Anand Mahindra calls for ranking change as list ranks IIT JEE tougher than UPSC

Anand Mahindra recently watched the film 12th Fail, featuring Vikrant Massey, which highlights the challenges faced by UPSC aspirants. After watching the film, he spoke to various people about the difficulty of different entrance exams. He then took to social media and reacted to a ranking of the ‘top toughest exams in the world’ from October 2023. The list stated that the IIT JEE exam is harder to crack than UPSC.

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Mahindra expressed his disagreement with the ranking, stating that it needs to be changed if what an IITian who also took UPSC told him is true. The IITian told Mahindra that ‘UPSC is much tougher than the IIT JEE’.

“After seeing #12thFail I checked around and spoke to a number of young people about the relative difficulty of our entrance exams. One of them was a graduate of IIT who is involved in a business startup but who has also taken the UPSC exam. He stated emphatically that UPSC is much tougher than the IIT JEE. I wonder if this is a commonly held perception, in which case this ranking needs to change!” wrote Anand Mahindra on X while quoting a list of the world’s toughest exams.

The list features ‘ten toughest exams’ from across the world. Three exams from India made it to the list, with IIT JEE on second, UPSC on third and GATE on eighth.

Take a look at the tweet shared by Anand Mahindra below:

Anand Mahindra shared the tweet on February 4. Since then, it has gone viral with 1.2 million views. The share has also accumulated numerous likes and retweets. A few even dropped their thoughts in the comments section.

Check out a few comments here:

“The exam itself is not tough, but it has 3 stages, and every graduate can take it, which makes the competition very tough. One small mistake and you are out of the race. But if the difficulty level of question papers is compared, of course, JEE is much tougher,” claimed an X user.

Another added, “One of my relatives cleared IIT in the first attempt and cracked UPSC in the fourth attempt. He always says that UPSC is the ‘mother of all exams’.”

“I myself have gone through that and realised quickly JEE was a cakewalk, given you only needed to complete 5 books and you will get through JEE. But UPSC is a different beast altogether; you can only go so far by just reading; you need to be constantly and consistently aware of what’s happening around you, what happened and what may happen!” shared a third.

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