On ESE

I have qualified the engineering services examination 2015 and have been ranked 58. I do not want to reverse engineer this result and under influence of the wishes of people fall into the delusion that I might have indeed done something special. I have put up an extremely moderate effort. In fact I have been preparing for civil services examination and ESE helped in pressuring me into studying my optional subject mechanical engineering. It is my preparation for civils, that helped me clear ESE. My marks will make it clear.

GAT 172.22, obj1 91.67, obj2 90.55, conv1 58, conv2 85, PT 134

So, with total of 631, it is clear that if I had not applied as OBC I would not have made it into the final list.

On Classroom programs and test series:

I have not been part of any classroom program but had joined classroom test series program at Made Easy. It starts in March and goes on till the exam in May. I felt I was alright in my prep but I used to get rank of about 700-800 in the tests and I often felt that the objective part of test was based on their own material. Towards the end I was getting more demoralized so, I did not appear for most of their tests.

On mock interviews:

Further, in mock interviews too, I was given marks ranging 90-100, which is like the bare minimum one gets in interviews. I agree with the panel in mocks, as my subject preparation was extremely poor. But then UPSC panel is not testing for research, it wants generalists with technical abilities, so I guess I was OK for them. I gave only 1 mock interview and later did not bother much about it. I would say, one should keep working on communication skills in parallel to gain confidence.

Disclaimer:

I am not trying to say that the classes were wrong and that I knew all the while that I was right and I am a champion because I made it. All I want to say is that, like me, when you get these signs pointing out, you are not up to the mark, don’t give up. Work hard on the subject and have faith in your method, instead of giving up to luck. Also, people who are working or, those who are not able to avail classes, don’t feel that you are missing out on something substantial.

On GAT:

My prep approach for GS is actually based on civils but it works for any other exam.

GS has 6 major parts: (History, Polity, Economy),(Geography, Enviro, SnT)

One has to study under these heads and also analyze papers under same heads.

For history, best approach is to read NCERT thoroughly. One should be able to narrate major events, objects, people and concepts in history with certainty. That will come only when you go one layer deeper. So, I recommend while reading NCERT, keep Wikipedia ready and keep opening multiple tabs as you go on reading and scroll through those pages. Say you are reading about Delhi sultanate and you start with Qutb-ud-din Aibak. Then go to wiki page of this guy and just run thru it. Then you will come across many interesting details and link suggestions under See Also, read those too. One might think, abey ye bahot jyada deep ghus raha hai. But by my experience, mcq in GS is all about wide reading. You gather enough details to create dots which you can then connect in exam hall. You cant expect that you will get some single bundle of notes that you will read(like the very popular Lucent book) and cruise through the exam, as UPSC wants to beat just that. OK, back to history. History has 4 diffused parts—ancient, medieval, modern India and art+culture. There are ncerts for each. If one finds some time, I recommend Discovery of India by JLNehru.

For polity, buy a copy of constitution of India(bare act, which means only articles not any fancy explanations and cases etc). Knowing the language of constitution itself gives lot of clarity. Then one can use Laxmikant for revision.

For economy, first and foremost Macroeconomics NCERT, use it to study Budget speech and then if you have interest Economic Survey. These are enough as such to get decent understanding of economy.

For geography, ncerts of course, 4 of them, physical and human for world and India. But one must use maps in parallel. Go to corresponding govt websites and gather maps and use blank ones to plot and understand geography. Example, say you study chapter on hydrology or rivers etc then go to water resources ministry and see how govt classifies water basins, what are major rivers, their courses, cities on them etc, plot them. Use an atlas or even Maps by google/bing/any other.

Environment, there are many books. Pick a good one and dig deep. There are NIOS notes on enviro for which links are available on Mrunal.org then there are textbooks by beta publications. If you want deeper stuff there is book by ShankarIAS. But I would recommend also going to ministry website MOEF&CC for latest details.

Science tech is manageable if studied in a focused manner. I suppose phy chem wont be a problem for engineers. So, it comes down to biology. Class 11,12 ncert are enough and sometimes are a bit too deep. So, one should not go beyond these books. For the tech part, follow latest news.

Supplements:

Newspaper, India Year Book are the major supplements in GS prep. Especially the chapter on states is very informative in IYB, when used along with Wikipedia and maps.

Mechanical Engineering:

I have written a lot on GAT because as you can see it makes up 1/3 of my written total. So, it can be a real gamechanger. For mechanical engg, I was preparing as per civils syllabus. So, I can only tell what I did.

