[Results] Prelims 2020 Over - Gearing for 2021

Also for the chashma gang. If you wear glasses they might get fogged up and seriously impair vision. It might help to make sure the bottom of your glasses falls over the top of the mask.

This is perhaps the time when we remind ourselves that UPSC as an institute has tremendous credibility and would like to remain credible. It knows that there is no syllabus as such for Prelims. Previous year questions and the style of asking (where even seemingly vague questions can be worked out with a calm mind) are the only allies for a student preparing for this exam. It knows that it is supposed to be a qualifying exam and hence it cannot and should not probe candidates beyond a certain depth. 

So to feel shattered after seeing the marks of a test which was almost50% factual and had little scope for logical guessing,in my opinion, is just not the right. You still have to back yourself. You still have to tell yourself that "come4th october, i will ace Prelimsbecause I have prepared my subjectsbased on how UPSC frames questions; not some institutes who have to prepare 5000 questions over the course of 50 test papers while having a commercial agenda of their own. "

Basically you have totrust UPSC.Wo aisi bakloli 4-5 questions mein karega - jinhe aap seedhe seedhe skip kar skate ho. Yeh test papers aisi bakloli 40-50 question mein karte hain" 

Only thing you need to be worried about is some silly mistake you made - the kind of mistakes that make you want to smash the nearest windowpane. Just minimize those kind of errors. Be thorough with the core areas of the 6 subjects. Recollectandnot simply REREADstuff as you enter the final round of revisions. And back yourself to go all the way. 

YehPUTCAT, PALAUDICULTUREandPARRETO-OPTIMALITYgaye bhaad mein !

Upsc ka mock hai ya KAUN BANEGA CROREPATI ! kuch bhi..

Cheers !

anyone ?

Extremely wise words, I think.Full disclosure, I haven't cleared Prelims yet,but this is the realisation that I have come to as well. Whether that realisation will work for me this time, only time will tell. I missed out by the barest of margins (probably 1 or 2 controversial questions) last time. But when I thought about it, I realised that I had gotten 5-6 questions wrong (bread and butter questions like Stratospheric Aerosol injection, Mahayana buddhism, Charter of 1813 andffsEPR, EoDB index and Microplastics!!) simply because I: a) hadn't even revised the basics once; b) had lack of complete clarity; c) had doneatleast 120 mocks (and scored highly - 99%ile and all) and tried to fill my brain with junk; and d) had built up UPSC and the exam so much in my head that I was looking for traps everywhere. So, did I eventually lose out because of controversial questions or because of a fu** up of mammoth proportions never seen before in the history of humankind? The answer is quite clear, I think. 

There is absolutely no point getting jubilant over a mock test score, be it 130 or 150. Similarly, there is no point getting distraught over a score of 70 in the last month. Especially in the last month. Such low scores in tests which have absurd questions make you question your own preparationbecause they are designed to do so.Anyone who runs a test series, even an open test series,is trying to sell you something. Only you can be the judge of your own preparation. If you've been at this for 6 months to a year or more, you definitely know where you are lacking in your preparation and you are in a position to make areasoned assessmentof the areas you urgently need to work on at this time.Do not allow mock tests or the ones selling them to take you in a direction which you would not go in, had the mock test not existed in your life.

Further, these mock testsoften cloud your clarity of thoughtto such a great extent. If you have been diligent in your preparation so far, you have a fairly certain idea of where you stand in terms of your knowledge. This is the worst possible time for you to assess where you stand.Deep down, you know whether you can clear prelims this time. Degrees of confidence may vary, but you know already. If you aren't confident, doing mock tests and obsessing over the results won't improve your confidence/can give you a misplaced sense of confidence. If you are confident/overconfident, it can either dent your confidence or confirm your overconfidence.

This time, I've aimed for that sweet spot in the middle. I know that I have an extremely good chance of clearing prelims provided I can keep my head about myself, do the stuff I know I need to do, and generally act like a rational person (who knows what microplastics are ffs) till October 4, Paper I.

Remember, this is the time to arm yourself with the arrowsthat you know you definitely need to have, and more importantly,to prune those arrows you already have in your armoury.Don't prepare for the bouncer UPSC may set, not now at least. If you begin to do that, there is no beginning or end to the things that you are required to read. At the end of the day,it is just an exam which a person who is not half as privileged as you should be able to clear with dedicated preparation.I mean, dafuq is palaudiculture anyway? 

@Sherkhan1428  agar pre clear hua toh aapko treat pakka!!

@root Is everyone able to access his/her saved comments (star one) ?? It is throwing a bug for me . Taking screenshot of@Patootie ‘s comment until then

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