How to run a UPSC test series online in Hindi and English

Copy UPSC, which prints every General Studies question in Hindi and English. Put both languages on every question of your series, with one answer key and one rank list for both mediums. Then match UPSC's Hindi and its marking rules to the second decimal, and close the test window before the paper reaches Telegram.

How UPSC prints its own papers in two languages

Download the 2026 Prelims papers from UPSC's previous question papers page before you design anything. General Studies Paper I has 100 questions, and its cover says each is printed in Hindi and English. Open the booklet and the Hindi version of questions 1 to 6 sits on the left-hand page, with the English of the same six on the right. The CSAT booklet (General Studies Paper II) has 80 questions, also in both languages.

Mains is laid out differently. In the 2026 Mains General Studies Paper I, each of the 20 questions appears in Hindi with the English directly below it. Candidates answer in the medium authorised on their admission certificate, and answers in any other medium get no marks. A Hindi-medium candidate may add the English for a technical term in brackets, but UPSC's rules warn that misusing this costs marks.

So nobody, in either medium, sits a UPSC General Studies paper in one language only. A Hindi-medium candidate who stalls on an unfamiliar Hindi term glances across at the English, and your tests should let them practise that.

Should students pick a language, or see both on every question?

One setup asks each student to pick Hindi or English at the start and shows only that version. For Prelims we would rather put both on every question, stacked or behind a switch on the question itself.

It matches the booklet, so exam day holds no surprises. You also get one set of question statistics across everyone who sat the paper, and a correction is made once for everyone. English-medium students lose nothing, since they can ignore the Hindi.

Separate papers make sense in one case: a Hindi-only institute, say in Prayagraj or Patna, that teaches and tests entirely in Hindi. What fails is the middle path, where two teams write different papers for the two mediums and publish one combined rank list. The papers will never be equally hard, and every topper's rank becomes arguable.

For Mains tests, print Hindi above English as UPSC does, and send each copy to an evaluator who reads its medium well. A bracketed English term is fine, but flag whole English sentences in a Hindi copy, because in the real exam they can cost marks.

Hindi that reads like UPSC's Hindi

This is where bilingual series usually lose Hindi-medium students. The safest style guide is UPSC's own papers: build a glossary from the last five or six years of Prelims and Mains papers, and make your translators use it.

The 2026 GS Paper I shows the habits worth copying. "Creditworthiness" appears as ऋणपात्रता, with the English kept in brackets. "Punch-marked coins" becomes आहत सिक्कों, again with the English alongside. The instruction "Select the answer using the code given below" appears as "नीचे दिए गए कूट का प्रयोग कर उत्तर चुनिए". Aspirants know these phrasings from past papers. Word them differently and a Hindi-medium student reads the same question more slowly than an English-medium one.

Negatives need extra care. UPSC sets "not" in bold italics in English, and नहीं in the same style in Hindi. Machine translation tends to drop that emphasis, and in statement questions it can turn "not correct" into its opposite. When the two versions mean different things, half your takers have answered a different question. Before any paper goes out, we would put it through these steps:

1. The setter writes each question in the language they think in, with the answer and a one-line reason.
   
   
2. A subject teacher who reads both languages translates it, using the glossary.
   
   
3. A Hindi-medium teacher or senior student who hasn't seen the English solves the Hindi version against the clock.
   
   
4. Any question where their answer differs from the key goes back to the setter and translator together.
   
   
5. Someone checks that bold, italics and the order of statements match in both versions.
   
   

Mistakes will still slip through, so set your rule before the first paper. UPSC's own process is a fair model: in 2026 it took challenges to its provisional key for about four days, each citing three authentic sources. For a weekly test, a two-day window, one cited source per challenge and a final key listing dropped questions is enough. If a translation error changed what a question asks, drop it for everyone.

Scoring that follows UPSC's rules to the decimal

UPSC's 2026 examination notice sets the rules. A wrong answer costs one-third of the marks for that question. Marking more than one answer counts as wrong, even if one of them is right, and a blank costs nothing. CSAT is qualifying at 33 per cent, and the list for Mains is drawn on GS Paper I marks.

Engines built for other exams may default to a quarter-mark penalty or add both papers into one total, and both are wrong for UPSC. Watch the rounding as well. The notice writes the penalty as "one-third (0.33)" of a question's marks. Decide whether your engine deducts 0.66 or an exact two-thirds per GS question, and say which on the result page. As an example, 60 right and 25 wrong gives 103.5 at 0.66 a question, and 103.33 at an exact two-thirds. Before the first test goes live, sit a dummy attempt with known right, wrong and blank answers, and check the score by hand.