Paper-1(2 for civils) can be divided into 4 major parts which are easy to attack---Basic thermo(PK Nag), HMT(JP Holman), RAC(CP Arora), IC Engines(MathurSharma+Heywood)

Apart from these there are the trouble making subjects, because they often criss-cross into each other’s territories and the sad part is that I could not find one single authoritative text on each one of them. So, there are multiple books with their multiple notations. You will find some previous year question solved in one book and the concept explained better in some other. But still, if I HAVE to divide it up, then it would be as Fluids(RK Bansal), compressible flow(Yahya), Powerplants(PK Nag/RK Rajput), Fans,turbines(Eastop McConkey/Yahya).

Frankly, I studied only the 4 major topics and among the latter topics only Yahya on Compressible flow is OK, but he too uses unnecessarily complex notations. Eastop McConkey was used at IIT-D so I was comfortable but the kind of questions these people ask on fans turbines, I don’t know where they get it from and who teaches these things. I feel sorry for the subject. Why cant someone write one single clear cut book for graduate students and not for critical acclaim! 

Paper-2(paper-1 in civils) comparatively is neater and I am more comfortable with it. It is in fact the scoring zone. Don’t miss out on this or you get pushed out of the list(my feeling, some are better off with paper-1). This one can be cleanly cut into 6 parts—SOM(BC Punmia or an interestingly smaller and straightforward book by DK Singh), TOM(SS Rattan), MD(any book)

Above 3 topics have relation between them, so better to run them in parallel when studying.

Next 3 topics are Materials(Amitabh Ghosh/DeGarmo select pages/Swadesh Singh), Manufacturing(same sources as materials) and Industrial Engineering(Hezier—I used google books). These too have some relation between them so, can be run in parallel.

Supplements:

Google books: when the domestic books are not clear enough, it is useful to use google search to get notes and ppt by foreign univs and also using google books. Use it judiciously as there is page view limitations.

NPTEL: is OK for quick reference, but it wont help much in problem solving esp the complex kind of Qs in conventional papers

VTU: vtu has surprisingly big stock of notes on different topics. I found it much more relevant than nptel notes

IGNOU: also has notes on different topics, but there are not direct links to these pdfs. I think they are sorting out some issue on IPRs. The pdf is still available, so I don’t know what they are achieving by keeping notes disarrayed across internet. Ignou notes on cnc, jigs fixtures and such special topics are good. Not so good for basics.

COMPASS:

Most importantly, it is important to not drift away from your course. Aim is to do well in the exam. Your knowledge and expertise in subject would be appreciated but if it is not useful in fetching marks then you will suffer the taunts from many “less knowledgeable”---yaar aata to sab hai, but pata nahi kyu nahi nikal raha. So, dont try to get a phd in each topic. Start with previous year questions---ALWAYS.

Even in GAT—look at the questions upsc is asking and direct your efforts to master those areas. Same in mech, locate things upsc is asking and study around that in books and notes. That part one must master, beyond that is optional. Don’t get strayed by test series. If you are scoring poorly in them then compare questions with previous year Qs and you can recalibrate.

Last minute pressure:

Engineering subjects are vast and one takes 4 years to know what is in it, whereas one would also like to clear the exam in 1^st shot so, pressure to complete the study in 1 year can be quite a lot. Especially the day before exam, one feels the real extent of pressure and the vastness of syllabus. Happened to me in 2014. I had not prepared much for mech and focus was on GS for civils and I thought I would manage. But after appearing for GAT, that night I realized I cant do anything and just went to sleep. Point is mere reading of subject is not enough. You should know exact formulae and methods for specific questions and theory part.

Patience:

If you have reached this part of the post, congrats! You have patience. Use the same when dealing with the subject. There are quite a few confusing areas. Spend time on it. Use internet and multiple sources. Ask a friend. Or soak it. Come back to it later. Target and secure the low hanging fruit. Keep moving towards your goal without worrying about what others are doing and kaun kitna bada stud hai ya padhaku hai. Apna kaam karte raho and as Gaurav Agarwal says Khelo India.

Promise:

Preparing for this exam I realized that most of the technical stuff is not written for students and is for satisfaction of the author. So, I promise that I will write posts on specific theory and questions because if that is out of the way then students can move on to some quality research, nahi to sab wahi atke reh jayenge. In return, bas dua de dena yaaro. Civils nikal jaye, poori free e-book likh dalunga mechanical engineering pe :)