UPSC CSE 2025 Related Discussion

tedmosbysaid

Neyawnsaid

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tedmosbysaid

@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"

@tedmosby 

I badly want you to succeed. At the same time I am concerned that if the optional is not working in your favour more than twice, do have a rethink.

I may have forced some people to change their optional, and sometimes rightly so because it has ended their vicious cycle.. 

If the optional isnt working for 2 or more times, it wont work in the 5th time or so. And this is the only time to think about it.

@Neyawn I was exploring the possibility of changing my optional after my 2023 attempt but I had to make some amends because I knew that there were certain blunders I had been committing in my optional prep. I remember you had written a post about it. This time I did everything possible and I am completely satisfied with my personal efforts for Maths but again 2024 has shook me and I had to rethink on the aspect of optional.  

I always had this aim of breaching the 300+ barrier in 2024 which "I" don't think would be possible for me if the present marking pattern persists. What plays out in reality is a different thing. "Few" silly mistakes in the real exam can pull your score down to below 200 (That's how extreme results are in Maths. I personally know a lot of brilliant people whose score have ranged from 140s to 300s).  

Why did I choose Maths? When I started prep in Dec 2017, I was in the 3rd semester of BTech. I had a CGPA of 9.97 (till my 4th sem) and I had a near perfect score in Maths-based courses. Also to back it, I had several gold medals in Maths Olympiad. I used to think that UPSC Maths is something which is based "just" on knowledge (A perception I didn't shake off till after seeing my 2023 Marksheet). I had tremendous knowledge about the physical significance of the concepts (Thanks to 3Blue1Brown and other such YouTube channels) but Maths in UPSC is all about following SOP as the questions had been standard till 2023. In addition to this, the 2017 results were out in 2018 and Anubhav Singh had secured AIR of 8 with 375/500 in Maths. Next year, even Kanishak Kataria scored 361 in Maths. I was naïve back then and I didn't know the dark side of this optional. Some of the brightest minds in India have wasted attempts after attempts because of this optional. 

Reason for continuing with it: If I changed my optional without doing PYQs and mocks properly, I would have committed the same blunders in my other optional as well. So to make amends, I solved PYQs from 1992 onwards (for CSE) and 2000 onwards (for IFoS) since Dec 2023. I identified important concepts and practiced the standard questions in this attempt. I gave my mocks and I scored decently under strict conditions. 

How 2024 changed my perspective: Mostly non-standard questions were asked in 2024. A person who has done "only" Maths this attempt would have scored more. Balancing it with GS was extremely difficult. Now the sunk cost fallacy has sinked in and I am finding it tough to switch. 

In this limited time since my Mains, I analysed my Maths attempt and yes, I have been in self-doubt because of variables like scaling, relative performance and so on. I would not like to comment on these variables because I am not competent enough to do that. For now, I have shortlisted Philosophy and Anthropology as "possible" substitute to Maths for now but I do not know how to go about humanities optional from scratch. 

For that purpose, I would need suggestion from people who have written multiple Mains- @GaneshGaitonde @Rashmirathi @Steph_Curry and others in this regard.