Flunked Prelims 2024? Do not screw up 2025 – Part 2/2

In my earlier post I emphasised on the importance of the trinity of

• what you study/what you are working on
• who you are working with
• hard work

for success in any walk of life, including Civil Services Examination. If you have not been able to read that, here is the link to my previous post.

Here are some suggestions,

#1 You are not your friend. Even if he looks and feels the same like you.

People not clearing the Prelims are not all the same. Some of them will clear it next year and some will clear it the year next. Some will never clear the prelims examination ever – in all six attempts. That depends on what you are doing (a) after the prelims exam and (b) before the prelims of the next year.

( Fifteen minutes before I wrote this article. A student walked in. Writing Mains 2024. First Mains. Full of anxiety. Writing his last attempt. Was a part of SFG. And simulators, and no other thing. I asked him why he took so long. He said he didn’t know about things until the penultimate attempt. Things can be bad. Even for people writing Mains. )

Also your estimated / actual prelims score is an indication of your preparation level. So if you are three friends with scores in range of 30s, 60s and 80s, you are NOT the same.

Even if you drink tea together.

Or live in the same room in a PG. Or are from the same college.

The first one is 2 or 3 years away from clearing the exam, and has not studied yet.

The second one is close and may take 1-2 attempts and clear the prelims.

The third one is likely to bridge the gap next year.

Anything other than that? It will take some radical efforts. Business as usual approach will not work. You will have to give your blood, sweat and tears just for Prelims.

#2 What you do matters. Everyday counts.

What you do after prelims matters a lot.

So there are a bunch of kids I am dealing with. They have cleared their first prelims in like 4-5 years and are writing Mains 2024. Now last year when they did not clear prelims, I made them do AWFG and some classes. Then asked them to submit AWFG solutions in a single spiral binding copy ( so that they could use it for revision next year ).

The ones who did it, are more confident about Mains this year. The ones who whiled away time last year – going through guilt / pity/ shame/ lack of luck for not clearing prelims are writing Mains, but they are not as well prepared.

Its very painful to see attempts going down the drain. Especially when the people I meet generally have exhausted 3 attempts and only then come to Forum.

The joke is that we are the ICU.

While results are not in our hands, but preparation is. If you are not studying 6-8 hours a day, the *hours you need to study* are piling up.

Everyday.

So in 30 days that piles  up to 200+ hours at least, if you have not been studying.

In 3-5 months that comes to about 1000 hours of studies.

So unless you have done that, you won’t clear the exam, no matter how many calendars you change on the wall.

Some people buy a watch and look at the hour,  minute and second.

Some people only buy calendars. The choice is yours.

#3 Thinking about UPSC ≠ Preparing for UPSC

Thanks to 12th Fail and Kota Factory, the Civil Services Examination aspirant base has expanded.

Just about 5 years ago, an average aspirant was much better prepared, the average minimum level of the preparedness was higher. Today, while the cream crowd is much more evolved than what used to be say five years ago, there is the problem of lakhs of annually-writing-upsc-is-my-hobby.

What I have observed is that there is a huge missing middle.

There are lakhs of aspirants today who are *thinking about UPSC*. Watching reels, watching news summary videos and what not. Not realising that a conevnetional exam will require a conventional preparation – which means spending hours taking notes, reading newspaper, taking classes and practising writing answers.

Day in and day out.

Until you clear it.

If you don’t know where you stand in this journey, a good reflection of your position is

• the number of tests you have skipped,
• the number of classes you have skipped,
• the number of opportuities to sit and write for 3 hours you have missed.

And since you have a whole year to prepare for CSE 2025, you do not have many excuses.

We have reached the end of August.

Time to get sincere about the so called world’s toughest exam, or quit. There is no other way out.

#4 There is no time for Mains preparation next year

So those of who did not clear prelims 2024, you may want to look at the calendar of next year.

The prelims is scheduled on 25th May 2025 and Mains is on 22nd August, 2025.

You wont have time to do ANYTHING for Mains.

Whatever you have to do, you have to do it this year.

And you dont have many months left in this year.

Also, if you do not pick up Prelims by December 2024, you may miss the bus for Prelims 2025.

Again.

So if you are still having a pity- party over oh-how-sad-and-pathetic-i-am-because i could not clear prelims, it is time to get started with studies. The pity party with sorority or brotherhood has to end. If you dont know what to do , finish your MGPs and CA classes and whatever you are doing as much as you can.

Can’t do 100%? Do 70%! Can’t do 70%. Do 50%.

If you cannot run, walk. If you cannot walk, crawl. But by all means keep moving.

