UPSC CSE 2025 Related Discussion

Hi everyone, as you know the UPSC CSE 2024 results were declared yesterday and fortunately some of my friends made it to the list. I congratulated them and demanded party from them (because why not). 

But I would like to share a story for the ones who are writing this attempt and those who couldn't get into the list and are writing this attempt. Here it goes - "The Heroes of Tunbridge". 

The Date: 18th June 1983. The Venue: Nevill Ground, Tunbridge Wells, England.

It was supposed to be just another group stage match in the 1983 Cricket World Cup. But for India, it was going to be a virtual knockout match. The overcast skies and a green-tinged wicket promised trouble for the batters. Zimbabwe, still hungry from their earlier upset over Australia, pounced like wolves.

India won the toss and chose to bat.

But within minutes, the scorecard read like a horror story: Gavaskar (The Little Master) and Srikanth had departed for a duck and before the fans could even settle, five wickets were down before the 10th over. Panic sat in the Indian dressing room like a silent ghost. The crowd at Tunbridge Wells grew quiet. The score read17 for 5.

Cricket administratorS.K. Wankhede, who was attending the game, asked his taxi driver tokeep the meter running suggesting thathe was in a hurry to leave. 

The Indian fans had started to leave the stadium as the captain Kapil Dev took crease. 

No one expected India to recover from that score not even the Indian fans. 

But what happened next? I will just post the scorecard here: 

The captain had done the unexpected. By the end of the innings, Kapil Dev had scored 175 not out off 138 balls, including16 fours and 6 sixes. He broke the record for the highest individual score in ODI cricket surpassing the previous record of 171, held by Glenn Turner of New Zealand (only broken recently in 2023).

With Madan Lal, Syed Kirmani, and Roger Binny offering fragments of support, Kapil pulled India from the edge of humiliation to a defendable total of 266/8. 

Finally, India won the match and eventually, they went on to become the World Cup winners. 

A British journalist by the name of David E. Firth wrote an article that "he’d be happy to ‘eat his words’ if India progressed beyond league stage". The picture below is that of Firth eating his own words. 

Today, many are disheartened—scoring low in mocks, falling short in preparation etc. Some have already declared themselves out of the race—before even attempting the exam. But that’s not a performance issue. It’s a mindset problem.

मन के हारे हार हैं, मन के जीते जीति।

कहै कबीर हरि पाइए, मन ही की परतीति॥

 If you decide that you are not going to clear Prelims even before the actual exam then you are definitely not going to clear. It's all in your mind. 

If scoring low in mocks is shaking your confidence, remind yourself of this:

It’s better to stumble in mocks now than to fall in the final exam.

Maybe today, people expect you to lose.
Maybe even you doubt yourself.

But here’s what’s in your control: 
You try. You fight.
You fight until the very last question of the CSAT paper on 25th May 2025.

No matter what the scoreboard says now, 
think like a captain walking in during a crisis—
And play your captain’s knock.

All the best for the upcoming UPSC CSE Prelims exam. 

@happySisyphus It was great interacting with you on gmeet.  1st attempt hai toh kuch na kuch humesha missing hi rahega, you cannot avoid that. So just focus on achieving whatever targets you have decided upon and be consistent. 

@Neyawn I just saw your session and I know I am a bit exhausted and burnt out but I will get back to studying within this month itself after taking a small break. The thing about Maths Optional resonated with me and I would still say that Maths was a good optional till 2020. After that, RoI has been decreasing. So even if you get say 300+ in Maths then also you can't get a good rank without having good marks in GS + Essay (say 500+ with the current trend). And if you are not getting a rank then there's no point (Sirf interview tak jaana is not enough).

After interaction with @GaneshGaitonde bhai, I could actually gauge how HIGH the competition is. People with Humanities optional are armed with keywords and have a better "understanding" of concepts.Earlier, writing generic answers in GS would have been sufficient but the competition has increased a lot. To compete with them, we need to answer logically and analytically along with getting the quality-quantity trade off correct. This requires A LOT of answer writing practice now (Identifying the demand and writing a good answer under 7 to 11 mins with adequate keywords). In this context, balancing a science optional with GS is extremely difficult because now you have to compete with these people who have such fluent understanding of current events. 

