Her grandfather envisioned her as a civil servant before she had even finished school. Her father farms land in Mahabubnagar, Telangana.

She failed to clear UPSC Prelims in her first attempt. Then she failed again in her second. Two attempts, two Prelims failures, zero Mains appearances.

His teachers in Odisha had saved his father’s phone number as “Animesh IAS” years before he ever appeared for the exam. His father, a Political Science lecturer,

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.