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Edit: For a more detailed analysis, do check out my blog: www.abdaal.wordpress.comThis is going to be a long one, as well as rather impersonal and off-the-question. But since there is no way I can personally respond to each of the hundred odd queries I have received, I hope this suffices and helps someone on his/her quest towards the CSE. :)Civil Services was a long held dream. It waxed and waned with time, but it remained somewhere deep in my subconscious. It showed itself as I diligently read through the Toppers Interviews in CSR (for inspiration) or read the Edit Page of the Hindu even on cold Sunday mornings (for preparation!) These are all peripheral though. Perhaps the most important question that you need to answer as you embark on your preparation is to question why you want to be a Civil Servant. I say this not because it would determine the sort of bureaucrat you turn out to be but also because it would determine the levels of motivation you carry through your preparation.There is an easy way to answer this. Imagine yourself as really old-the age where people call you a grumpy old nag behind your back. If you were to look back then on your career, what achievement would make you the happiest? Would it be that you amassed such wealth that you could give your family every comfort they ever needed? Would it be that you had seen all that the World had to offer? Would it be that you could bring about a qualitative change in somebody else's life through your work? Would it be that people you have never met talk about you as an inspiration?I have my own answer. And that is not an answer I am going to share with you here. Discover your own. And then consider whether the Civil Services is the best way you are going to achieve that goal. Do not be dissuaded by thoughts of 'oh-this-is-all-so-idealistic' and 'I-am-barely-twenty-now'. I think it was Napoleon who said that if you want to know why a man turned out the way he did, enquire what he was doing when he was twenty.If you have zeroed down on the Civil Services after this, do not let talk of the difficulty of the exam, the minuscule chances of making it and all the discouraging statistics deter you. The exam does not so much select as much as it eliminates. With little more than 3-4 hours of regular preparation daily over a year, anybody (and you can capitalize that) can crack this exam.I started off with a couple of advantages. The first one was newspaper reading and GK. I have regularly read the newspaper, cover to cover, for close to twelve years now. You may not realise it, but over an extended period this habit prepares you for life. Being well informed is a bonus in whatever sphere of life you intend to compete in. So if you still have some years to go, there is nothing I would recommend more than subscribing to Indian Express/the Hindu right now. That alone would take care of most of your GS needs.The second advantage I had was the subject of my graduation (as well as my optional)-Law. It is staggering how much of your GS portion is covered when you study Law. Just to given an example-all of your Polity, most of your modern Indian History, a large part of Economics and all of your Environment developments. That effectively knocks out 50% of your GS. I would recommend it as an optional to anybody. However, non lawyers should bear in mind that while you can memorize large parts of the Law syllabus, there is no substitute for a solid grounding in the fundamentals of Law. You may acquire this through standard books like MP Jain on Constitutional Law or join a good coaching programme. It would simplify a lot of otherwise arcane jargon when you start reading the books as such.My first attempt in 2013 was without any preparation at all. I was working full time in a leading Indian corporate and it was impossible to get leave for this. That coupled with my inaction and laziness quite sealed my fate there. How I still managed to get into the Supplementary List then would remain one of my own personal unanswered mysteries.The disappointment of June 12, 2014 did not wear off till the end of the month. My preparation actually started only from July. This is a major mistake many candidates make. Getting selected for the Interview is no reason for you to shut shop. The exam is so difficult and so competitive that an Unreserved candidate only has a 1/33 chance of getting into the IAS even after making it to the Interview! So if you have been selected for the Interview, make sure that your Prelims preparation for the next year hasn't been shelved.I wish I could comment on the Prelims, but seeing how certain fundamental changes have been made this year to the pattern, I would reserve my comments on it till I see this year's question papers. However I would say that I did not have any separate set of books for Prelims. My standard books for both stages of the exam remained the same. Hence the Book List I append below holds good for both. Of course do make sure that you have looked at the syllabus very carefully.I would certainly recommend a Test series for Prelims-both GS and CSAT. There is