IAS Exam is the popular name for "Civil Services Exam" Civil Service Exam (or IAS Exam) is an annual exam series conducted by Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) of Indian government. The exam recruits personnel for the prestigious Indian govenment services including IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IPS (Indian Police Service), IFS (Indian Foreign Service) IRS (Indian Revenue Service) etc. The exam is being conducted in three stages: CSAT, Mains and Interview. CSAT stands for Civil Services Aptitude Test. CSAT is the preliminary exam that selects candidates for the all-important Mains exam. Currently, any recognized bachelors degree is the basic educational qualification for CSAT. It is an objective test with two papers (general knowledge and general aptitude) of equal weightage (200 marks each) The top scorers each category (general and reserved categories) will be selected to appear for the Mains. About 2,00,000 people took CSAT in 2011 and only about 12,000 people were qualified to take Mains exam. Mains exam is a written subject exam for 2000 marks. Top scorers in each category of the exam will be called for "Civil Services Personality Test" (Interview) The Interview is for 300 marks. All the candidates that were called for Interview will be ranked based on their perormance in both the Mains and Interview (2300 marks). The top ranked candidates in each category will be allotted services based on the candidates' ranking, candidates' preference and the availability of vacancies. Candiadtes allotted to services like IAS and IPS will have to go thru vigorous training before becoming eligible for postings.

CSAT (Civil Services Aptitude Test) is an elimination test. So, of all the candidates appeared for the test, the top candidates in each category will be qualified to the next stage (Mains). So, the cut-off/pass score will vary each year depending on the caliber of the candidates taking the test, the difficulty level of the questions and the number of vacancies projected. Each paper of CSAT (Paper I and Paper II) does not has its own cutoff. So, the cut-off is based on TOTAL CSAT score only. Based on selected candidates' feedback, we guess that the 'general category' cutoffs for CSAT 2011 would be around 210 marks (out of 400 marks) The cutoffs for reserved categories will be much lower than the general category cutoffs.