Download Essay and Answer Copies of (IASbaba’s ILP

Student) Apurva Pandey, Rank 39 UPSC CSE 2017 and

her Preparation Strategy
iasbaba.com/2018/05/download-essay-answer-copies-iasbabas-ilp-student-apurva-pandey-rank-39-upsc-cse-
2017-preparation-strategy/

May 9, 2018

Please find the Preparation Strategy of our ILP Student Apurva Pandey, Rank 39 and
General Studies and Essay Answer Copies 

She was also a regular follower of TLP Answer writing initiative of IASbaba. Apurva
Pandey is/was better known as ‘Veracity’ and here she also discusses the importance of
strong peer group in the likes of @TheCredibleHulk, @Abhijit(ABG), @Heidi and
@Toadsage

Hello friends,

My name is Apurva Pandey and I have secured AIR 39 in UPSC Civil Service
Examination 2017.

I live in Haldwani, the gateway to the hills of Kumaon, far away from the bustling lanes of
ORN and Mukharjee Nagar, both literally and figuratively. I would have never thought of
staying here and preparing for the civil services examination but for the great online
revolution in this field spearheaded by the likes of IASBaba. Needless to say that today,
I stand grateful and indebted to IASbaba for my success in UPSC CSE 2017.

From excitedly reading and commenting on topper strategies on the internet to writing
one myself, it has indeed been a transformative couple of years for me. But today, as I sit
down to write my strategy I realise how daunting a task this can be. I remember being
naive and taking every word a topper said very seriously, comparing myself to them, then
getting upset over it and finally spending the rest of the day wondering if I will ever make
it. It was only after sometime that I realised that each one of us is unique and will thus
experience a unique journey. So if you are reading this and feel that your journey is not
quite the same as mine, then do not get flustered. Have faith in yourself, pick up parts

🙂
that you think might work for you and forget about the rest as you get back to studying.

Association with IASBaba:

When I first decided to prepare for the civil services examination, I was a third year B.
Tech student, 100% sure of a bleak future in engineering. I first came across IASbaba
sometime in 2015 when they were also beginning, just like I was. I was quick to start

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following their initiatives, especially  TLP. The first answer I ever wrote was on TLP, and
surprisingly enough, the review that I got from Baba was not half as bad as I had
expected. That was when I decided to stop wondering whether I have it in me or not, and
just get to business.

Even though I couldn’t take much time out for studying while in college, I tried to write on
TLP at every possible opportunity. I would eagerly await reviews and was lucky enough to
find a community of fellow aspirants from whom I learned a whole lot. Special mentions
would be @TheCredibleHulk, @Abhijit(ABG), @Heidi and @Toadsage. In fact
@TheCredibleHulk pretty much became a mentor to me and I will never be able to thank
him enough for his kindness and wisdom that completely turned the course of my life.

I still remember the first time my answer was chosen best answer on TLP. I was crazy
happy, it was a great boost to my confidence and I have no qualms in saying that the kind
of response I got on TLP helped me become more sure about myself, my strategy and
my decision to prepare from my hometown. Other initiatives of IASBaba that I participated
in were the 60 day plan, ILP-2016 & PIB summaries, and each helped me inch closer
towards my dream in some way or the other. But what I am most grateful to IASBaba for,
is for holding my hand and showing me the way when  I was absolutely clueless, for
being my mentor at the very start of my journey, for every pat on the back and every
honest correction. Thank you for everything IASBaba. I would credit you completely for
my transformation from a clueless girl who could never write an answer in 250
words to a more confident one who managed to complete all GS papers well within the
time in Mains 2017!

Background:

I did my bachelors in mechanical engineering from Govind Ballabh Pant University of

Agriculture & Technology and graduated in 2016. Since I was determined about not giving
more than 3 serious attempts in this exam, I decided to appear in 2016 itself for getting to
know the exam better, since I was anyway going to waste 3 attempts. It was of course a
disaster given my level of preparation but gave me a scare that kept pushing me
everytime I got complacent.

