The Civil Services Examination (CSE) is a nationwide competitive examination in India conducted by the Union Public Service Commission for recruitment to higher Civil Services of the Government of India, including the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, and Indian Police Service. Also simply referred to as the UPSC examination, it is conducted in three phases: a preliminary examination consisting of two objective-type papers (General Studies Paper I and General Studies Paper II also popularly known as Civil Service Aptitude Test or CSAT), and a main examination consisting of nine papers of conventional (essay) type, in which two papers are qualifying and only marks of seven are counted followed by a personality test (interview). A successful candidate sits for 32 hours of examination during the complete process spanning around one year.
Not many take physics as their optional in the IAS mains exam. This is owing to the nature of the subject, no doubt. Nevertheless, there have been toppers who with this optional were able to notch up their final scores and get a high rank. The following table shows the success rates of physics optional from 2010 to 2015.
Physics optional success rate:
| Year | No. of candidates appeared | No. of candidates cleared | Success rate (%) |
| 2015 | 128 | 20 | 15.6 |
| 2014 | 151 | 14 | 9.3 |
| 2013 | 147 | 13 | 8.8 |
| 2012 | 266 | 17 | 6.4 |
| 2011 | 323 | 31 | 9.6 |
| 2010 | 243 | 24 | 9.9 |
Many candidates qualified UPSC taking this option and some of them bagged the good position this optional, the most recent being Pratibha Verma, who bagged the 3rd rank in the 2019 UPSC exam.