Mains

Mains preparation
Mains is the real deal. 9 papers--English(qualifying), Language(qualifying), Essay, GS1,2,3,4, Optional paper1,2
Someone has rightly pointed out that prelims is like one day international..two innings. Mains is like test match, while interview is like T20.
In the whole process, mains is most gruesome according to me. 3 hours each time, pouring your heart out onto the paper, without time to rest or digress or even repent. I dont want to scare people about mains, but actually I do. There are many who enquire about how to prepare for prelims and feel bit taken aback over the number of NCERTs theyve to go thru. I feel sad in pointing out to them that mains requires sifting thru much greater loads of text to come up with unique, relevant, polished analytical points or at least to get a hang of the topic.
For essays, I have wrote down my approach as follows : Essay writing
First and foremost for study of GS, I wrote the complete syllabus on a chart and divided it into broad sections that seem to belong together and then planned to take them up.

GS1 consists of geography, history(including art and culture), society
For geography, same 4 NCERT texts are good as starting point and one may go deeper into internet as required(looking at level of previous year questions or for topics that are not clearly explained in NCERT), for history part Ive written separate post. History strategy
For society part, I went thru sociology NCERT of 11th, 12th first. Then I felt the need to go thru select chapters of IGNOU notes for BA sociology considering the trend and type of questions asked in past few years.

For GS2 and GS3, Ive divided syllabus into groupings that can be seen in this index:
GS2 and GS3 index.
This classification helps in understanding the structure of the syllabus and hence the demand of the exam. It further helps in remembering the syllabus itself, which in turn helps in creating a "mind palace". A memory technique that involves imagining a palace/library where there are topicwise labeled cupboards/drawers with notes in it. Now we construct our notes on this structure.
Whenever we go thru any material--news, reports, videos, etc we should try to extract points out of it and put it in these well organized folders. So, that in exam, all we have to do is run a mental tag check and extract relevant points and make up instant bhelpuri answer :) I give due credit to Mr Aman(IIT Guwahati) who taught me how to read newspaper, extract relevant points, note topicwise.
Apart from newspaper, there are many sources to enrich these notes and are better located by doing thorough internet research on each topic name. Many govt reports, NGO reports, concepts, special topic related books, yojana, kurukshetra, economic survey, ARC reports are relevant in this matter.

For GS4, I got 60 marks in 2014 mains, 74 in 2015 mains. So, I cant say that Ive seen much difference in my marks, though I went thru much more material on ethics, philosophy etc and also tried to use lot of current affairs, examples in my answers. Only advice I can give for GS4 is that one should start with case studies, finish them up and then go after 10 markers. Case studies need time to understand and come up with a well structured, thought out answer, so cant be done in time crunch. 10 markers are rapid fire on a person's thinking, so it can be written impromptu, so can be left for latter half. Losing out on 1 whole case study is more punishing than missing out on a 10 marker.

These are major points to be kept in mind for mains.


For people opting for forestry optional in IFOS exam, I have tried to create a page with previous year questions sorted topicwise in this post: Forestry optional shortcut

For mechies, I have tried to put forward a plan for ESE2016: Plan for ESE 2016
For mechies, there are 3 cropping seasons, ese, cse and ifos...so high chances of good returns...Early crop of ESE in may helps strengthen optional and gives confidence in latter exams. There is intercropping for CSE and IFOS which is quite hectic, but it pays off when it rains interview calls.

Finally coming to mechanical engineering as an optional : On Mech for CSM

Mechanical engineering topicwise links can be found here: Mech Engg Tab