🙂
So I got back home from college and spent the next one year preparing religiously for
CSE 2017, and fortunately got through this time. 

Strategy:

Since marks are not out yet, I am not sure of what worked exactly. Nevertheless, here is
my strategy and I hope it can be of help.

Prelims:

I hope I am not alone in thinking that prelims is the most difficult stage in CSE. I am not
even exaggerating when I say that ,for me, the best part about making it to the list is not
having to sit for prelims again.

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I am sure I scored only enough to get me past the cutoff, yet my two cents on
preparation for prelims is as follows.

1. Be thourogh with the basic books. Everybody knows the important NCERTs,
everybody knows about Lakshmikant and spectrum. Point is doing these books
again and again till you gain an absolute mastery on the static part.
2. Mock tests. The importance of mock tests has been highlighted time and again by
many. Solve as many mock tests as possible, and revise till you feel confident.
While solving mocks, also develop your personal strategy for dealing with prelims.
Try and infer what kind of question paper makes you feel confident enough to go
80+ in attempts or what kind of question paper demands you to be conservative.
Identify your strong areas and weaknesses and schedule your study for the last two
months accordingly.
3. Pick up trends. I cannot highlight enough the importance of picking up trends. Go
through previous year papers to gauge what areas are trending and require
special attention. For instance, questions from Buddhism & Jainism figure in the
paper almost every year, questions on national parks/wildlife sanctuaries, maps etc
are common. So pick up these trends and work accordingly. This exercise is
especially helpful during the last two months. While the rest of the year can be
devoted to holistic coverage, in the last two months before prelims, you have to be
selective and strategise your study smartly.
4. Current affairs. You can prepare you own notes out of newspapers or go through
compilations made available by different institutes. Whatever you do, trust you
source and revise as much as possible. I personally found compilations very helpful
in this regard.

Finally, do not let your test marks affect you any more than pushing you to work harder.
Stress takes away confidence, and confidence is key to doing well in prelims. So learn
from tests and move on. Trust me, most people who make it to the list have their bad
days where they don’t score well in mocks. Let mistakes be learnings and not
distractions.

Grey areas:

Art and culture: I read this part from NCERT Fine arts, Ancient history and selective
reading of Nitin Singhania’s book on Art and culture.

Science and Technology: Relied mostly on Current affairs compilations from IASbaba.
Being a PCMB student in plus two, I did not find it necessary to check out the few
prelims-relevant chapters in NCERTs of Biology and Chemistry.

Environment: Selective reading of Shankar IAS book, since there’s a lot there that is not
quite necessary in my opinion. To figure out how to read selectively, one must go through
previous year question papers, detect the pattern and use it to extract prelims-relevant
information from these bulky books. I also relied on current affairs compilations for this
part.

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Mains:

I feel more confident sharing my strategy for mains as I completely loved this stage.
However, in my opinion, one has to strike a careful balance of several factors to score
well in mains. Since marks are not out, I think it’s only fair to give a general strategy for
GS than elaborating on each paper separately.

1. Content: Your years of hardwork is pointless unless you can show it to the examiner
on paper. Therefore, I think our content should be such so that the examiner is convinced
that we have studied hard and know stuff. For this we must quote reports and
committees, put in data, cite examples, refer to current developments etc.

Of course one cannot read all reports and learn all kinds of data. Here again lies the
importance of picking up trends. For instance, cyber security, subsidies, mob violence,
river interlinking, privacy etc were really trending before mains. I was expecting questions
on these and so had certain facts from reports/ committee recommendations jotted on a
piece of paper. I did not read entire reports, simply googled and found facts &
recommendations that were simple enough for me to remember.

Then apart from current hot-topics, one must also keep an eye for all-time hot topics.
These include topics like climate change, inclusive growth, Indo-China relations,
Panchayati Raj, agriculture etc. You can ready some data, recommendations,
committees, and innovations in these too.

In fact, if time permits, it is best to go through all topics in the syllabus and jot down
data on each one of them in not more than half a sheet. Revise it before the exam, and
impress the examiner with the apparent wide range of your knowledge.

