UPSC CSE Mains Examination consists of two types of papers- qualifying and merit-ranking. Paper A and Paper B namely the Language paper and English paper will be qualifying in nature. The marks obtained in these papers will not be added to marks that may determine your rank.

All the other papers will be evaluated for merit purposes.

Below are the cut-offs of last five years followed by its trend analysis-

From the above, you might be able to see that with subsequent years, the cutoff has fallen by some numbers. Although there is not a clear or predictable pattern because unpredictability is the main feature of this examination but a target of 800 makes you land somewhere near the cutoff (in a general sense, you might change it according to your respective categories)