no substitute for practice and a test series, diligently attempted, not only teaches you time control but also revises your entire syllabus over a number of attempts. It is well worth your time and money to invest in a couple of good ones. I took Vajiram's 2013 series and would have taken one in 2014 as well had I not run so close to the deadline.For GS I, I would recommend reading the old NCERT books as many times as possible. Since history is one of my strong subjects and one that I have a genuine interest in, I did this portion from Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and from my much battered old copy of an Advanced History of India. If you cannot spare the time for this, NCERT and Bipan Chandra's Modern India should do the job. If you have a couple of years to go for the exam, I would also recommend Ram Guha's India After Gandhi and MJ Akbar's brilliant (if old) India: The Siege Within. Strangely enough, I did almost all my Indian Culture and Art from free online sources. It is well worth giving this method a shot. Geography is again one of my favourite subjects but since I was out of touch with it, I relied on GC Leong. NCERT alone should also do.For GS II, I had my Law optional books supplemented with Laxmikanth's Indian Polity. I would gladly recommend that book to anybody. Vajiram's old study modules also came in very handy. These supplement the former beautifully. For the IR part, I did not do anything special, except read up on random articles online and look at what Wikipedia had to say. There is absolutely no need to get into the nitty-gritties of these. If you have done your newspaper reading well, you already know this portion.For GS III, the Economics part was done from Ramesh Singh. For the rest, Vajiram's Study Modules sufficed. Enviro and Ecology was done from Majid Hussain- a decent book but nothing too great.For GS IV, there is really nothing to study. This is amply made clear by the 2013 and 2014 papers. I do not know how I fared this year, but I can assure you that all the definitions I wrote were my own. There is probably something to be said for memorising some standard ones on Ethics, Integrity etc, but I did not do any of that. In the case study part, my answers involved a short analysis of the ethical questions involved, followed by what, say, a Rousseau or a Bentham would have done followed by what Indian Law/Constitutionalism has to say on this. The last one, incidentally, was almost always my position as well.You would realise that relying on these books mentioned here would still leave half a dozen topics out in each of these papers. I did all of those from Wikipedia or the internet generally. None of these require more than an hour each, at the maximum. So you can actually leave them for the fag end too.I signed up for a Test Series here too. It was extremely useful, as I have mentioned earlier, both as a tool of revision as well as time management. Do make sure to attempt every question and look up the right answer the very day you have attempted the test. The evaluation marks don't matter much. I think I flunked more than half of these tests! Self evaluation is the best evaluation.As far as Law is concerned, I relied on standard Indian textbooks, except for International Law. Constitutional Law was done from VN Shukla, IPC from KD Gaur, Contracts from Avtar Singh and Torts from Bangia. For Int Law, the peculiar India oriented syllabus means that SK Kapoor's International Law saves you a lot of time. If you want your basics to be in order, I would recommend Starke. All of the smaller topics were done from the Internet as well as the AIBE material. It is advisable to stay updated on current legal developments from the lawandotherthings blog. I did not do much case law, except in Consti-though this is recommended. If you do not have a really poor memory for numbers (like me), I would recommend memorising the section numbers for IPC and Contracts as well as most of the important Article numbers from the Constitution.I was fairly confident of making it to the Interview. If you can make it with no preparation in 2013, you surely should with the five months of preparation in 2014! The actual interview was a pleasant experience. It was Ms Alka Sirohi's Board. Not much of an icebreaking session or cordial trivialities. Most of the questions came from my work as a lawyer as well as generally on the Indian legal system. A couple of them dealt with my interest in rail-fanning (or train-spotting). I was unable to answer a couple of questions and told them so. Overall, I was pleased with my performance as I came out of the room.Was I expecting the IAS? Not in my wildest dreams. So when the news broke, it struck me dumb for a few minutes. To be chosen from close to a million aspirants is a humbling feeling and burdens you with a tremendous responsibility. I hope I am able to live up to that in whatever little way I can. For now, I feel an incredible sense of relief that I would not have to go through the grind all over again!If there are any other questions regarding the preparation/exam, I would be happy to answer them here in the comments section.

