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Not opinion, and not a difficulty ranking — no commission publishes one. This is what each exam asks, counted from 882 solved MPPSC questions (2018–2026) and 999 UPSC prelims questions (2016–2025), every one tagged to a subject by our faculty.
65.4% of the MPPSC paper sits in syllabus areas UPSC also examines. The other 34.6% is Madhya Pradesh GK — content UPSC never asks about, and the part your CSE preparation does not touch.
Each figure is that subject's share of its own exam's questions, so the two columns are comparable even though the year windows differ. A positive gap means MPPSC asks proportionally more than UPSC.
| Syllabus area | MPPSC share | UPSC share | Gap | ≈ Qs per MPPSC paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polity & Governance | 15.4% (136) | 14.6% (146) | +0.8 | 15 |
| Science & Technology | 14.9% (131) | 13.6% (136) | +1.3 | 15 |
| History | 9.3% (82) | 11.9% (119) | -2.6 | 9 |
| Geography | 8.7% (77) | 10.5% (105) | -1.8 | 9 |
| Current Affairs | 8.7% (77) | 7.2% (72) | +1.5 | 9 |
| Economy | 4.2% (37) | 20.4% (204) | -16.2 | 4 |
| Environment & Ecology | 3.2% (28) | 17.3% (173) | -14.1 | 3 |
| Art & Culture | 1% (9) | 4.4% (44) | -3.4 | 1 |
Madhya Pradesh GK — 305 of the 882 solved MPPSC questions, 34.6% of the paper. There is no UPSC equivalent, so no amount of CSE preparation covers it. On a 100-question paper that is roughly 35 questions a year.
Recurring themes across the 9 solved papers, largest first. Themes appearing only once are left out.
The same table read the other way. Most comparisons only serve the candidate moving from UPSC downwards; this is the move a lot of people actually make.
UPSC prelims asks 100 questions where MPPSC asks 100, and it spreads them differently. The subjects MPPSC under-weights relative to UPSC are the ones you would be building close to from scratch: Economy (20.4% of UPSC against 4.2% of MPPSC), Environment & Ecology (17.3% of UPSC against 3.2% of MPPSC), Art & Culture (4.4% of UPSC against 1% of MPPSC).
What carries over best is Current Affairs and Science & Technology — MPPSC already works you harder there than UPSC does, so that depth is banked.
The 34.6% you have spent on Madhya Pradesh GK does not transfer — UPSC does not ask it. Budget for that when you plan the switch, in both directions.
Both exams also differ in what a mark costs. See the marking schemes below — the penalties are not the same, so an attempt strategy tuned to one paper is not tuned to the other.
The gaps above are the actionable part: where MPPSC rewards more work than UPSC did, and where you are already over-prepared.
And Madhya Pradesh GK from scratch — 34.6% of the paper, with no UPSC overlap.
Over-prepared is not the same as safe to skip — these subjects still appear. It means extra depth here buys fewer marks in MPPSC than it did in UPSC.
Question counts here match the papers we hold and have solved.
| Exam | Paper | Questions | Marks | Per question |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MPPSC | General Studies Paper-I | 100 | 300 | 3 |
| General Aptitude Test (Paper-II) · qualifying | 100 | 300 | 3 | |
| UPSC | General Studies Paper-I | 100 | 200 | 2 |
| CSAT (Paper-II) · qualifying | 80 | 200 | 2.5 |
Scored as 3R − W: three marks for a correct answer, one deducted for a wrong one. Unattempted questions carry no penalty.
Marking scheme checked against Drishti IAS — MPPSC 2026 pattern change, UPSC CSE marking scheme. Commissions do change these — MPPSC re-marked its 2026 paper — so confirm against your exam's own notification before settling an attempt strategy.
Method: MPPSC figures are counted from the 9 prelims papers we have solved (2018–2026), 882 questions, each tagged to a subject by UnlockIAS faculty. UPSC figures are counted from 999 UPSC CSE prelims General Studies questions from 2016–2025, tagged the same way; that set covers text questions and excludes image-based items, so subjects that lean on maps and diagrams are slightly under-counted. Both columns are shares of their own paper set. Shares are rounded to one decimal place and may not total exactly 100.