Anyways, gyaani baba days would be over soon and the hustle would begin again so ending this comment with a quote from Bhagvad Gita (Chapter 3, Verse 19): 

tasmād asaktaḥ satataṁ kāryaṁ karma samāchara
asakto hyācharan karma param āpnoti pūruṣhaḥ

"Therefore, giving up attachment, perform actions as a matter of duty because by working without being attached to the fruits, one attains the Supreme"

Ahhh Mains - one of a kind experience. Chaotic 89 days of preperation - High on adrenaline low on sleep.

The performance was decently good. I still get reminded of the adrenaline for finishing the papers. Dreams at night of last 5 mins remaining.

Content wise I keep getting flashes of value additions and dimensions for the Qs everytime i read something - Mostly in GS and Essay.

Optional and Essay were good - Did better than my expectations in optional and just about my expectations in essay. Got lucky in essay as the supreme art of war one was taught by air2 2024 in her session and I had a slight memory of it.

GS were about average - Could have done better in few Qs. The interlinkages about something new are realised everyday, thats the thing about subjective papers the amount of time given to think about the answers is directly proportional to its quality. 

Had more expectations from GS4 due to the amount of time invested but underperformed a little.

Hoping that it was to the best of my abilities in those 3 Hours for all the papers.

1/5

Back here after long time.Final reading for prelims from today.Couldn't do 3 iterations,hoping 2 slow one would suffice.

Need to push in these four months(10 hours atleast).Have seen friends do very well in mains at same prep level at prelims.I think the exam rewards very high for hardwork just before exam.Will go to delhi post prelims.

More on mains later.Give everything for pre in next 24 days.Will try to post regular from now on.

Bad days are the days one must show up

well, you inspire me so heres my past 4 weeks of progress 

Still struggling to juggle around with tests and lectures. lets see, if posting weekly progress here could stop me from spilling over the targets to the next week.

Couldn't clear, Feeling very deflated

Jinka ho gya, congrats dosto

Thats because I believe in the community.

Plus there is a selfish motive.

You see when the first version of the community was built, there was this dude who guided people well

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/ips-officers-twinning-with-brother-post-reminds-twitter-of-singham-2800648

The elder one guided a lot of people and the younger was a student with forum many years later.

The one thing that happened was that noise-free good guidance was available, so many people cleared prelims.

You had live Rank 1,3,4,5,6,8,9,11 from the people participating in the discussions. Very civil, very censored.

Once that happens ( people clear prelims ) , there is some positivity on the platform.

The quality of questions and kind of crowd improves. 

Those things are infectious. 

For people to get selected the right environment has a bigger role than anything else. We tried doing that in FRC, but it is too expensive. Digitally let us see how far we can go.

After facing three consecutive failures, I realized it was time for a change. The toxic environment of my previous job in the metal industry was draining, and I needed a break to recharge and refocus.

In 2022, I  appeared for the NABARD exam. I made it to the interview stage but fell short by just 1.25 marks in the final list. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I cleared 2023 with good marks.

For my preparation, I utilized various resources. I found free PDFs of clarity and edutap on Telegram incredibly helpful for my studies. Quantitative Aptitude and Reasoning: These subjects were manageable for me.Current Affairs and General Studies: The insights I gained from my UPSC preparation proved invaluable during my answer writing. Interview Preparation: I scored 35/50 on my first attempt and improved to 45/50 on my second.

Finally, I’m in peace to have broken the UPSC cycle and secured a job that not only offers a great posting but also allows me to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The standard in-out time means I can still dedicate time to my things. And the best part? The salary is fantastic! I feel a sense of security knowing that even if I face setbacks in my future UPSC attempts, I’ll be okay. 

well long time no see? long time no see. 

