About the UPSC interview question bank
The UPSC interview question bank in numbers, where the transcripts come from, and how to read the tags.
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71,784
questions
2,560
interviews
27
questions in a typical interview
44%
are follow-ups
16%
rest on recent news
Interviews by exam year
- CSE 2021371 · 10,224 q
- CSE 2022655 · 18,377 q
- CSE 2023466 · 13,242 q
- CSE 2024550 · 15,394 q
- CSE 2025518 · 14,547 q
What this is
Every question from NEXT IAS interview transcript compilations and the community compilations of CSE 2021 to CSE 2025 interviews, tagged by where it came from and what it asks you to do. Use it to see what boards really ask about an entry in your DAF or an issue in the news, and how they word it.
How to read it
- These are candidates' recollections. Each transcript was written by a candidate after the interview. Wording is as they remembered it, with spelling and grammar cleaned.
- Every CSE 2023 to 2025 interview was checked. All of them were re-read line by line against the source PDFs and posts by reviewers who did not do the extraction.
- Tags are judgement calls. In a full check the source tag was agreed on 93% of questions and the question-type tag on 92%.
- No invented questions. Every question in the bank traces to a line in a source transcript.
- Each interview counted once. Interviews that appear in more than one compilation are kept once.
- Hindi and Hinglish questions (about 4%) are shown in English translation.
- Counts favour common profiles. States, optionals and hobbies with more candidates in the transcripts have more questions. Compare years by share, not by count.
- No candidate names are stored. Board names are the chairpersons recorded in the transcripts.
The tags
| Source | What it means |
|---|---|
| DAF | Prompted by an entry in the candidate's form: home state, district, degree, optional, hobby, job, prize, name. |
| Static GS / Opinion | Concepts, facts and opinion on national and world issues, with no news peg and no DAF link. |
| Current Affairs | Rests on news from roughly the 12 to 18 months before the interview. |
| HR / Motivation | Your own choices: why civil services, why this service, why you left a job, strengths and weaknesses. |
| Situational | Puts you in a role: "As DM, how will you handle this?" |
| Ethics / Philosophy | Abstract moral and philosophical questions. |
| Ice-breaker | Opening pleasantries and closing prompts. |