Detailed Preparation Strategy For UPSC CSE Prelims, Mains, Answer Writing, Notes Making, Etc. by Rupal Rana, AIR 26, 2023,

What were you doing when the result came and what was your initial reaction?

When I saw the result I had the feeling like everybody else.

I felt happy and satisfied that all my efforts culminated into a fruitful end. I think the pleasure and the happiness was just for a moment but after that you are just satisfied that you are done with this cycle and you are out of this preparation zone exam. It’s a big relief that I don’t have to read the books again.

Were you academically bright all your life or you decided to study hard when you came for civil services? 

I was academically bright, sir. I did my graduation in Mathematics because this subject always interested me right from the beginning. I have been a college topper of Mathematics with a CGPA of 9.2.

When did you decide to prepare for service, like as a kid or after college?

When I was in second year of my college I got to know about civil services so it was never a childhood dream. When I was a child, I was not able to understand the responsibilities and everything so even I was not even aware about the examination, however, when I entered into the college and I got to know about it.

What do you think is an optimum time to start preparing?

Nowadays,  people start during their college itself as they do not focus on their college studies but I was somebody who was always told by my mother that good grades matter and you should not ignore your college studies.

But now I feel that you should start from college itself because I think grades don’t matter, what matters is once you clear prelims and mains and only during the interview stage they ask about your educational background, so ideally you should start during your college.

However, I believe that there should be an ideal balance between the two – you should not ignore college at the cost of civil services. Because, during the college, you get a lot of exposure and you get to interact with a lot of people so it helps in your personality development a lot.

What are the basic books that you referred to?

So I had a very limited books. For Polity, I only referred to Laxmikant, for Modern History, i followed Spectrum and the NCERT written by Bipin Chandra and for the mains part for History, I referred to 4-5 chapters from ‘India’s Struggle for Independence’. For ancient and medieval history,  I referred to the NCERTs from class 6th and Class 12.

For art and culture I referred to the book written by Nitin Singhania. For economy, I relied on Vivek Singh’s book and for mains specifically, I was part of Dipin Sir’s Current Affairs classes.

Did you try ForumIAS simulators by subscribing or you took it from the market? Were you satisfied or what was it like?

Yes sir I did solve them and I took it from the market and solved at my home.

I was satisfied. In fact the solution and the content that is provided is unparalleled. I believe that solving the test is one thing, reading the solutions is another important thing because we get the extra peripheral knowledge out of it, which helps in the actual prelims.

In the actual prelims, you won’t get direct questions you have to use your extra knowledge and this extra knowledge will develop when one reads the solutions in an effective manner. I used mock tests immensely to increase my knowledge base.

Sometimes students come and say sir I’ve studied everything for prelims but I’m having an accuracy problem in attempting questions, some of them don’t believe that there is a knowledge problem. So what did you do when you used to get questions wrong how did you deal with them and what’s the way ahead?

In my earlier attempts of prelims, I was focusing on accuracy and I never attempted more than 80 questions. In terms of the knowledge I think the second attempt was my best attempts but I did one mistake, that I focused on accuracy and I attempted just 71 questions and could not clear prelims by five marks which made me realize that in this changing pattern of prelims,  it is getting uncertain and with vague questions, you cannot be accurate.

I mean, you’re not even sure of the exact questions so you have to increase the number of attempts so this year I attempted 94 questions in prelims and thankfully I got through and now I feel that you have to increase the number of attempted questions. It depends on individual as well but for me it was the number of questions.

Like you know people say that ‘I’m left with two options should I go ahead. What was your strategy when you had left with two options, how did you deal with it?

Like I said before I always focused on increasing my peripheral knowledge so when I used to get stuck in the two options I would use every part of my brain to get something out of it but I never made some blind guesses.

I always attempted the questions based on the intellectual guessing or so. I was very clear in my mind that if I have the knowledge to attempt that question I will attempt it but I will never go with blind guesses.

Was there a time when you did not clear the prelims and what was the reason behind it? What was your key learning throughout all these years?

In my earlier three attempts I could not clear prelims. The first attempt that I gave was just like that, I wanted to take the feel of the exam.

In my second attempt, I had knowledge but due to the wrong strategy I just attempted 71 questions and could not clear it. I made the same mistake in my third attempt maybe I attempted just 78 questions still could not clear it.

But in this attempt I increased the number of questions that I would be attempting was based on my knowledge base that I gathered through my journey of four years of preparation.

How did you come to know about ForumIAS?

Everybody knows about ForumIAS,. When I was preparing,  a lot of Toppers used to say that they had enrolled themselves into the MGP and the interview guidance so that’s how I got to know about it.

