Toppers' talk by Mr. Shubhankar Pratyush Pathak, AIR 11, UPSC CSE 2021

Mr. Shubhankar Pratyush Pathak secured an All India Rank 11 in the UPSC Civil Services Examination, 2021 in his very first attempt. Civil Services as a career appealed to him from the very beginning and it was his smart approach and targeted hard work that helped him succeed.
Mr. Shubhankar, who hails from Champaran (Motihari) district of Bihar, completed his B.E. from Electrical Engineering from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad in 2020. He joined Cisco Systems as a Software Developer in August 2020 and resigned from his job after a few months to prepare solely for the UPSC CSE exam with Mathematics optional. In this highly interactive session, Mr. Shubhankar breaks down his preparation strategy in detail.
Time Stamps:
00:22 - The session begins with greetings from Mr. Shubhankar.
00:50 - A brief introduction about Mr. Shubhankar and his Civil Services Examination preparation journey.
19:00 - Interaction with students and resolution of their queries.
34:20 - Approach for Prelims and the need to look at the paper not as a set of 100 questions but as a set of 200-250 statements.
42:15 - Approach for analyzing Previous year questions.
52:50 - Role of test series for practice and innovative use of Whatsapp.
56:52 - Discussion on elimination strategy.
1:04:00 - Approach for CSAT.
1:13:55 - Resources for Prelims.
1:26:24 - Strategy for Current Affairs.
1:28:40 - Discussion on making notes.
1:55:12 - Importance of Answer Writing and how to go about it.
2:13:23 - Resources for Mains.
1:44:43 - Approach for General Studies 1, 2,3.
2:30:50 - Strategy for Ethics.
2:35:30 - Strategy for Essay and how to deal with philosophical essays.
2:48:00 - Approach for Mathematics Optional.
2:55:07 - Strategy for Personality Test and interaction with the students
3:06:06 - The session concludes with a round of applause from the audience.