CSAT needs its own place on the result page. Show it first, as qualified or not qualified against 66 marks. When a mock has both papers, rank on GS Paper I alone, and flag any GS score where CSAT fell short. Say, as an example, a humanities graduate scores 110 in GS mocks and 60 in CSAT. That student needs to see, every week, that this would have ended the attempt, while there is time to fix it.

The result page aspirants actually use

Aspirants glance at the rank and spend their time on the numbers that change how they attempt the next paper. Start with the cost of negative marking: marks lost to wrong answers, and what the score would have been with the guesses left blank. Accuracy by confidence comes next. If students can tag each answer as sure, fifty-fifty or a guess during the test, the result can show the net marks each group earned. That settles the argument every Prelims aspirant has with themselves about how many questions to attempt.

Subject accuracy helps only if the tags are fine enough to act on. "Polity" is too broad, while "Parliament", "Judiciary" and "Local government" tell a student what to revise. Show, for each question, the share of all takers who got it right. Missing a question most people answered correctly is a revision gap. Missing one most people got wrong is usually fine.

Your answer key has one more audience on Prelims day. UPSC's provisional key came three days after the 2026 exam, and marks stay unpublished until the final result. So aspirants spend Prelims evening scoring themselves against coaching keys. A careful bilingual key with explanations, released that evening, brings in aspirants who have never bought anything from you. Once UPSC's key is out, the same explanations help your students decide what to challenge.

Building the series around the 2027 calendar

UPSC's calendar for 2027 puts Prelims on Sunday, 23 May 2027. The notification is due on 13 January and applications close on 2 February. Mains begins on Friday, 20 August, and takes five days. UPSC says these dates can change, so check the notification.

Here is one example schedule. Sectional tests run from November to February, one subject block a fortnight, with a monthly current affairs test. Full-length mocks start in March, GS and CSAT on the same Sunday, in the slots UPSC used in 2026 (GS 9:30 to 11:30 am, CSAT 2:30 to 4:30 pm). The last full mock goes out about ten days before Prelims, leaving the final week for revision.

Translation sets your lead time. If a paper goes out on Sunday, freeze the source language by the previous Monday, so translation, the cold solve and corrections all fit. Skip this and the Hindi version goes out a day late, and Hindi-medium students notice.

For Mains, start full-length mocks the week after Prelims instead of waiting for results. In 2026 the result came 22 days after Prelims. With under 13 weeks between Prelims and Mains in 2027, a student who waits gives up about three of them.

Keeping the paper off Telegram while the window is open

Most online series give a window, say Sunday morning to Tuesday night, so working aspirants can fit the test in. On a popular series, someone has usually photographed the questions or posted an answer list in a Telegram group by Sunday afternoon. Everyone who sits on Monday then scores higher than they should, and the rank list stops meaning anything. For a test series, that rank list is much of what you sell.

So take the rank list off the window first. Publish the all-India rank from a fixed-time sitting only, and let window takers see their score and percentile against it without entering the list. Then make a leaked answer list useless by shuffling question order and option order for each student. A "1-c, 2-a" list means nothing on a shuffled paper, and statement questions with coded options survive shuffling as long as each option moves as a whole.

Hold back the key, explanations and question PDF until the window closes, then stamp each PDF with the student's name and registration number. Our article on why locked PDFs still leak explains why a password won't do. Where you can, run tests in an app rather than a browser. Android lets an app block screenshots of its own screens, which a browser tab can't, though a second phone's camera still works.

Finally, watch for scores that jump between the first and last day of a window, especially with very fast answers. When a paper does get out, our guide to preventing question paper and test series leaks covers the response.

For a 2027 series, settle the test engine and the leak controls before the first sectional test, while changing them is still cheap. Upclass Mock Test runs online test series in your own branded app, alongside Mains answer-writing evaluation, and PDF watermarking covers the solution PDFs you release after the window. Vajiram & Ravi and Rau's IAS eLearn are among the UPSC institutes on Upclass; see our UPSC coaching page or book a demo.

Frequently asked questions

Is CSAT counted in the UPSC Prelims cut-off?

No. CSAT (General Studies Paper II) is qualifying: you need 33 per cent, or 66 out of 200. The list for Mains is drawn on General Studies Paper I marks among candidates who clear that bar, and a test series should rank students the same way.

When does UPSC release the Prelims answer key?

Three days after the exam, in 2026, the first year UPSC released a provisional key. It came out on 27 May, and challenges closed at 6 pm on 31 May. The final key, with marks and cut-offs, still comes only after the final result of the whole examination.

Should Hindi and English medium students share one rank list?

Yes, because UPSC ranks them together. Add a filter so a Hindi-medium student can also see where they stand among Hindi-medium takers. That view helps morale, but the main list stays single.