#4 Do not shine in reflected glory.

Be the sun, which has a light of its own.

Not like the moon, that only reflects the light of the sun.

The moon fades during the day as it is too bright. Only at night can you see its light – and reflected one.

If you have friends who are clearing prelims, mains or interview or have cleared the exam and are in service – and just because they are YOUR friends does NOT make you a man or a woman who has cleared prelims, mains interview or in-service, respectively – in that order.

The brotherhood will not last long when real life outside of the UPSC universe will hit hard.

Knowing an IAS officer does not make you an IAS officer.

I teach IAS aspirants. Some of them become IAS officers. My father was one. My closest friends are also senior IAS officers now. I have some in family too. But that does not make me one. When I encounter a constable, I call him Sir. Period.

#5 Better your standards

Do not set low standards and benchmarks for yourself. I am saying this because I am meeting lot of students these days who are happily saying

1. 1. “I cleared GS this time, only CSAT I have a problem”
   2. “I cleared CSAT, I am getting 110, but GS is my ONLY problem.”

There is no glory in scoring so high in CSAT or GS if you are not able to meet your objective – that is clearing the Prelims examination.

You are competing to be among the top 0.1%. Your are competing with nearly India’s best. A mild-mild approach to preparation will not cut it.

Studying less than 8 hours a day will not cut it. And those 8 hours have to come everyday.

A few months ago, we had an old student walk in for a talk at FRC. He had cleared the exam multiple times – getting IRTS, IRS, IPS, IAS. And then he wrote the exam to get IAS again – because he didn’t get a cadre of his choice.

While taking the session, an agitated student asked him – “Sir I want to become an IAS officer, but I can’t study for long. That is my problem.”

What he replied was a great reality check.

He said, If you want to climb Mt Everest, walking 5kms a day cannot be your practice sessions. A more extreme step than that will be needed.

Your benchmarks have to meet the size of your goals.

Why become IAS, if you have trouble with the basics which are part of job requirements?

Remember, success is never owned, it is rented. And the rent is overdue everyday.

#6 Social Media is Toxic !

There is an increasing flock of students who are currently engaging in light-weight Civil Services preparation.

When I use the words light weight, I mean some of us  have done half of this and half of that, none of it fully. We watch Topper talks and think that is part of preparation.

Many of us have not sat for 3 hours at a stretch in months and made notes or taken classes. We follow every new Youtuber in the market and are the clickbait audience for “How to become IAS without studying” type videos.

We watch every news video of coaching institute channels thinking that this is “UPSC preparation”. Coaching institutes also know that to get views, you have to make videos on sensational issues that have no relation to the examination, but you have to somehow keep making those videos and “look like UPSC related stuff”.

Parents in smaller towns do not know that news videos are not a part of UPSC preparation, and even encourage kids to follow such channels. Two or three years into this kind of preparation, and our idea of what UPSC preparation is completely skewed.

Just a few years ago, things were a lot different. The serious aspirant crowd had nearly the same level with some people doing better than others. Today, thanks to social media , apps, and newer methods of distraction, the crowd differentiation is huge.

Which means that the ones who are doing well are doing too well, and the ones who are not, are doing too badly. The distraction brought by social media is separating the chaff from the grain.

And sometimes, the only thing that is separating performers from non-performers is their ability to cut the clutter and focusing on things that matter.

You will have to know how to deal with it. One of the reasons why people cleared the exam in the hubs of coaching areas was because you were able to cut the noise.[&&]’

If you are too dependent on a YT video every few hours for your dopamines and endorphins, I have two things to tell you –

One, the Internet owns you and

two, you are not getting anywhere with that approach and there is probably depression at the end of the hell hole.

#7 The world is full of failed geniuses

One of the reasons why people do exceptionally well on every front of life, but may face their first failure in Civil Services is because they assume too many things about this very Conventional Examination – which can be prepared for by just following two principles

(a) No shortcuts and (b) Doing conventional things oustandingly

But when you are a genius, and since this is social sciences ( and you were good in english in school, or even without studying you can solve 20 questions in prelims, so you think after studying I will TOP the exam ), you are likely to take it too easily.

It is said that Civil Services is a dicey exam. It is often said that it may ruin one’s youth.

None of the things are incorrect.

Yet what is also not incorrect is that a lot of people take the mildest approach to the examination.

I mean the average JEE aspirant does study often more than the average UPSC aspirant. Secondly, the JEE aspirants has no delusions about his capacity or difficulty level of the exam , and you won’t hear JEE folks being a loudmouth saying publicly that I will get a single digit rank.

