Roadmap
UPSC optional subjects: the full list of 48
Taken from the Commission’s own notification, not a coaching summary. Free to read, no account needed.
Last verified 6 September 2026
- 48
- subjects on the list
- 500
- marks, Papers VI and VII
- 28.6%
- of the 1,750 written marks
- 0
- marks it earns in Prelims
Two papers, one subject
What the optional actually is
Papers VI and VII of the Mains are both the optional subject. A candidate picks one subject from a list of 48 and writes two three-hour papers on it, 250 marks each. There is no second optional, and the subject cannot be split across the two papers.
Which papers
Paper VI and Paper VII of the Mains, worth 250 marks each, 500 together.
Format
Conventional, essay type. Three hours per paper, as with every other Mains paper.
One subject only
Both papers examine the same optional. Candidates choose any one subject from the list of 48.
Where it does not appear
Nowhere in Prelims, and nowhere in the Personality Test. The optional is a written-stage subject only.
No eligibility bar. The notification states that candidates may choose any one of the optional subjects from amongst the list, and attaches no condition tying that choice to a degree, a graduation subject, or a mother tongue.Straight from para 2
All 48 choices
Twenty-five subject optionals, then the literature of any one of 23 languages. Every literature counts as a separate choice, which is where the number 48 comes from. This is the list as printed in the current notification, in the order the Commission prints it.
The 25 subject optionals
- 01Agriculture
- 02Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science
- 03Anthropology
- 04Botany
- 05Chemistry
- 06Civil Engineering
- 07Commerce and Accountancy
- 08Economics
- 09Electrical Engineering
- 10Geography
- 11Geology
- 12History
- 13Law
- 14Management
- 15Mathematics
- 16Mechanical Engineering
- 17Medical Science
- 18Philosophy
- 19Physics
- 20Political Science and International Relations
- 21Psychology
- 22Public Administration
- 23Sociology
- 24Statistics
- 25Zoology
Literature of any one of these 23 languages
- Assamese
- Bengali
- Bodo
- Dogri
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Kannada
- Kashmiri
- Konkani
- Maithili
- Malayalam
- Manipuri
- Marathi
- Nepali
- Odia
- Punjabi
- Sanskrit
- Santhali
- Sindhi
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Urdu
- English
Twenty-two of these are the languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The twenty-third is English.
Do the arithmetic once
What it is worth, in marks
The optional is the largest block of marks any single subject can earn a candidate. Worth knowing precisely, because the figure gets rounded up and down freely elsewhere.
Of the written total
500 of 1,750 merit marks, which is 28.6%. Papers I to VII are the seven that count.
Of the grand total
500 of 2,025 once the 275-mark Personality Test is added, just under a quarter.
Of Prelims
Zero. The notification calls Prelims a screening test whose marks are not counted for the final order of merit.
Against a GS paper
Each GS paper is also 250. The difference is that the optional puts 500 marks on one syllabus instead of four.
Why the comparison with GS is misleading. GS1 to GS4 are 250 marks each as well, so the optional looks like two GS papers. It is not. Those four papers cover four different syllabi; the optional concentrates 500 marks on a single one, examined at a depth closer to a postgraduate paper.Four checkable questions
How to choose one
There is no ranking of optionals worth trusting, so the useful move is to check four things about a candidate subject rather than to look for the best one.
01Can you read the actual syllabus and recognise most of it?
Part B of Section III of the notification prints the full syllabus for all 48. It is the only authoritative statement of what is examinable. Read the real thing before deciding, not a summary of it.
02Does it overlap the GS papers you already have to prepare?
Overlap is a genuine, checkable saving on revision time. The next section lists where the shared syllabus ground actually is.
03Does it assume a foundation you do not have?
Medical Science, the three engineering optionals, Law, and most of the pure sciences are written to a degree-level base. Starting one from nothing is a much larger commitment than the syllabus length suggests.
04Can you find material, and can you write it for six hours?
Both papers are conventional essay type. A subject with thin standard reading, or one that is hard to write at length under time, costs more than it looks like on paper.
On success-rate tables. Lists ranking optionals by success rate circulate widely and are rarely traceable to anything the Commission published. None are repeated here. Choosing a subject on an unsourced number is choosing on nothing.Shared ground, read off both syllabi
Where optionals overlap GS
The overlaps below come from comparing each optional syllabus against the GS paper descriptions in the same notification. They are shared syllabus headings, which is a claim about coverage, not about difficulty.
Geography
GS1, GS3
World and Indian physical geography, resource distribution and settlement in GS1; disaster management in GS3.
History
GS1
Indian culture and art forms, modern Indian history and the freedom struggle, post-independence consolidation, world history.
