The Civil Services Examination consists of three successive stages: (I) Preliminary Examination (multiple choice); (II) Main Examination (Written test) (III) Interview or Personality test for the selection of candidates to IAS, IFS, IPS and other services.

The list of subjects that can be taken as optional paper in the Civil Services (Mains) examination:

Subjects List of Civil Service (Mains) Exam

Agriculture
Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science
Anthropology
Arabic
Assamese
Bengali
Bodo
Botany
Chemistry
Civil Engineering
Commerce
Dogri
Economics
Electrical Engineering
English
Geography
Geology
Gujarati
Hindi
Indian History
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
Law
Maithili
Malayalam
Management
Manipuri
Marathi
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering
Medical Science
Nepali
Oriya
Pali
Persian
Philosophy
Physics
Political Science
Psychology
Public Administration
Punjabi
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
Sociology
Statistics
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu
Zoology


List of Social Science Subjects
Economics
Geography
Indian History
Philosophy
Political Science
Psychology
Public Administration
Sociology
Law


List of Science Subjects
Agriculture
Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science
Botany
Chemistry
Mathematics
Statistics
Medical Science
Physics
Zoology
Anthropology
Geology


List of Engineering Subjects
Civil Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering


List of Commerce and Management Subjects
Commerce
Management


Indian Languages
Assamese
Bengali
Bodo
Dogri
Gujarati
Hindi
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
Maithili
Malayalam
Manipuri
Marathi
Nepali
Oriya
Pali
Persian
Punjabi
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu


Foreign Languages
English
Arabic