Every UPSC aspirant faces this question when he is about to start his preparation. Your decision of choosing one optional has the capacity of catapulting among toppers or relegating you to low scores. This makes the optional subject choosing so crucial and hence you have to make a well informed and calculated decision.
The answer to this question is not as simple as it seems. Many coaching institutes advertise that the optional subject which they are teaching has the most promising results and has least amount of syllabus to cover. Such advertisements do put the students into dilemma. If one has a guide to show him the way then it is well and good , otherwise the answer remains elusive.
Some of the aspirants have tendency to take the exam without any kind of special preparation so as to get the feel of the exam. But this strategy is the least recommended one and there are reasons for that. On one hand the aspirant loses his one attempt on the other he loses one precious year too.
So what are the things that one should consider before settling for a subject and putting one's hard work into it ?
Here are a few points which helped me choose my optional and may be they will help you too :
1. Buy or download the syllabus of UPSC and go through it many times. Try to make a framework of the syllabus of General Studies Papers in your mind (of course not asking you to cram).
2. Now read the basic concepts of topics like history, geography, sociology, philosophy, polity from the NCERT books. (you anyways have to do this step for your general studies preparation)
3. Now try to find an answer for the question whether any of the subject interested you much more than others , if yes then spend some time reading details of that and maybe you will agree with your previous perception or it will be evident that it was just a misconception.
4. For choosing Engineering, Medical, Anthropology etc. It is best to find out some person who is actually taking exam with those optionals ( best way is to talk to people who gather around coachings).
5. Another thing to do is that you spend some time with the previous year questions of the Optionals which you have zeroed upon. Try to gauge the depth of the questions and ascertain whether you have the caliber to handle such questions, if not then move to any other subject and if yes then well done.
6. While going through above steps don't spend more than 1-2 weeks in doing PhD research for each and every optional. And after some time you must have 2-3 optionals that you think are worth giving a shot.
7. Last advice is that choose a optional which you love, while reading which you don't feel sleepy and that in which you instead have the curiosity to know more and more. Don't spend time speculating which optional is more scoring. Each Optional is scoring and each has comparable depth of question ie. level of difficulty. And in the end UPSC does scale the marks of all optionals.
8. Now choose your perfect optional and keep working hard.
The answer to this question is not as simple as it seems. Many coaching institutes advertise that the optional subject which they are teaching has the most promising results and has least amount of syllabus to cover. Such advertisements do put the students into dilemma. If one has a guide to show him the way then it is well and good , otherwise the answer remains elusive.
Some of the aspirants have tendency to take the exam without any kind of special preparation so as to get the feel of the exam. But this strategy is the least recommended one and there are reasons for that. On one hand the aspirant loses his one attempt on the other he loses one precious year too.
So what are the things that one should consider before settling for a subject and putting one's hard work into it ?
Here are a few points which helped me choose my optional and may be they will help you too :
1. Buy or download the syllabus of UPSC and go through it many times. Try to make a framework of the syllabus of General Studies Papers in your mind (of course not asking you to cram).
2. Now read the basic concepts of topics like history, geography, sociology, philosophy, polity from the NCERT books. (you anyways have to do this step for your general studies preparation)
3. Now try to find an answer for the question whether any of the subject interested you much more than others , if yes then spend some time reading details of that and maybe you will agree with your previous perception or it will be evident that it was just a misconception.
4. For choosing Engineering, Medical, Anthropology etc. It is best to find out some person who is actually taking exam with those optionals ( best way is to talk to people who gather around coachings).
5. Another thing to do is that you spend some time with the previous year questions of the Optionals which you have zeroed upon. Try to gauge the depth of the questions and ascertain whether you have the caliber to handle such questions, if not then move to any other subject and if yes then well done.
6. While going through above steps don't spend more than 1-2 weeks in doing PhD research for each and every optional. And after some time you must have 2-3 optionals that you think are worth giving a shot.
7. Last advice is that choose a optional which you love, while reading which you don't feel sleepy and that in which you instead have the curiosity to know more and more. Don't spend time speculating which optional is more scoring. Each Optional is scoring and each has comparable depth of question ie. level of difficulty. And in the end UPSC does scale the marks of all optionals.
8. Now choose your perfect optional and keep working hard.
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