Political Science and International Relations
GS2
The Constitution, Union and State relations, institutions of government, and the whole international relations half of GS2.
Sociology
GS1, GS2
Indian society, diversity, women, population, urbanisation and globalisation in GS1; social justice and the welfare sector in GS2.
Public Administration
GS2
Governance, transparency, e-governance, the civil services, and statutory and quasi-judicial bodies.
Anthropology
GS1
Indian society and social structure, and tribal communities and their institutions.
Economics
GS3
Planning, growth and inclusive development, and the resource and investment topics of GS3.
Philosophy
GS4
Ethics in human action, moral thinkers, and the value framework GS4 is built on.
Law
GS2
Constitutional provisions, fundamental rights, and the judiciary.
What overlap does not buy. It cuts revision time, not the depth the optional is examined at. World physical geography is one bullet in GS1 and several pages of the Geography optional syllabus. The optional still has to be prepared as its own subject.The part most guides skip
Language, medium and script
The medium rules matter to more candidates than the literature optionals do, because they apply to everyone writing the Mains, whichever optional they pick.
Medium
Papers I to VII may be written in English or in any one language of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution.
A split medium is allowed
A candidate writing Papers I to V in an Eighth Schedule language may still choose to write the optional papers in English.
How papers are set
Every question paper other than the literature papers is set in Hindi and English only.
Two-script languages
The Santhali paper is printed in Devanagari and may be answered in Devanagari or Olchiki. The Manipuri paper is printed in Bengali script and may be answered in Bengali script or Meitei Mayek.
Scripts are fixed per language. Kashmiri and Urdu are written in Persian script, Punjabi in Gurumukhi, Sindhi in Devanagari or Arabic, and Bodo, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit all in Devanagari alongside Hindi.
Separate from all of this: Paper A, an Indian language, and Paper B, English, are 300 marks each but qualifying only, needing 25% in each, and their marks never count towards merit. Paper A is not compulsory for candidates from Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.
What Civils Notes does not do
Stated plainly rather than left for a reader to discover after signing up. Civils Notes is a Prelims platform, and the optional subject is a Mains decision.
Not built: notes for any optional
None of the 48 has study notes here. Not one subject, and not one literature.
Not built: optional question banks
The question bank covers Prelims Paper 1 and CSAT. There are no Paper VI or Paper VII questions, and no answer-writing practice for them.
Not built: a recommendation engine
No tool here will pick an optional for a candidate, and no page will claim one subject scores better than another without a source for it.
Not built: mentoring or evaluation
No one here reviews a candidate optional answer, and there is no guidance call to book.
What does exist is this reference page, the Mains roadmap it sits under, and a Prelims product underneath both: notes, a chapter-mapped past-paper bank, and daily current affairs, each verified before it ships.
Frequently asked questions
How many optional subjects does UPSC offer?
Forty-eight. The notification lists 25 subject optionals, from Agriculture to Zoology, and then a twenty-sixth entry covering the literature of any one of 23 languages. Each literature counts as its own choice, so 25 plus 23 gives 48.
How many marks is the UPSC optional subject worth?
500. Paper VI and Paper VII carry 250 marks each. That is 28.6% of the 1,750 written marks that decide merit, and just under a quarter of the 2,025 grand total once the 275-mark Personality Test is added.
Does the optional subject matter for Prelims?
No. It carries no marks in Prelims at all. The notification is explicit that Prelims serves as a screening test only, and that the marks scored there are not counted when the final order of merit is determined. The optional first appears in the Mains.
Can I choose an optional subject unrelated to my degree?
Yes. The notification says candidates may choose any one of the optional subjects from amongst the list, and attaches no condition tying that choice to a degree or a graduation subject. A commerce graduate may take Anthropology, and an engineer may take Sociology.
Can I write the optional papers in English if I write the GS papers in a regional language?
Yes, and the notification says so directly. A candidate who opts to write Papers I to V in an Eighth Schedule language keeps the choice of writing the optional papers in English.
Which optional subject overlaps the GS papers the most?
By shared syllabus headings, Geography, History, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology, Public Administration and Anthropology overlap the most. Treat that as a saving on revision time rather than on difficulty: the optional is examined far deeper than the matching GS line, which is often a single bullet.
Does Civils Notes have notes for any optional subject?
No, not one of the 48. Civils Notes is a Prelims platform: study notes, a chapter-mapped past-paper bank, and daily current affairs. Optional preparation needs a source outside this site today. This page is a reference on the choice, not a course.
The optional is a Mains decision. Prelims is the gate in front of it.
Curious how the notes and questions are checked before they go live? Read about our methodology