Hows the prep going? i don't know lets see. - Kinda slaggy focus these days due to forcing my self to stick to the morning routine. (my body keeps going back to the night routine i don't know how) 

Currently troubled cause wasn't able to do enough for mains heres the update on those tests. 

the main struggle is to finish 4 sectionals of optional paper 2 (done with 4 sectionals of paper 1) 

Mentor recommends doing ethics and essays sunday to sunday along with prelims prep cause he thinks the score in sfg was decent enough. 

so speaking in terms of data@Rashmirathi,i come here to seek advice again. 

Polity - was without revison + few chapters read from laxmikant - scope for a lot of improvement afte reading it. 

Economy - was reading mains material + whatever i could recall. (concepts clear - scope of improvement after precentric revision.)

Env, Geography, SnT - did kinda fair prep for them - revising notes + books (about 2-3 hrs per day) (slight improvemnt posible after cover to cover reading of sources) 

History - Weakness, not that much - kinda fair with the ideas of mains and flow but have to organise prelims centric facts. wasn't able to revise before tests (fell sick) (only place to go is up) 

so thats about it from the past 50 days of Sfgs, sustained through the program (ofc would have if i had to say my one strength it would be consistency.) 800 people remain in the offline with the odd 2300 starting - percentile almost remains same about 50-60% (barring few anomalies). 

Started this as just the practise of MCQs with no revision or reading stuff (about the first 7-8tests) - soon added a slot just before sleeping to revise notes of the topic as much as possible - improved the overall marks (about 2hrs of study for them per day)

Really wanna prepare for mains till end of feb - the confidence is kinda back for pre because the recent tests were of logical domain (SnT and Geography), but maybe thats not how@DancingMaster or@Neyawn would advice for the first attempt. 

Target for pre - 

1) Attempt Full length paper 2017-2024 - identify heuristics and themes 

2) read the standard books cover to cover 

3) Make Quick Revision notes 

4) Current Affairs - Mentor recommends PT365 (due to time constrain and as I have read newspaper about consistently from june 2024 so majorly revision) + i would be solving the current affairs MCQs (monthly compliations of insights) - realised its better to learn through them. 

yeah thats about the changes in the routine for prelims. 

For remaining mains - 

1) got about 10 lect of society and social justice to cover (haven't watched them since jan 20 because had to complete tests) by feb end.

2) Finish 4 Optional papers (by feb end) 

3) Maybe write few essays on mentors recommendation (Sunday to sunday) - wrote 1 yet scored among the top 20 so not bad - kinda confident of writing skills. 

4) Brain storm few ans (about 2-3 per day) and maybe write 1 - kinda fearing ans writing cause the tests have started again taking more time than allotted + brain fog while brain storming. (about 30 mins per day to keep in touch?) 

i keep going back to kanishak sirs topper talk - kinda feel similar to him (ofc won't be able to score 370 in opt but about the objective and statistics based approach) 

what say friends and senior players should i take the mains prep along? or its time for full fledged prelims? based on data above feelings ofc - to go by feeling i want to do mains, need a 3rd person pov on the scene. 

the 89 days in between and about some many tests remaining i feel scared. 

This was taking a lot of mental space so had to dump to get back to focus. Looking forward to advice. 

PS -@Fairyflu @AdiTea @mango all good? where the consistent postings of targets at? 

heres my prev few weeks 

also where the forest people at? started using this recently its kinda fun (just to be clear this is not full true picture - i dont use my phone anyways so i sometimes forget starting it or closing it + i don't believe in the number of hours theory for me its more of things completed therefore excel, but yeah using this cause its cute + helps in rebound.)