Now coming to CSAT, CSAT has become a big albatross around the neck of several aspirants. Did you face challenges in CSAT and how did you deal with it?

To be very very honest I’ve never studied CSAT for even for 10 days before my exam and I could clear it every time because of my Mathematics Honors.

Now, CSAT is becoming a challenging task to do especially after the prelims this year. I felt that CSAT was something,  I mean even as a math background student I was really scared after my CSAT exam because the maths questions were challenging.  I would advise that please focus on CSAT because the cut off for GS this year is just 75 marks, so aspirants should definitely focus on CSAT and should not ignore that paper.

Increasingly we have seen that reading comprehension is also a bit on the difficult side. I mean even PhDs in English literature will not be able to get all the questions correct. So how did you deal with it?

Comprehension part was my strong area because of the newspaper reading that I was doing so when we read a newspaper it’s not just the direct benefits that we get out of it in terms of the content. Eventually, you start summarizing things or you reduce the entire content into few lines.

Reading newspapers will definitely benefit in terms of the English comprehension. Ultimately, during the exam time, you need to be very calm while you are reading the comprehension because due to the pressure conditions during the CSAT paper, aspirants really get that anxiety which leads to them attempting the paper in real hurry.

What was your strategy or what did your day look like, 1 month before the prelim?

I think one month before the prelims, I would generally wake up at 7:30 or 8 in the morning and by 8:30 AM, i used to be on my study table irrespective of the day. I used to have this target that I have to complete two slots before my lunch and post that, I used to take a nap  for 30-40 minutes always.

Then I would be back to study table around 4:30 or 5. In the afternoon time, I would take a break of two hours which included my lunch, nap, interaction with people, everything and then I would study and take a 30 min break for tea at 7:30. At 10:00 PM I would have my dinner post which i used to study till 2:00 AM.

Did you face the problem of running out of time in either the GS paper or the CSAT paper?

Time management was never an issue for me because I practiced it in the mocks the strategy that I would be implementing and even in my Mains.

Apart from ethics I was able to complete every paper 2 mins before time and then I would be just adding some embellishments such as boxing the content.

Coming to note making, so how did you make your notes were they like elaborate with two or three colored pens and highlights and sketches or was it synoptic and digital notes or paper notes? Which software did you use for your notes?

For prelims I made online notes of the keywords, for example, my modern history notes were just 25 Pages notes and I revised those notes multiple times.

I made handwritten notes for Lakmikant,for example, I would make tables of the Constitution bodies comparing them, for the President and the Governor I would have a chart out there.

First I tried with Evernote but then I tried one note. But I stuck to Google Docs. One file was for one subject and I was very satisfied with it,  even in my interview preparation I made a lot of notes in that application itself.

Coming to the newspaper, did you read the newspaper regularly and which one? What was the time that you gave to the newspaper? 

I religiously followed the newspaper all throughout the three stages.  I followed the Hindu and I would always give I mean 1.5 hours to it.  Now I feel that that the newspaper reading has helped me mentally in my interview.

I was able to express my thoughts very naturally, it felt that the content is already embedded in my subconscious mind so I don’t have to remember anything I would just say things because I was following the news.

What were the primary gadgets or devices you kept for your preparation like a mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, iPad, tablet?

It was always a smartphone and the tablet.

Coming to each paper, so we have world history and post-Independence in GS paper 1. Did you prepare GS 1 world history post-Independence or you had left it?

I prepared it but I identified some themes from where the questions were already asked, for example the French Revolution, the American Revolution. I made my own notes on those themes and then I referred to the solutions of the test series.

For the MGP that I had joined, I would prepare from the test series. I had this strategy that I would prepare from the test series for all these Fringe topics like world history or the post independence.

Coming to GS Paper 2, we have polity and governance and development issues, was Laxmikant sufficient to address this and if not what did you do for it?

Lakshmikant is not sufficient for Mains. But since PSIR was my optional so it helped in my GS 2.  Especially for the IR, I did not prepare anything else because I had already prepared for PSIR and for some of the topics I had notes.

I prepared two page notes for the topics that were not there in the optional and the strategy that I adopted in all my GS papers were to prepare my notes the two three page notes on every topic.

How did you find the difficulty level of the mains examination?

I think Mains is a little bit predictable at least the themes are predictable. You won’t be able to predict the questions but the themes are predictable so if you have covered your Mains syllabus thoroughly then you will be able to deal with mains.

Coming to General Studies paper 4, what was your strategy and sources for theoretical part and Part B?

