Hello Everyone, My name is Goldi Gupta, and in CSE 2022, I got Rank 181. This was my fifth try. I have passed the preliminary round four times and the main round three times. It’s clear that my road has been long, not easy, and full of challenges. In this post, I’ll try to talk about most of this trip. It’s going to be long, so please stick with me.
I didn’t take any classroom teaching, but I used the mains test series from Forum ias MGP and other test series that were easy to find on the market a lot. Whether to take classroom coaching, subject-specific coaching, or a test series is a personal decision that each student should make based on how well they think they are prepared and where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
I used standard sources that previous toppers had shared, like Anudeep sir Akshat Jain sir Laxmikant for polity, Spectrum for history, Shankar for environment, Nitin Sangwan sir Notes for culture, Mrunal sir old videos and Sriram IAS material for economy, Rajtanil Ma’am videos for geography, and ncert books.
Sources for current events: Here, the goal should be to use as few sources as possible. I relied on PT 365 and Mains 365 for all of my current events, and I used the Indian Express for mains-related cases (Explained Page is a goldmine for mains).
Prelims Strategy: In the five prelims I’ve taken, my scores have ranged from 89 to 139. My “mantra” for the prelims was to make many changes to my static notes, which I made very early on in the planning process.
Analysis of PYQs helps a lot in Prelims. For example, if they’ve asked about west coast ports before, they can now ask about east coast ports in ancient times or just ask about port names in general (as seen in 2020 and 2022).
Taking one test series at a time also helps you build the right mindset and strategy. Based on what I’ve seen lately, I’ll recommend that everyone work on getting smarter and feeling more confident. Choosing one choice over another is a matter of trust, and it affects everything.
Even though things are unsure now, the key to passing prelims is still to control your fear and have faith in yourself.
Mains Strategy: I’ll write a separate note about PSIR and the essay. This is about GS. My mains scores went from 365 in 2020 to 457 this year, which is a big reason why I was chosen. What i did is:
2: I used maps and started writing from more than one point of view in gs 1, which raised my score from 74 to 110.
3: In GS 2, I focused on writing too many points, paying special attention to cases, committees (in Polity), quotes (in Governance), and important people’s comments (in International Relations). This helped me go from a score of 97 in 2020 to a score of 128 in 2022.
4-In GS 3, I’ve always gotten above-average marks (97, 94, 101) in the last three years. Again, writing a lot of points, using maps in agriculture and security questions, answering each part specifically, using boxes to highlight things, and using panels and data points has helped a lot.
For example, everyone reads about the Shanta Kumar Committee but forgets to bring it up in the question. It may not have anything to do with FCI directly, but it can be used. I focused on these small things when it came to storage MSG subsidies centre state problems.
For instance, I vaguely remembered the Shailesh Nayak Committee on CRZ, which is used to deal with the problem of coastal erosion, and Bibek Debroy and Rakesh Mohan for railways. I think that all of these things helped you keep your score up.
5: In GS4, I mostly think about how to handle my time. I give myself 90 minutes for case studies and exactly 90 minutes for the 13 answers. Real-world examples help a lot with GS4, so media should be read carefully with this goal in mind.
About Luck, Success, and Failure I have to say that this test is very hard to predict. Sometimes, even if we work hard, we can’t get past the queue, and there’s nothing we can do about it. The only thing we can do is keep working hard, have faith in our skills and hard work, and believe in our gods. The world will find ways to pay us back, just like it did for me.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you all have the best.
