) Out of 45 Optional subjects offered by UPSC for CSE 2016, the foremost popular ones in descending order were; Geography, Sociology, Public Administration, History, politics & diplomacy, Anthropology, Philosophy, Maths, Medical Science, Law, Literature of Hindi Language, Psychology and Economics.
Looking at the themes for the overall study papers and UPSC syllabus, one can see a clear advantage for a student with a Humanities background as he has already studied these subjects in class and college.
So if you would like to pursue Civil services as your career aim, Humanities (Arts) is certainly getting to provide you with the additional edge to try to so. It covers the widest range of subjects that might be haunted for higher studies and also provide a robust base for CSE. If a student wishes to pursue CSE, it’s better to abandoning of the apprehension that Humanities have fewer career avenues as compared to other streams. It provides equal if less, opportunities and requires an equivalent effort and dedication by the scholars.
Finally, confine mind that each journey has its ups and downs. Prepare slow and steady, and use every means to expand your knowledge domain. CSE demands candidates to possess an honest interest within the subjects they study, which may only come from perseverance and devotion. So Join the Best IAS Online Coaching Class to start your preparation.
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