Before seeing this question I knew Two Quora user who cleared UPSC in other years , i followed them but when I read your question I search about users who cleared UPSC 2015 I found few user. I am mentioning their Profile .From UPSC 2015 I found two User AIR 3 and Chandra Mohan Garg AIR 25.Here are few other user who cleared UPSC Civil services in different year.Roman Saini : He Cleared UPSC at age of 22 in first attempt with AIR 18, Cleared AIIMS entrance exam at age 16 and currently online educator at Unacademy - The Free Education Revolution!.Ira Singhal : She is the Topper of UPSC 2014.Awdhesh Singh (अवधेश सिंह) : A senior IRS Officer .User-12653884241351697666 : Cleared UPSC twice .AIR -59 in 2004 CSE.Nikunja Kishore Sundaray : IAS (RR-1987) , CBSE Topper, 1978 , National Award Winner-2012 .Subhash Jangala : IRS 2011 AIR 250.Shashank M Tripathi : AIR 73, UPSC CSE-2014There are many more on Quora you need to search them you can follow and get help from them.EDIT: I found few more UPSC-2015 crackerSharanya Ari : AIR 7Arushi Sharma : AIR 292Pulkit Garg : AIR 27 and UPSC 2014 - AIR 490Bhavesh Mishra : AIR 58 .Debotosh Chatterjee : AIR 406Digant Anand : AIR 223Rajat Chaturvedi : AIR 480Shivam Dhamanikar : AIR 934Gaurav Garg : AIR 320Congratulations to all who cracked UPSC and All the Best to them who are preparing for it.PS: I added the name here only to provide few profile nothing else and I don’t know anyone personally I just mentioned Rank and designation as I found in their profile. I will add more name as i will found any where.Thanks

After you somehow scrape through and find your name in the coveted "list" of UPSC- CSE successful candidates, you have 2.5 months of 'honeymoon' period comprising July and August. This is the period where you will feel like a local celebrity with lots of media attention, pampering from the entire family (in fact, this was the first time I came to know I have more than a thousand relatives, some of whom I was seeing for the first time in my life). Your old school(s) which earlier cursed you, day-in and day-out, for being such a bad student, insulting and embarrassing you in front of entire morning assembly for just talking/chatting; calling your parents, asking them to 'discipline' you; taunting you throughout your childhood that you are a worthless piece of s##t, beating the crap out of you for apparently no reason at all, will all line up and give you a call to come and 'enlighten' their students by delivering a 'thought-provoking lecture' . This is nothing but a publicity stunt on their part to use your "name" and "achievements" in justifying the exorbitantly high capitation fees/donation that they charge at the time of admission. Similar motive is also with the coaching centres, who despite serving BS, lectures after lectures, expect you to recommend their name for future aspirants. Last but not the least, your old crushes, which never trusted in your abilities to crack this examination even if you are given 50 attempts, stabbed you in the back and shattered your heart into quintillion pieces, even they will come back, saying that they knew all along you had it in you. I mean seriously. Do they really think you are dumber even than the 'rain man'. Anyway, all this helps you in further understanding the meaning of life, concept of opportunism, flattery, contemplating your purpose in an extremely limited stay at earth, and setting your priorities straight.But come September and you know some entirely different ball game is awaiting you. This is the beginning of "100-day long foundation course" (in my case it started on 01/09/2014 and will be over on 12/12/2014). In the first week, the course team at LBSNAA, Mussoorie try to cure your disorientation and illusions about what is gonna happen to you. We are a bunch of 284 OTs (160 engineers, 45 arts, 37 doctors, 22 pure sciences, 20 others) with 180-2=178 IAS, 30 IFS, 35 IPS, and rest are drawn from IRS (IT), IRS (custom and excise), IFoS, Indian railway services, Indian Postal Services, Royal Bhutanese Civil Services. This diverse group is soon made to realise that you have not become 'an elite' and are not bestowed upon with a divine right to rule over the rest of humanity. It's an important life lesson for bureaucrats and other power wielding authorities that the others, no matter what is their stature in the governmental hierarchy, are very much human, are not your slaves and are to be treated with dignity and respect.I arrived on 31st August, 2014 and was given a room in silverwoods hostel (read hotel). It is situated outside the academy and hence, the 50 odd residents of this hostel (all gentleman incidentally) are relatively cut off from the proceedings of the academy. The rest three hostels (Ganga, Narmada and Kaveri) for Officer Trainees (OTs as we are passionately called) are not so good as far as infrastructure is concerned. Yet, they being physically contiguous and situated inside the academy, have distinct advantage of being aware about