Gear up for UPSC mains exam

With the upcoming UPSC mains exam, scheduled on 3rd December, aspirants are gearing up for the same. Only few days left for the mains and here are some fast and furious tips for the preparation.
Only 3 % students clear the prelims and appear for the civil services mains, and if you are one among them, then your mind must be bristling with innumerable questions pertaining to formulation of best possible strategy to crack UPSC mains examination. Having a list of do’s and don’ts is essential to bone up on the important topics and stave off dissipating your time and energy on covering unnecessary ones.
Here are a few quick do’s and don’ts Mr AK Mishra, director, Chanakya IAS academy shares with the students with 30 days left for the mains preparation. "Mugging up on ethics book is a mere waste of time, instead you can go through the last 3 year papers on ethics and make out that the answers are all about common sense. Avoid reading bulky books if you have already done it and can avoid or skim through few grey areas like science & technology, Art and culture. Focus on maximizing your marks rather than focusing on irrelevant notions."
The mains consist of write-ups in less than 200 words within 7 minutes, but usually candidates tend to botch up time browsing for extra information. Even a PhD candidate has to write common sense based answers, so bank upon it rather than to clutter your mind with unnecessary information.
One of the most common beliefs is that going through the bulky reports like the five year plan (for economy) and ARC for ethics is mandatory. This may just be a time depletion task. The paucity of time will not allow you to research extensively on the complete report, so better to go through summaries which is more than enough.
It is prudent to invest time thinking about the Return on Investment as most of the candidates get stuck with the GS paper 1. It is unwise to invest too much time on subjects like Arts & culture, World History and sociology as these cover only 30-40 marks in the entire paper.
Most of the aspirants tend to get stuck with GS Paper 1. Investing too much time on subjects like Art & Culture, World History and sociology is unwise as questions worth not more than 30 or 40 marks is asked from any of these areas in the entire paper.
"GS paper 2 and 3 has focus on current affairs, so reading the editorial pages of newspaper and making short notes can be of great help. Extra marks can be achieved in the Ethics exams by citing personal examples. Try writing on your own, and can refer to toppers for improvising the writing skills. Go through the Economic survey 2015-16 which clears the concepts of GDP, unemployment and agricultural stats. Adding such facts and figures enhances your marks in GS 3" added Mr Mishra
UPSC CSE exam structure grants you substantial amount of control only in Mains so it’s prudent to use it to best effect, as you never know what’s going to come your way in Interview( If you qualify)