Community update time? ohh the ride has become like running in between some resurrected mammoths (istg science is going wild these days) anyways update on performance? was feeling a bit stuck past few days cause of FLT score (it was 93.33 in forum simulator 0 and 84 in previous sunday's sunya open) 

Came over the feeling with over all statistics because the sunya's test was about similar to abhyass and anubhav in terms of data length facts and tricky nature so that makes it an 30 mark jump (54/57 in abhyass and anubhav) so the stress related to prelims performance is dormant but gets coupled with the college last week sometimes (ye abhi tak khatam kyu nahi ho rha yaar ab to de do degree 😭)

Its the last week so assignments presentations and stuff have left me drained + sfg in the morning every day which my offline friends here don't let me miss (so a perfect 34/34 score for attempting them 😛) About the quantified marks in them? well they have been a surprise for me too

a top 100 rank in polity week and a top 10 rank in science? damn boy good cover up but geography and env mapping revision + history basic mistakes still provide a scope for improvement.

Overall FLTs :- 

Also fair progress due to static revision during SFG 

Places improved : - 

1) Polity - didn't do laxmikant went for the bare act straight (after class notes ofc) - +10 marks in mock bhai fr didn't expect such a clutch 

2) Familiarity with History - its no more the see and leave zone (above average familiarity with the question and topics help me get a 2-3 question edge compared to previous mocks) 

3) Factual science - covered up the space/defence factual portion so thats again 1-2 questions.

Still scope for improvement? 

1) Mapping - same old cry attempting them all due to familiarity but not updated or revised in long (this is the first thing to do in may after college work gets done) about 5-8 marks improvable.

2) Geo,Eco,Env (sfg first month subject revision) - how did i get two fiscal deficit questions wrong  in two papers in a row 😭 lagging in revision need to pick that up. 

The body is not supporting anymore + mental residue of college backlogs get me overwhelmed when triggered, i remember@GaneshGaitonde 's advice (can't do anything about it you'll either have to work hard earlier or after its over) that gets me back on track to finish whatever's in the hand. 

30 days to go? 

Here are the previous weeks learning to end with 

"Invest your enegy in the positive obligation to improve that always yields better results than negative obligations to remove" (i get back to this thought whenever i try to eliminate distractions - my father's words - Focus so hard on your work that distractions fade without trying) 

and also the thought - ternary equilibrium between Hard work, Self-confidence and Optimism (i.e to control the controllable) is gonna get you though past your hurdles.

Agaya rajdhani chodke mai. Recovered my health and my peace. By far the shittiest exp I have of Delhi till now. During my past two visits I was unknown to the world of live-ins and backchodis that's present in the Upsc circle. This time I tried to broaden up my horizon and lol its an endless shithole. I have no issues w live-ins or any other mastis. It was  the pollution, shitty weather and mental trauma for me. Wanna highlight the mental trauma xD.   Was about to engage in SFG on field  competition, but lol my health. Anyways, First 15 days agg lag dia mene, so the month was not wasted. Sarojini and my Winter aesthetics were fun. Was legit looking like A OG only.  Meet with RashmiRathi was amazinggg! Learnt a lot bhai! Also w another SFG/ Pre god Choragangakinarewala xD hopefully he will make it in the list this year. Bhai '22 ETHICS course se bohot log hojaenge select and I kid you not, 3 sal panicle  @Neyawn would claim this while giving lectures. Good Stuff only. I Believe in him. 

Calling it a month. Tabhiyat down.  This is my truth now(for this month). This is me and my studies. Jo bhi hai. Jitna bhi hai, mera hai. And I have the power to change my truth (:. Zyada likhne ki takkat hi nahi hai. Ill Rest and complete my application.

Didn't clear Prelims is a vague term. What was your score in the two attempts. That matters. If you have not studied well for prelims, and you are hoping to top State PCS, then you are mistaken. People topping State PCS are now usually ex-UPSC folks, and no they are not the relims non-qualified ones.

Give one good attempt to UPSC prep. If you can write such correct english, you are good enough to have a good civils prep. And follow the calendar. 6-8 months to GS Mains + Optional and 5 months to Prelims exclusively should do it.

Some people don't clear prelims because they are too much in hurry to clear it.

Sometimes slowly is the quickest way to do a few things. 