But when it comes to Civils, when we do not clear Prelims – we do not study.

And then we compensate the lack of studying by creating delusions about the exam. Or about ourselves.

Remeber, fantacising about clearing the exam will not make it real.

Manifesting about getting a TOP rank will not make it real. There are hundreds of people already doing that.

If you want to manifest, think about how your day will be studying 8-10 hours a day. Think about how you will improve your Polity Tests. Think about how it will feel to be Top 10 in SFG Tests. Not about how royal it will feel to get out of vehicle meant for a ditrict collector.

#8 It is not worth your life or mental health

If you have any doubts about Civils preparation, or if you think that it if affecting your mental health, then there should be no shame, guilt, regret in quitting preparation.

I can tell you with the benefit of hindsight, and having seen hundreds of successful and not- successful aspirants – that in the end happiness will not come to you by clearing this examination.

Happy people are happy – no matter what. They just need one reason to be happy. Sometimes, they do not even need a reason to be happy.

Unhappy people are unhappy in their own way. They need just one reason to be unhappy.

Success in this exam may make your family happy, your parents proud, but that is it.

It may not even bring the joy you think it will bring.

In the end, we are more likely to feel numb ( like we feel after repeated failure at different stages ) even if we clear the exam.

There are enough number of super successful people who did not clear Civil Services and went on to do awesome things in life.

But that’s it!

*In the end*, if you decide to actually write the examination, then we have to accept the grind.

Life comes to us in packages.

The good will come with the bad.

The glory of clearing the civil services cannot be separated from the grind that comes with it.

The silent pursuit of success that is crucial to clear this exam.

And if you have flunked prelims, but have not been studying for the past two months ( and don’t plan to for the next 3 months ), you probably don’t deserve to beat the ones who are doing it.

Not even if you are poor, single, lonely, under-previledged, sociall outcasted, have family issues or have a health crisis.

Those things are irrelevant when it comes to the exam.

People clear this exam, despite all the above problems. People do not study for the exam despite having none of the problems mentioned above.

Civil Services cannot be a hobby. If that was the case, half of North India has it – and they aint clocking even 6 hours a days either – though their Youtube hours may exceed millions of minutes.

I see a lot of students sign up for MGP and AWFG – as if it were *fashionable* to do so. But buying courses won’t get you to clear the exam. What will get you through is the grind. 

This year, I have a bunch of people writing Mains, and will probably clear only because last year after their Prelims failure, they summed up all AWFG tests in two notebooks with a spiral binding. They had gone through nearly every important topic once last year. That makes it easier this year.

Anyone can buy a course off the marketplace, but it will take a lot more than that to sit up, spend hours preparing and slogging, and spend a few hundred hours writing tests, taking feedback, making amends.

The river could be right there in front of you, and yet you may not see the water.

One man can take a horse to the water. Ten cannot make it drink the water.

#9 You gotta be a fighter

Last week, I met an old student. ( not agewise ). Selected young into the services, she got what she wanted. The IAS. The friend that often accompanied her when we had mentor sessions, did not.

When I met her, it brought back memories from years ago.

When this had happened,  they had pestered me to counsel them.

I decided to speak to both of them only once on the matter  – since I felt it would not be fair for me to get into private matters, even if they wanted to.

I was okay being a Civil Services mentor, but not quite a lifecoach.

Also, there are only a limited number of thankless jobs you can do.

Nearly a decade later both of them are extremely well settled. This young girl grew into a wonderful IAS officer. And then she asked me last week, why things did not work out for her.

For them.

I said because she did not fight for it.

“But I am a girl. You know how society is. I had cleared the exam. He did not study enough. What could I do?”

If you love something, you gotta be a fighter.

At some point, in your preparation journey, you will be all alone.

This is the point where you can take a call either to quit or to continue.

No one – absolutely no one will support you in this journey.

At some point, your parents will lose faith in you as well.

You will be alone.

Except the dark night, and handful of stars shining in the sky.

And they may be too blurry to see if you have tears in your eyes on sleepless nights.

If you decide to quit, by all means quit. And when you do , accept it.

But if you love something, you gotta be a fighter.

If this is the career you want, you gotta fight for it.

And remember, failure is a distraction.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

And if you do not know how to begin. Take a pen and a QCA booklet. And write your first test.

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Until next time

❤️

Neyawn

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This article is a part of Series of Articles for People who have not cleared Prelims and are looking for a way ahead. You can read the first part of the article by clicking here.

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[&&] This isn’t a call for come to ORN/ Delhi. Today ORN / KB no longer provide the kind of atmosphere that is good for preparation. Also the place is overflowing with people.