UPSC IAS Exam Eligibility

UPSC IAS Eligibility Criteria 2021 Overview

IAS Exam Age Limit	21 to 32 years (must not have touched the 32nd year)
Age Relaxation	As per category (mentioned in section below)
Educational Qualification for IAS	Graduation
Nationality	Indian citizens only

UPSC Exam Eligibility

To be qualified to sit the IAS exams, you must first hold a bachelor's degree, and this is just one of the qualifying requirements.

There are other UPSC qualifying requirements that you should investigate before applying for the IAS exam online.

To be eligible to take the UPSC exam, you must first ensure that you have the necessary educational requirements.

The educational requirements for UPSC tests are not as stringent as those for other exams such as the UGC NET and RBI Grade B.

By not steep I mean that the eligibility for UPSC does not require a minimum passing mark in your graduation certificate.

However, make no mistake. Do not let this fool you into thinking that the UPSC exam is in any way easier to crack than the others. The UPSC IAS exams are by far one of the toughest exams in India today. It would take a perfect IAS preparation strategy and a lot of hard work to make it through to be an IAS officer.

Anyway, tough or not, the very experience of attempting the IAS exams for the first time is something that is out of this world.

UPSC Eligibility Criteria - Qualifications, Age Limit No. of Attempts

UPSC IAS Exam Eligibility: Nationality

To appear for the UPSC IAS IPS exams you need to be a citizen of India, for all other services, you must be either:

A citizen of India,
Or a subject of Nepal,
Or a subject of Bhutan,
Or a refugee from Tibet that came to India before the 1st of January 1962 with the intention of settling in India permanently.
Or an individual with Indian origin who has migrated from Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, East African countries of Uganda, Zambia, Zaire, Kenya, the united republic of Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Vietnam, with the purpose of settling permanently in India. If you belong to categories b), c), d), and e), then you’d need a certificate issued by the govt. of India to be eligible. Also belonging to the b), c), d), and e). Categories will bar you from being eligible to be appointed to the Indian Foreign Services.

UPSC IAS Eligibility Criteria: Age Limit

Long story short – Gen: should not have touched age of 32 years, OBC: should not have touched age of 35 years, SC/ST: should not have touched age of 37 years, PWD: should not have touched age of 42 years.

Compared to the criterion of educational qualification (which I shall be getting to in the next sections), the UPSC Exam eligibility criteria of age limit, and nationality are things over which you, as a candidate, have no control.

The most you can do is be done with your minimum educational qualification as soon as possible.

That way you’ll be able to save yourself the required number of attempts that you’d need to crack the UPSC exams.

UPSC IAS Eligibility Criteria: Number of attempts

The UPSC had raised the number of attempts and of the upper age limit criteria for applicants of the Civil Services Exams in the year 2015. According to the amendment, the candidates belonging to the general category had been granted an upper age limit of 32 years (must not have reached) with a maximum of 6 attempts.

For the OBC candidates, the upper age limit is 35 years (must not have reached) with a maximum of 9 attempts. For the ST/SC candidates, the upper age limit is 37 years (must not have reached) with an unlimited number of attempts.

For physically handicapped candidates, the age limit is 42, 45, and 47 years (must not have reached) for the general, OBC, and ST/SC categories respectively.

However, the maximum number of attempts for the physically disabled general and OBC candidates is 9, whereas, for the ones from the ST/SC categories, it is unlimited.

UPSC IAS Eligibility Criteria: Minimum Educational Qualification

I have written the UPSC eligibility based on educational qualifications in detail below:

To appear for the UPSC IAS exam you must have proof that you are a graduate from a centrally or state-recognized university. This means that you should have a bachelor’s degree certificate from any university incorporated by an Act of the State and Central Legislature of India, or any institute of education established by an Act of the Parliament of India, or one that is declared to be a deemed university under Section-2 of the University Grants Commission Act of 1956, or possess a qualification equivalent to that.

Some scenarios:

In case you are in your final year of college and have appeared for or are intending to appear for the final examination of your bachelor’s degree course, or are awaiting the results of the same, you are eligible to apply for the prelims examination of the UPSC IAS exam.
In case you are able to clear the prelims round of the UPSC exam and are planning to appear for the Mains round of the UPSC exam, you’d need to produce the proof of your graduation by attaching your bachelor passing certificate to your application for the Mains exams.
In certain exceptional cases, the UPSC may allow you to appear for the IAS exams even if you do not have a graduation certificate from the universities/institutes written above but have passed your final graduation examination from any other institute, the standard of which in the perception of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) justifies your eligibility to appear for the Civil Services exam, e.g., Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, etc.
In the case that you possess a professional or technical bachelor’s degree like BE or MBBS recognized by the govt, you’d be considered eligible to appear for the UPSC exam.