This exam is a career defining one. Give it due respect and resources. My resources I mean time, energy, money and effort. 

Hello@Neyawn Sir. I am posting my SFG test scores here with rank (tallying them with offline students only). I have already given mains once but fumbled because of optional (205 only -PSIR) and Essay (83). Why? because I never wrote any answers for them before but now in this attempt I have already wrote about 100+ Psir answers and 3 essay but I want to subsequently prepare for mains too.
So, how much time should I dedicate to mains and how much answer writing will you/ any mentor suggest.
Thank you

"In the midst of chaos chase light" (statistics in my case)

Its community update time. - all drained from previous week of college assignments and presentation (Karol bagh parabola my prof calls it) physically drained due to travel, mentally and emotionally drained due to health problems of family (i don't know if this is a place to dump that so lets keep it for later) 

To begin with heres the prev 3 weeks of progress 

a litlle dissapointed of not being able to save 500 rs by one ques in sfg ent (scored 65.33 the cutoff was 68) 50 hi aajate yaar isse achha to 😭 anyways the grind shall continue so lets aim for saving this next month. 

SFG progress as of now seems fair target was top 100 but hovering around 250 so lets rely on consistency and the process play its part. 

Coming back to the starting line - i feel like i keep getting lucky in the tests and i dont deserve the marks i have been getting because the people around me have studied much more yet are scoring less. 

Attempted the PYQs - excluded the qs i knew ans from before or counted them as i attemepted them when i saw for the first time in sfg or elsewhere (if i got something wrong before i counted it as a -ve) with a target for myself as the forest cutoff.

need to go till 2015, and about the FLTs attempted 2 as of yet 

Forum AI-0 - scored 93.33 (54/19) got into time trouble wasn't able to attempt more questions felt the paper was easy and could have scored about 110 easily. yet convinced myself that i dont deserve this score as i might have scored because of familiarity with Forum questions and mindset due to SFG. 

Insights AI - 1 - this was something to bring me to the ground scored 63.67 (45/40) manged the time a lil better but still got a place to improve. 

So in the self doubt tantrum we chase more data points to cut shot the standard deviation of confidence hyperbola. lmk if you guys are attempting any full length open mocks would love to have someone to compete with.  

+ the full length are being saved by SnT and Env mostly because of familiarity with them due to my background (JEE and Biotechnology) so the scope of improvement in polity and history is still a lot.

ps - i have an eye out for@DancingMaster and@Fairyflu since sfg L1 the aim is to get ahead in the weekly/monthly ranking in L2😤 (all healthy competition tho)

and the mind is still a little scared about the mains prep but has accepted the situation and lets go cash in aur aptitude for the MCQs. 

To end with -

"Statistics don't lie like the emotions do." and

"Outwork your self doubt" are the quotes i remind myself in the times of need, throwing it out there if it helps.

Copied this from a linkedin post

Vivek Oberoi, a flop actor, drives a Rolls Royce worth ₹12 Crore. 

 A car so luxurious that even some of the most successful stars can only dream of it. Yet, there was a time when Vivek was the butt of every joke. Critics wrote him off. The media declared his career dead. He even tried regional cinema to stay afloat, but nothing clicked.

For most, that would have been the end of the story. But Vivek Oberoi made a comeback just not the way anyone expected.

He didn’t cling to the idea of being an actor. He didn’t let a single failed identity define him. Instead, he pivoted, and took the same public identity that once brought him criticism and turned it into his biggest asset. And used that asset to build a real estate business and an event management company in Dubai.

On top of that, he’s also an active angel investor. This isn’t just a story of personal reinvention. It’s a lesson in business and in adaptability. When something isn’t working whether it’s a career, a business, or even a personal goal, Blind persistence isn’t always the answer.

Sometimes, courage means letting go of what’s not working and redirecting your energy into something that does. A career can end, but courage doesn’t have to. Dreams can shatter, but your ability to create new ones never dies

@tedmosby @ganeshgaitonde @rashmirathi @tata