The Road less taken-by Archana Kumari (AIR 110, CSE 2020)

  Title: PORTRAITS OF POWER: Half a century of being at Ringside Author: Shri N.K. Singh Publisher: Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd. Year of publication: 2020 Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-5333-775-9     This book ‘PORTRAITS OF POWER: Half a century of being at Ringside’ has been written and published in the year 2020 by Shri Nand Kishore Singh (N.K Singh). He is a well-renowned bureaucrat as well as politician, most recently known for his stint as the Chairman of the Fifteenth Finance Commission.    N.K Singh was born in Kolkata and spent most of his childhood at his maternal grandfather’s place in Bihar, who was one of the richest and most celebrated Zamindars of North Bihar and had been a member of Bihar legislative council for many years. He pursued his education in Economics from St Stephens college, Delhi and then post-graduation from the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). Following the footprints of his father, an ICS officer, he chose to become a civil serva...

This post will walk you through my strategy for General Studies papers, key points to make notes with mains perspective and the exam day mindset which helped me fetch good marks in them.  I would like to mention that in this process, like every other aspirant, I also watched several topper talks, read blogs and glanced some topper notes. In particular, I referred to notes of Kanishak Kataria Sir (Rank 1, CSE 2018) and Varnit Negi Sir (Rank 13, CSE 2018) to understand note making for better revision before exam.  DAY 2 has two papers General Studies III and General Studies IV, three hours each. This was the third day of exam after the Essay, GS I and GSII papers. The night before was a real struggle to keep myself awake and revise for GS III, GS IV. In the morning I was tired and somewhat sleep deprived too as I could only manage to sleep for 4 hours (6 hours is the least I needed 😛). The day passed quickly writing the two papers and I walked happily from the exam centre for a...

This post will walk you through my strategy for General Studies papers, key points to make notes with mains perspective and the exam day mindset which helped me fetch good marks in them.  I would like to mention that in this process, like every other aspirant, I also watched several topper talks, read blogs and glanced some topper notes. In particular, I referred to notes of Kanishak Kataria Sir (Rank 1, CSE 2018) and Varnit Negi Sir (Rank 13, CSE 2018) to understand note making for better revision before exam.  DAY 1 has two papers General Studies I and General Studies II, three hours each. All in all, the day gets tiring and exhausting after continuous thinking and writing. That is where you need to be little more patient and strong for another day. And believe me, the experience is worth it! General Studies I One extremely good thing about CSE mains is that there is a detailed syllabus to guide us unlike prelims where everything under the Sun seems to be coming. So I starte...

  Life is one and each one of us want to live it with a purpose and a sense of satisfaction.  Convincing myself of the existence of such life, I embarked on making UPSC mains strategy which I am going to share before you, the patient readers.  ESSAY As a beginner when I used to take a look at the question paper, I used to wonder how much knowledge do I need to gather in General Studies to be able to write 1200 words in an Essay. Believe me, the real hurdle is not the knowledge gap but our inhibition to start writing the first essay. During the first two years of my preparation and failing at Prelims had made me focus more on qualifying prelims, everything else was on a backseat. In order to break this inhibition, I took help of some four online lectures on Essay by Smriti Shah Ma'am of Vision IAS. I happened to write my first essay after qualifying the 2020 prelims. However, I believe the earlier you start writing Essays, the more you will get to know yourself and will h...

This post will walk you through my experience of the Prelims and what goes on in the mind of an aspirant that day. I will also talk about the major takeaways and tricks to maximize your score through examples from 2020 prelims paper.   So the much awaited Prelims had finally arrived on October 4, 2020 after getting postponed due to the first wave of COVID in our Country. Like everyone else, I too was somewhat skeptical and scared of a mass gathering at an exam center. Nonetheless, I went to take the exam after almost a month of intensive revision exercise and some 5-6 full length mock tests. I was feeling confident because of multiple revision of static sources and PT 365 Vision current affairs.  The Mindset  Recalling my risk aversive attitude in the last two prelims, this time I was mentally preparing myself for a relatively more risk taking experience. By this I mean attempting more number of questions using educated guessing, smartly eliminating options, general ...