However, all this only after you have covered your basic books and are doing your
newspapers properly. Quoting data & committee recommendations cannot compensate
for lack of analysis. There is no shortcut or trick to bettering your analytical skills and the
only way is hard work and sincere study.The aforementioned is only to make more
attractive what you have, the foundation lies in focused study and not in quick google
searches.

2. Presentation: The examiner checks several copies a day and we must try our best to
ensure that our answer script stands out. If our content is great then there is no way it will
not stand out, but good presentation makes this content more readable, catchy and
emphatic, thus directly impacting the examiner’s impression of us.

A few things that can be done to better presentation are:

1. Presentation 

a) Introduction and Conclusion

b) Break down the answer in parts if the question is in parts.

c) Use of heading/subheading for better organisation and visibility of content

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d) Use of flow charts, diagrams, maps for greater clarity. It also helps break monotony
and makes the copy interesting to the examiner.

e) Underlining important points, for eg any committee or report name that you may have
mentioned

f) Simplicity in answering. Language should be simple, not very flowery or complicated.

If the examiner has to put in extra effort to understand your answer, it does not bode well
for your marks.

g) Concluding answer on a positive note, maybe with some kind of solution. For
instance, I ended many of my answers with ‘Way forward’, listing few good solutions or
recommendations.
h) You must also try
to begin your Essay on an interesting note, with some quote or
story or poetry so as to capture the interest of the examiner at the very outset.

i) Practise. All the points mentioned above cannot be implemented in the actual exam
without prior practice. Remember, the more we sweat in practice, the less we bleed in
war.

2. Time management: I, for one, struggled a lot with time management. When I first
started writing full length tests post-prelims, I could only do around 14-15 questions in 3
hours. Then I starting solving questions on hour-basis, setting my target to 6 per hour. I
practised this way one hour every day, while solving full lengths weekly. I also used
flowcharts and wrote point wise to better the situation. My speed improved considerably
by the time mains arrived, although I still ended up leaving 35 marks worth in Optional
paper 1 due to speed issues.

3. Optional: It is important to devote to your optional as much time as possible. Choice of

optional must be based on how much the syllabus interests you. If you are sure that
you enjoy your optional enough to spend lots of time on it, then nothing else should
matter. I found PSIR interesting, and I really felt that I could manage it on my own so I
chose it without any second thoughts.

Here again, answer writing is important. I joined Shubhra Ranjan mam’s online test
series for the same. I also purchased her notes since many toppers had recommended
that, but for me reading directly from notes did not help gain the kind of insight and
confidence that I thought I needed. So I purchased all the recommended texts for various
parts of the syllabus and read them religiously. Reading these texts not only gave me a
better understanding of the subject, but also helped me understand how exactly should a
student of political science write.

For PSIR, I read an excellent strategy article by Ananya Das ma’am that really helped
me a lot. I would advise all those who have this optional to go through it at least once.

Finally,

Whatever you do, never lose hope. Because no matter how well prepared they are,
nobody is absolutely sure of their selection. Not one time during the course of my
preparation, did I think I would get a rank as good as 39. I was alsways full of self doubt

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and fear, but yes, I never stopped studying. I just thought that study never really goes
waste and if not here then somewhere else, my learning will help me make a mark.So if
you feel low, or if you feel that you are falling behind, then remember that  those who get
selected also face similar fears. More often than not, this fear pushes us to work hard and
so your fear is not entirely a bad thing.

Of course, luck does have a major role  to play. But for your luck to work, you need to be
well past a certain threshold. We must focus our energies on working hard and reaching
that threshold, so that luck, if any, can get to play its role.

This exam is a year long process in itself, and so please don’t overwhelm yourself with its
preparation. Take breaks, watch movies, talk to people who make you feel better, just
don’t stop living your life. It is after all just another exam in the great series of exams that
life is.

I wish all of you good luck and a very happy, fulfilling journey.

Download – Essay_Apurva_Pandey_39

Esssay Topic: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of
others”

Download – GS Answers_Apurva_Pandey_39 

Thank you

Apurva Pandey (Veracity)

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