What does it take to top India’s hardest exam at 22, in your very first attempt, as the first Dalit woman in history to ever do so? For Tina Dabi,

If you secured AIR 2 in the UPSC Civil Services Examination, most people would assume you walked away with IAS. Anmol Sher Singh Bedi chose IFS instead.

Most aspirants treat a fourth unsuccessful attempt as a signal to stop. Nandini K R treated it as preparation for a fifth. That fifth attempt made her the top-ranked IAS officer in the entire country in 2016.

She was not studying in a library with eight uninterrupted hours ahead of her. She was preparing for UPSC around her toddler’s nap times, meal schedules, and bedtime routines.

She did not start preparation with the goal of topping India. She started with the goal of clearing the exam. That one distinction, between chasing a rank and chasing competence,

An IIT Bombay graduate, working as a software engineer in South Korea, quit a comfortable international career to attempt UPSC for the first time. He came back as India’s top-ranked IAS officer of 2018.

When UPSC CSE 2023 results came out on April 16, 2024, Aditya Srivastava was already in uniform. He had cleared UPSC CSE 2022 with AIR 236 and was serving

She holds a Computer Engineering degree with a 9.21 CGPA. She chose Sociology as her optional subject. She cleared GPSC at Rank 55 while still preparing

An engineering graduate from a small town in Madurai. Seven years of preparation. Two government exams cleared. And on March 6, 2026, AIR 2 in UPSC CSE 2025,