UPSC Previous Year Question Paper: Free PDF Dowload for Mains, Prelims

UPSC Previous Year Question Paper: Download UPSC previous year question papers pdf for the past 10 years. Candidates must solve the UPSC’s previous year’s question paper to understand difficulty level, and pattern of questions asked, and ascertain their performance.

UPSC Previous Year Question Papers are pivotal in improving your preparation level. There are various benefits of practicing UPSC’s previous year’s question paper including familiarity with the difficulty level, nature and level of questions asked, and important topics which are repeatedly asked over the past years as well as checking where your preparation stands. 

The exam prep team of Jagran Josh has discussed the UPSC question paper PDF with solutions for the past 10 years for the civil service exam. This will enable you to analyse the previous year’s trend and boost your qualifying chances. 

In this article, we have shared the download link to previous years’ UPSC question papers with solutions PDFs of 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and more. 

UPSC Previous Year Question Papers PDF – IAS Exam Question Papers 2014-2022

Solving the UPSC question paper pdf with solutions will help you to prepare the strategy based on the latest trend, curriculum, and actual exam format and help you to understand the difficulty level and topics from which questions are often asked in the exam.

Going by previous exam trends and the difficulty level of the UPSC examination, the prelims exam has been found to be moderate level and the mains exam is usually moderately difficult. Thus, one can anticipate questions to be moderate level in the upcoming CSE prelims exam. Hence, it is essential to solve the UPSC previous year question papers for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and more in order to get an edge.

UPSC Prelims Previous Year Question Papers with Answers

The UPSC prelims exam is qualifying in nature and the marks obtained in the exam are considered to shortlist the candidates for the next round i.e. mains exam. However, it will not be counted when preparing the final merit list. The UPSC prelims exam comprises two objective papers i.e. GS paper I and GS paper II (CSAT). Each paper carries 200 marks and the exam duration is 2 hours each. Download the past 10 years’ UPSC question papers with answers PDF for prelims exam from the year 2013 to 2022 below.

UPSC Mains Previous Year Question Papers with Answers

The UPSC mains exam comprises 9 descriptive papers. The marks obtained in the mains exam and interview will be counted for determining the final order of merit. Download the past 10 years’ UPSC question papers with answers PDF for the mains exam from the year 2013 to 2022 for compulsory subjects below.

Benefits of Solving UPSC Previous Year Question Papers

There are a plethora of benefits of solving previous years’ question papers for the UPSC examination shared below:

• Practicing previous years’ question papers will provide insights into the actual exam structure, difficulty level, exam trends over the years, the standard of questions that will be asked, etc.
• Solving the UPSC question paper with solutions helps you to gauge your performance level and discover your weak points that need improvements. 
• Practicing previous year’s papers will increase your speed of solving questions and help you to manage your time effectively.
• Previous year papers are one of the reliable resources to revise the entire syllabus and retain concepts for a long time.

How to Attempt UPSC Question Paper?

The best method of solving the previous year’s question paper for the UPSC exam is to set a countdown timer and solve all the questions in that time period. To begin with, one should first download and take the printout of the UPSC previous question paper and then set an online timer to attempt the papers in a timed environment.

Once the time is over, stop solving the questions immediately and then compare your responses with the ones mentioned in the solutions PDF. Now, do the total of the number of correct and incorrect answers marked on the UPSC question paper. This will help you to identify your mistakes and focus on improving the same for better results. 

UPSC Previous Year Question Papers Analysis

Candidates shared that the overall difficulty level of the prelims exam last year was moderate level. As per UPSC Exam Analysis 2022 Prelims, the GS paper I comprise a total of 100 questions from subjects like history, geography, polity, environment, etc and the difficulty level of questions was moderate level. In GS paper 2, the questions were asked from sections like mental ability, arithmetic, comprehension, etc and the difficulty level of the questions was easy to moderate level.

UPSC Question Paper Pattern

The UPSC recruitment process comprises three stages i.e. Prelims, Mains, and Interview round. Check the detailed exam pattern of the UPSC Prelims exam below:

• The prelims exam shall comprise two compulsory papers of 200 marks each.
• Both the question papers will be of the objective type (multiple choice questions) and each will be of two hours duration.
• The General Studies Paper-II of prelims will be a qualifying paper with minimum qualifying marks fixed at 33%.
• The question papers will be set both in Hindi and English.