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PSIR - Strategy, resources & discussion

Not seeing very high scores in psir this year as previous years even though it has highest number of selections. 

My score has been 267 (125+142). Paper 1 was simple this year yet dont know why such low scores. 

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Shubhra Ma'am notes were 100% solely part of my prep. Nothing absolutely NOTHING beyond them. This was a conscious choice since i prepared after prelims mostly.

Her crash course notes are a gold mine for paper 2. In paper 2 i attempted 2 ques in 2B part all thanks to her notes. 142 in paper 2 only because i could quote books and scholars from her crash course answers. 

In paper 1, it seems i need to add more content for which i think test series, pyq and selected reading of standard books might help. 

Although this time csat is stuck so not so hopeful :(


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@Porus  I agree that at least in Theory part, if one wants to go beyond ~270, they will have to do something extra. Mainly because
1) the competition in theory portion is way too high. Everyone relies on questions in 2A and 2B
2) questions are repeated, either verbatim or their variation.
Model answers, topper copies, solved pyq are simpler ways of getting additional content. 
However, as SR says, we must always prepare keynotes. These are very crucial for multiple revisions. We can keep adding stuff from other sources in these keynotes. Immensely helpful for me. 

Finally, the anser writing part is very crucial for this optional. While attempting mains 'dearth of content' is not the issue, it is the flow and the way of presenting right scholars quotes, and data. 

I've also seen some of the topper copies this year, nothing out of the ordinary in content. But whatever is required in an answer is there. 

Let's see marks of rank 31, 35, 67 etc. We may get a clearer picture. 

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@Aurang_mirasudar  yep it works.
As@Porus said, collect scholars on every major bilateral relation. SR class notes are not updated here. Crash course covers this gap. I remember she gave trade data, PM quotes, interesting quotes from Shyam Saran's book "how india sees the world" etc on major issues.
Next question is that what if we don't have a relevant scholar to quote for the question asked? Here i think theory part scholars help. 
For example, on a question on leadership role in foreign policy quote fareed zakaria's neoclassical realist approach/kautilya, or Nye for soft power's importance etc. I quoted AT Mahan for BRI question last year because i had no significant scholars here. These theory scholars and concepts give more weight to answer than just CRajamohan imo. 


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@Aurang_mirasudar  yes ofcourse i too quoted at max 3 scholars :)  


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