the latest 'rumours' and can reach class and mess within 2-3 minutes.After getting done with formalities on first September, we were asked to adorn ceremonial dress of bandh gala jodhpuri suit (different from formal dress) as the Honourable Vice President of India, Shri Hamid Ansari himself was coming to formally kickstart 89th FC.First week was relatively chill as the academic hours were mainly restricted to ice breaking sessions, introduction of faculty, stupid exercises in team building and all that crap that typically occurs in such courses.Then in 2nd week, the dreadful nightmarish stuff started. It was waking up at 5:30 am, walking (running if you wake up late) for 1.5 km to reach the hallowed 'polo ground'. Then, PT session commences from 6-7, where we are made to do some light exercises and running for a km or something. Now comes the hardest part of the day. It includes an ascent of 150m to reach back to our hostels. People tend to take bath and get ready, while I spend entire 100 minutes on Internet, taking only 200 seconds to get ready before reaching the class at 9:00.We are typically taught law, management, accounting, history, polity, economics. Mostly the permanent faculty (includes IAS officers, central civil servants and expert academicians) deliver the lectures. However, sometimes guest speakers ranging from LSR, DU, JNU professors, to retired army generals, working/retired civil servants heading various departments, writers, authors etc. are asked to visit the academy to shed light on the areas of their expertise. Likes of Raghuram Rajan, Gopalkrishan Gandhi, Shobha de, Gurcharan Das, Tom Alter, Nachiket Mor, Tushar Gandhi, Sumanta Banerjee etc. have all come and tried sharing their wisdom with the batch (while many of us were dozing off).On every Saturday in September, a trek was organised which typically involved walking and climbing a total of 18-22 km from 8 am to 3 pm. You really curse yourself while you are ascending the hills. But the scenic beauty and the sense of achievement one feels on reaching the top is really worth the effort. Places which we have visited include Kempty Falls (if you go there and don't jump in the cold water fall, you are an idiot), Benog hills (best scenery in entire Mussoorie), Lal Tibba hills, known for its blood sucking leeches. Yup you read that right, I personally sprayed 1/2 kg of salt on myself and still a leech attached to me.Life in the academy revolves around OT lounge (for chilling, playing pool, drinking etc.), officers mess (duh ...for food obviously) and happy valley complex (sports and gym).In this first week of October, we were taken to a Himalayan trek. My group went to Uttarkashi. We walked and climbed 90kms in one week, ate food with live worms, slept on the ground, including tents, stayed for 2 days at a height of 4500 m. It is both, literally and metaphorically, the high point of our FC.Interspersed activities include, playing guitar, riding horses, firing guns, cooking, baking, cadre predictions, 'match making', river rafting, bungee jumping, et al.Anyway after coming back from a long, arduous and painfully amazing trek, there were many activities like submitting assignments, essays, book reviews, and the dreadful mid term examination on 22/10/2014. My level of preparation can be gauged by the fact that less than 48 hours before the exam, I was sitting in JLN auditorium of my almamater, AIIMS, New Delhi, just 10m away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, listening to his electrifying and mesmerising speech and receiving my MBBS degree from the health minister of India, Dr Harsh Vardhan.Anyway, after the exams, there was a cross country run of 10 kms around the academy on 25/10/2014. A village visit was scheduled from 1-8 November for all the OTs where we were supposed to stay in the villages and have the taste of real-life practical problems faced by the villagers on a day-to-day basis. Our group went to a village in Moradabad, named Kaderpur. It was relatively well developed but was quite a sensitive area. We visited and gauged the functioning of PHCs, village schools, panchayat functioning. We went to the farms and observed the cropping patterns which were practiced. Every piece of land was covered with sugarcane and rice.On 15th November, India Day was organised which marked the extreme diversity of India and celebration of the same in the form of varied dresses, food, dances, processions, etc.It will be followed by an athletic meet and then finally an end term exam.The course ending will be marked by a valedictory function on 12th of December. Thereafter all the the other services except IAS, will leave.On 15th December, phase 1 of our training will start, with one week of classes followed by 2 months of India tour.Then, one year cadre posting, and finally Phase-2 which will be from June 2015 to June 2016.June to August 2016 will be phase 2, finally marking the end of two year training and transformation from a probationer to an IAS officer.