Can someone help me with choosing a monthly magazine:
VISION IAS - Has better coverage of social issue and polity but not recent prelims based question
PW IAS - Has better prelims based datas, art and culture, history etc.
Cant understand what to choose , IF I TAKE ANY OF THE MAGAZINE THE MATERIALS OF OTHER IS LOST , VERY FEW INTERSECTION POINT IN THIS VEN DIAGRAM OF MAGAZINES.
PLEASE HELP.
Pick up the magazine, u able to understand,because if u pickup monthly magazine whole of 12 m/s then u see d content b/w them is mostly same.
So,my advice is if u want to choose between two, give both of them a read the one u able to comprehends easily go with that.
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.
How did you evaluate changing optional? Was it only the inability to score 300+ in Maths despite giving a lot of time?
There is a beautiful article written by Prajit Nair on this.Plz go through this.
https://forumias.com/blog/failed-in-mains-blaming-your-optional-thinking-of-changing-it-read-this-before-you-decide-by-prajit-nair-air-87-cse-2016/
@DM Thanks a lot! I will surely take this into account.
@Averageaspirant 300+ is not the only thing. I had to spend nearly 70-90% of my time on Maths in my post-Pre phase. Also what is value addition for me in GS is just a normal concept for a person with Humanities optional. Ex: For Ethics, a person who has Philosophy can reuse their content to make an analytical comment in Ethics. A person with PSIR can reuse their content in GS2. This is non-existent for science optional people.
Given the current marking trend- if you score 300 in Maths, you still have to get 500+ to be in the game. And if not that then only a superb Interview score would ensure that you get a top 100 rank. For getting 500+, you need A LOT of effort in the form of answer writing and possibly, value addition. To keep silly mistakes in control, you need to attempt a lot of mocks for Maths too. Now it is not only about attempting, it is also about analysing and recognising your pain points. Based on that, you have to form a strategy. In Maths, the stakes per question are very high. If you make a small + and - error, the whole solution goes wrong. Plus if you know a question, you know it else you don't. You cannot just write a "generic" answer to it. Plus if you look at the questions they asked this time, people are filing representations over them. All of this has forced me to ask myself: Can I depend on this optional?
In addition to this, you lose touch during the Pre preparation phase and to gain back the same rigour post-Pre is difficult. Now given the reduced time between Pre and Mains, managing Maths with GS is going to be something I have to think about. A critical analysis is something I have to do in the coming few days. I definitely love Mathematics but love is not enough in this exam. That's why I asked others for help. I have to look at both the sides (Leaving vs staying) and take a well-informed decision motivated by my own concrete reasons.
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