Deciding early on in your high school about your career choices definitely has advantages, you will be able to develop relevant skills and join relevant courses that add value to your career choice and that give you an early success.
Similarly, if you have clarity that you want to become a civil servant in your high school, you can start your preparation from the beginning of your college and get to join civil service in the first attempt.
Tina Dabi is the best example who had developed clarity on what she wanted early on her life and she qualified UPSC Civil service exam in her first attempt. She chooses her graduation subject relevant to her optional subject for UPSC exam and this made all the difference in her success.
The same approach can also be taken by other UPSC aspirants if they have decided to become an officer of Indian civil service.
How to choose the best graduation subject which can help in your UPSC CSE exam?
UPSC in its notification provides the list of all the optional subjects that a candidate can choose to write their mains exam. Indian university offers a graduate-level course on all these subject and practically you can take any of them to achieve your UPSC target. But there are some criteria to choose your graduation course if you have UPSC CSE in mind.
The criteria to choose graduation course with UPSC CSE as a target:
- Interest in your subject
Your interest is the most important factor in deciding your graduation subject, as you have to love the subject to develop conceptual clarity, which is essential if you want to score high marks in your optional subject. Secondly even later if you change your mind and do not want to pursue you will not regret your decision and will make a good career out of your graduation course.
- Convergence in other General studies paper
Some of the optional subjects are quite popular relative to their counterpart and that’s because these optional subjects like Geography, Political Science, Public Administration, Sociology have good convergence with other general studies paper. This approach helps to prepare your general studies simultaneously with the optional subject. So choosing any of these four subjects is definitely a big advantage considering UPSC preparation as your target.
- Other Career / Backup plan
It is always wise to have a fallback option if you are preparing for UPSC CSE exam as the success cannot be guaranteed in this exam. You should choose the graduation subject that allows you to develop a better career even if you are not able to qualify the exam. Since most of the optional subject in the list of UPSC are also popular graduation course, this must not be difficult.
Graduation subject stream choice is should be entirely yours, the subject of your graduation must match with your aptitude and interest, rest of the things can be managed.
Best of luck!!