I really liked reading ethics because there’s no limit to it so I did a lot of value addition in terms of the examples I used to refer to the ‘Better India’ website to find out some examples of IAS officers and also the Padmashri Awardees.

When I was writing my ethics paper I used current affairs examples. There was this Great Nicobar project that was going on in news so the question in ethics paper related to environmental ethics, I directly use the example. I had this thing in mind that I have to memorize my syllabus so that I can relate to every corner of my ethics syllabus and that’s how I added a lot of examples and everything.

Now coming to Main’s answer writing, how important is it to balance between note-making and answer Writing Practice?

There should be a healthy balance between the two. You cannot ignore one for the sake of other answer.  Answer writing is something that will get you through in the main stage.

Without doing answer writing you will not be able to identify what is your strength or your weakness for example when I wrote my first test I noticed that I was able to complete the paper so writing speed was never an issue for me an that was my strength.

I focused on content enrichment so you have to make notes because without notes what will you write in your answers if you do not have the content so aspirants should balance between the two.

When we write answers, what was their approach to handling the conclusion? Where did you end up with just writing the suggestions or way ahead or did you make a formal conclusion to your answers?

I have this habit of writing a conclusion at least in two three lines.  I would always complete my answer because without conclusion it would seem like it is an abrupt end to the answer so I had inculcated this habit during my answer writing practice that I would always write a conclusion.

In the last 2-3 weeks before the main examination, what was your daylight?

You have to revise a lot for the mains. There’s a lot of subjects and you have to prepare everything beforehand because you know that you won’t get time during the duration of the examination so it was all study nothing else.

I decided to prepare for Mains from home itself because I would have emotional stability. I used to interact with my mother and she would help me calm me down. 12 to 13 hours was my limit I never crossed 13 or 13.5 hours.

Now you hear you’re attending classes in offline mode in Forum, so as you told me that you’re staying in Delhi itself right? What was the reason for traveling all the way to the class versus not doing because we have so many students and they say Sir traveling takes a bit of time so why did you choose the offline mode?

The experience that you get during the offline interaction and the personal interaction is missing in the online mode if you are somebody who is living far away. but I think travelling time was manageable for me, which was 30-35 minutes.

Coming to your essay, so which essay topic did you choose this time?

One essay was on education and the other one was that ‘All those who Wander are not lost’.

Coming to your personality test or the interview, so we had an orientation session here for all our interview students, you were a part of that?

I was a part of the interview guidance program and I had attended all the classes of Dipin Sir.

Did you get sufficient time to prepare for your personality test? It was your first mains, so were you expecting the interview call or was it like a surprise when you got it?

I had completed all my GS papers and my optional and to my level I think I was satisfied with the content that I provided  so I was expecting but I was not sure because nobody can be sure of their selection in the mains but yes I had the hope. When the results came out, I joined the interview guidance program I met Dipin Sir and attended his classes too.

Which board did you get and what was the most difficult question they asked you?

My board was Sinivardhan Sir’s board. They asked me one question from my mathematics background which I could not answer at that point of time so that was the difficult question.

Examination extended to you for four attempts right, so how did you keep yourself motivated during these years?

I had a very clear purpose that till my attempts are left I will attempt this paper no matter what because I decided it during my college and I always dreamed of being into the service.

This journey is full of ups and downs so my mother has contributed a lot in keeping myself motivated so I would always share everything with my mother. She was always like,  you will get selected you are doing your hard work your efforts are in place.

I am thankful to Dipin Sir also. There were just 20 days before mains when he said to me that you will definitely get an interview call, he was so confident about me getting into the interview list.

When we start our preparation journey, I call it the pen question, we start our preparation journey and some of us are a little you know choosy about what pen we write so did you maintain the same pen all throughout in all the four attempts or did you evolve and change your pens?

I was never bothered about the pen, I was like if I will have the content and I will complete my paper. When I started practicing after my prelims result then I found that with the V7 pen, my answer writing speed was really nice so I stick to that V7.

Any favorite books, any favorite authors or any favorite quotes?

I used to read some of the books during my free time though we do not get much time. But to keep myself motivated, I used to refer to books.  I have read a few books for example on habits, ‘Atomic habits’. There is one lesson from this book that, ‘if you want to win in Life or if you want to get success then your mind should be stronger than your emotions’ which still resonates in my mind.

Any suggestions for ForumIAS or anything that you’d like to see?

According to me, ForumIAS has benefited me. The evaluation was done within 3 days and also the content that is provided is unparalleled. I used to take tests from here and I used to read the solutions especially for the GS paper because the content is so structured with lot of value addition. The MGP program really boosts the confidence.

Read – Biography, Testimonials and Answer copies of Other toppers