Normally, it takes many aspirants two to three years to clear the UPSC CSE, with some needing to spend as much as six attempts to shine in what is sometimes thought to be one of the most challenging exams around the world. The UPSC exam has three phases: an objective preliminary exam, a subjective Mains paper, and a personal interview. It is an extremely rigorous exam and requires a sound understanding of a very lengthy syllabus, so most candidates typically take several attempts to clear the exam.
However, then there is IAS officer Saumya Pandey, from the 2017 Uttar Pradesh cadre, who, in the very first attempt in 2016 managed to get a superb All India Rank (AIR) 4. Born on 12 January 1994, Saumya Pandey was a student of the same city. Besides being brilliant in academics, Saumya Pandey is also an outstanding sportsperson who had won medals in swimming and basketball during the school days.
She topped her entire district with 98 percent in Class 10 exams, and scored 97.8 percent in Class 12. After school, she got into engineering at Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology. She topped the university and won a gold medal in 2015. Next year she attempted UPSC CSE. At the time of declaration of results, when she along with her mother was checking for her name at the bottom of the list, little did they know that she was actually within the rank holding five of the top positions. Recently, Saumya Pandey became social media highlight after photos emerged showing her sitting and talking to an elderly disabled man went viral.
