The government recently declared Ambedkar Jayanti (14 April) as a gazetted holiday. The UPSC had announced its Personality test (Interview) schedule before this notification.
The UPSC has clarified through a notification taken out recently that the civil services interviews will happen on 14 April 2011 as scheduled. All the best to the candidates.
You can see the PDF file of the notification by UPSC on the link at the UPSC website.
If you are a UPSC Civil Services (IAS exam) aspirant and want to know the biography and other details of the present UPSC members to prepare for your upcoming Civil Services Exam interview and other interviews conducted by the UPSC then you can download the pdf made by Ghanshyam Thori. Ghanshyam has uploaded the pdf file on Rapidshare and we are putting it below so that you can download it. It is genrally advisable to know at least something about all UPSC members as each interview panel is headed by one UPSC member. You can click on the save button (floppy button in adobe) and save it or enlarge it and read it. If you can’t see it below then click this link to download the pdf file Profile_of_UPSC_Members.pdf
UPSC has just released the Examination schedule for the year 2010. If you are still wondering when the UPSC CS (Main) exam will start, the answer is 29 October 2010 and will last for 21 days. Of course, this is subject to change as written in the disclaimer (which is very rare). See the snapshot below saved from the UPSC website few moments ago.
It also has the dates for other UPSC exams such as the CDS, NDA, IES, Geologists’ exam, Central Police Forces Exam, Indian Forest services etc.
A lot of people give Yoga as hobby in the popular ‘IAS exam (Civil Services Exam).’ In a forum a person gives a small but useful list of questions that could be asked if your hobby (real or indicated 
) is Yoga! It is fashionable among UPSC aspirants to include Yoga as a hobby in the Main exam form! Follow all the links for original authors and more discussion:
With the UPSC Civil Services (Main) Examination result expected soon, students and aspirants are preparing themselves for the interview (called personality test) by preparing themselves on their hobbies, home state, Bio etc. (such as travelling, Yoga, Music, Movies, reading novels).
Somebody asked in a forum a list of questions to expect when the hobby is ‘travelling’
Here is the list of questions to expect that some creative body wrote:
There is a debate among students on this in a forum in the third week of November 2009. These are the excerpts. You can go to the forum link if the page has not expired. Please note that the following points are the views of the experienced students writing on that forum. This post also has a lot of comments on the Science subjects as optionals in the UPSC Civil Services Examination.
UPSC is completely biased against science optionals esp maths, physics,engg…..last year maths paper 2 was extremely difficult even though heavy scaling was done…..as many as 22 candidates got “zero” in paper 2…… average marks was 143/600….howz that possible….if scaling is for providing level playing field among all subjects then why is that average marks of optionals like pub ad and history were more than 280 while maths and physics optional average was less than 150….i’ll advise newcomers not to take any science optional……
The following is the experience of students in the UPSC Civil Services Examination (IAS exam) Interview board 2008. These are excerpts from the discussion on a popular Orkut forum (link may have expired now and content may be missing).
The students were discussing how Purushottam Agarwal was as an interview board chairperson/interviewee in the year 2008 (April-May). This will be useful for anybody looking for preparation tips and strategies for the Civil Services Examination interviews. Please note that one paragraph below is the experience/narrative by one person except where indicated otherwise. Visit the link above to see if the thread exists. Part 2 will be published soon. Grammatical mistakes/typos have not been corrected thanks to lack of time.