The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conducted the preliminary stage of the Engineering Services Examination (ESE) 2021 yesterday. The examination was conducted as two paper – 1, and 2. Paper 1 on General Studies and Engineering Aptitude of 200 marks was held from 10 AM to 12 noon. While the discipline-specific paper on Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, and Electronics of 300 marks was held from 2 PM to 5 PM.
With the exam concluded, the wait for result begins. In the case of UPSC exams, the result date is not announced before hand. Nevertheless the commission follows a more or less similar timeline each year, and on that basis, predictions can be fairly accurately made with regards the ESE result date.
As per our calculations, the UPSC will declare ESE 2021 prelims result on any date that falls after 42 to maximum 53 days after the exam. Thus, the result date will be any date between August 29 and September 09, 2021.
Past year result dates, which were used to make the calculations, are as follows.
| Year | Examination Date | Result Date | Difference |
| 2020 | January 05, 2020 | February 20, 2021 | 46 days |
| 2019 | January 06, 2019 | February 28, 2019 | 53 days |
| 2018 | January 07, 2018 | February 18, 2018 | 42 days |
| 2017 | January 08, 2017 | February 24, 2017 | 47 days |
| 2016 | May 27-29, 2016 | August 03, 2016 | 68 days |
The prelims decide who will qualify for the mains exam. Candidates who will meet the cut-off requirements for the preliminary exams for UPSC Engineering Services will be qualified for the Mains exam. The schedule for the upcoming Mains examination will be released only after the publication of the preliminary results. However, it is expected that the Mains exam will be held during October and November, 2021.
As far as the cut offs are concerned, they too follow a pattern. It has been observed, that since 2017, the cut offs for all the branches have been steadily increasing, with the exception of the year 2019 that saw a dip in the cut offs.
| Branch | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
| Civil | 238 | 188 | 207 | 202 | 229 |
| Mechanical | 262 | 187 | 256 | 231 | 301 |
| Electrical | 238 | 221 | 230 | 257 | 320 |
| Telecom | 245 | 226 | 213 | 221 | 322 |
The cut-off analysis for the last five years show that the maximum cut-off was 320 for Electrical Engineering in 2016. On the other hand, the least cut-off went to 187 for Mechanical Engineering in 2019. Comparatively, the cut-off was significantly high for almost all the branches in 2020. As a result, this year too, the cut-offs are likely to remain higher than that.
The UPSC Engineering Services exam is held every year to recruit engineers to the various engineering services in the country. As a result, the examination is also known as IES or Indian Engineering Services. The final stage of the examination is the personality test and candidates who qualify for this stage are given positions in the various engineering departments under the Government of India.
