Dear Aspirants,

In today's post, I will be featuring the experience of an aspirant who has given the Mains exam this year.

The aspirant goes by the name "Lost Soul." I first noticed his consistent MCQ practice on the Insights platform. He would not only take the quiz but make detailed notes of the mistakes.

This was not done for a single day or a single month. I guess it was done consistently for more than a year.

In the 2021 exam, he had cleared the GS paper in Prelims but the dreaded CSAT played a spoilsport. However, the consistent preparation did not stop. The results of his efforts were seen in the Prelims 2022.

I used to take inspiration to be consistent in doing the Daily Quiz from some of the aspirants and he was definitely one of them.

Why this article?

The UPSC preparation tends to be a black box. You see yourself toiling day and night. You read all the suggested books. All of this is the input.

At the other end, you have Topper's videos. This comprises the final output. While some of them articulate in detail the challenges they faced, many of them also miss out on the details.

The process that goes in the middle is known only to the close friends of the aspirant. This post is a small effort to minimise the gaps in the understanding of the process.

Disclaimer - Whatever is shared here is a perspective of one Aspirant. Kindly use your discrimination to identify what aspects of this article seem relevant to your journey.

I have made minor edits to the original post shared by "Lost Soul." I will be sharing the original links to his message on the Disqus platform.

The Experience of Joining a Test Series

I had joined a popular test series, which every one out of three Mains appearing candidates joins and was comparing my performance in those tests as a mirror to judge my performance in the actual exam. But I recently came to know from experienced Mains qualified people that the evaluators in those tests are actually people like us, who have appeared for Mains exam earlier.

Also, the marks they award vary to a very large extent. In real exams just like in prelims, we can't trust the keys of coaching institutes. One of my friends saw that in the subjects where they were awarded high marks by the evaluators, they scored very less in real exams and vice versa.

So overall I can't predict what is going to happen to me. I examined test performance and came to the conclusion that I will score well in optional, essay, ethics and GS1 as in the All India offline tests, these appeared to be my strong areas.

On the other hand, in GS2 and GS3 they awarded me below-average marks. (Possibly this is due to the fact that I was not a member of their year-long mains test and we all know that different coaching institutes repeat most of the questions in their tests and revision plans, they put in their daily and monthly materials, just like insights, the year-long members may have been at advantage there as they must have revised older tests that I was not aware of).

Note: I will share Part 2 about the actual exam experience of this aspirant and my takeaways in the next article.

Link to the Original Message on Disqus Platform

If any other aspirant who has written the Mains is willing to share their journey, kindly ask them to reach out to me at [email protected]

Daily Quiz Scores

This week was slightly better. I hope to cross the 20-mark average in the coming week!

Do a Self Assessment of your preparation with this link

Wishing you a productive and peaceful week ahead :)

Best Regards,

Satya