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Just being done with the Prelims feels like a big relief. You feel that a lot of burden has been lifted off your shoulders. And the joy of performing well and knowing that you get to go the next stage ( Mains) is beautiful. You plan to chill for a few days, but there is still that anxiety somewhere regarding mains.I had felt the very same anxiety. Especially for aspirants giving UPSC the first time, the feeling is more horrifying. For the past 2–3 months, your sole focus had been to clear prelims. But now that it is over, you have to face the Mains. Worry not, it can be managed.For anyone who is expecting more than 95 in the recent Prelims, I would suggest, get ready to gear up and plunge into the battle again.I managed to score a decent 122 in GS2 and 145 in GS3. You can also get a good score. PLANNING and EXECUTION are very important.NOTE : No GS coaching was taken, so everything was covered from varied sources.WHAT TO DO AFTER PRELIMSFirst of all - enjoy for 2-3 days. A lot of work has been put in. A few days of relaxation and planning ahead is very important as the next 4 months of ur life will be very crucial.If you feel that there is even a slightest chance that u will make it through prelims, start preparing within 4-5 days.For all those aspirants who find themselves as the Borderline case with a margin of +-4 days, start your preparation. Dont wait till results. Wasting 1.5 months of the 4 months that you have for Mains is not advisable, rather it will pretty much be the end of your chances at a good rank.The most important thing to do here is planningI had made a very clear plan on how i was preparing with each day marked for something specific - What was your timetable while preparing for UPSC? ( This has the images of the document I had prepared as a planning for my Mains )MAINS : HOW TO GO ABOUT ITFor mains one needs to realise that it is NOT NCERTs which make you capable of writing answers. This is where all the time spent into reading the newspaper and making its notes comes to use. Vision IAS Mains 365 booklets are the most comprehensive source for Mains writing material for GS2 and GS3.For answers, understand that all the big paragraphs of answers cannot be learnt. Rather, one only needs to remember the keywords to the answer. This is what one will revise near the Mains as the material to be revised starts to pile up. So underline only the key words. Taking short notes on the sides of the VisionIAS booklet (among other sources) would also help in quicker revision.Always remember that you need to read enough to answer a 200 word question effectively. So don’t delve into depths on all topics.This is not the time to be reading something new. Value addition has to be done obviously. But do not start the preparation of a new subject now. This should be done before the Prelims examination.Though smaller topics like Disaster Management and Internal security can still be completed, it is always advisable to finish them before your Prelims.I will deal with each paper and how I had gone about tackling them.NOTE : In a lot of subjects, I had followed Vision IAS printed booklets on those specific topics. This was done due to paucity of time and because I felt that Coaching notes in those specific topics would be much more helpful than some bookESSAYI would suggest that you watch Siddhart Jain AIR-16 video on how to write essays. That will give you a pretty good technique to think of dimensions and organise it in a good way.For Eg, I had “SPEECLIH” - Societal, Political, Economic, Environmental, Cultural, Legal, International and Historical aspects while writing essay.I would also suggest you to read Gaurav Aggarwal sir’s essays given on his blog “the supermanreturns” to understand how he used to write essays and try to emulate his technique into yours in case you find them useful.Out of the 1.5 hrs that you will spend on each essay have15-20 mins Planning - Planning is very essential. How to organise your essay decides your marks.Rest - Writing the EssayI had searched a lot for getting good content to write essays. Shubhra Ranjan Mam’s Essay Book was the best one which was the most relevant as far as UPSC was concerned. I had made a rough structure for around 20 essays which were to be used in case essay came on those specific topics.Also have a good quote to begin and end the essay as it really does make a difference in marks.Take 1-2 essay test series and get them professionally evaluated if u dont have a good mentor.Do not, i repeat do not get them cross check with ur peers who have the same experience as u as 2 noobs do not make an expert ( This is especially for the guys preparing for the first time )Lot of people have asked me - when practicing essay how much time should i take - 1.5 hrs or should i just my creativity flow and not focus on time. I would suggest that write 2-3 essays without time constraints, but after that write within time limit because u will not have the luxury of time in the Mains exam. Practice in limited time is very crucial to be able to score well in an essay paper.If I had to prepare again, Essay writing is one area I would have focussed on more.ETHICSEthics requires a very different approach. It needs to made as simple as possible as it is a very simple paper.Firstly you should go and read DK Balaji sir’s article on Insights. It will provide you with a deeper understanding of what kind of answers and personality UPSC wants from candidates.I have heard many people say that preparation in Ethics paper is not required. This is not at all correct.I would suggest that First Print the Ethics syllabus and then cover it from a source (preferably coaching printouts ) which has the least amount of material. 50-100 pages total. Your aim here is to understand each and every term given in the course and understand its technical intricacies of all the terms.You can use Google or Mrunal notes by Kavan Limbasiya (AIR 198, CSE 2014) to better understand concepts. Create ur own notes after reading the sources you may want to refer to.Do not read the Lexicon the very first time if you don’t have any idea of the subject. It is not a good book to understand concepts, but is a very good book to supplement notes. This would make your theory answers pretty good.Make examples for all the Values in civil services like Integrity, Accountability, Transparency etc, preferably from your personal experiences. In case you are unable to find a personal experience, then create a good short incident or use a currently occurring event. Balaji sir’s article explains it beautifully.Make a table of most imp Values and fill in as many as you can. I had made a big table with many different values.For the part on Great Administrators, leaders etc have unconventional names ready who may have really inspired you. Unconventional names in answers would show depth in a person rather than just making up an answer for the sake of it. Eg- Dag Hammarskjold was an inspirational for me.Create quotes for all the important topics, so that you can put them in your answers. Collect them over time. (PSIR students can very easily get them from their own coursework)In Ethics once you are done understanding and making notes, the most important stage comes. It is writing answers. I cannot overstate the importance of writing answers in Ethics. It requires some practice to be able to seamlessly use the technical terms in the answers such that they come out very well. You will not get this ability by simply reading others answers. Write answers such that they are able to reflect your personality with the required terminology. Don’t mug up coaching notes. Make your own definitions and try to keep your answer original.I had written around a 100 answers which were collected from IASBaba TLP program and from Insights 70 day Ethics initiative. Write and compare with model answers. Broadly you should be able to get a hang of writing answers at the end of these many questions.Also there are many questions on thoughts of various great leaders like Swami Vivekananda, MK Gandhi among others. In such question just give a basic reading to the model answers on them to get a general idea. There is really no need and no time to get into the nitty-gritties of thoughts.For Case Studies, I had solved Subba Rao Book on Ethics. It has a lot of case studies given in it and it helps you form a general idea on solving them. Kavan Limbasiya (AIR 198, CSE 2014) also has explained how to approach case studies to solve them effectively.In the end i would recommend solving test series in time so that you get in a habit of completing the paper as that is the most important and crucial point to be kept in mind. I used to solve all the questions in order in the Ethics paper except in an extraordinary situation when I had absolutely no idea in a question.Subject wise planMains 365 by VisionIAS and solving the TLP questions by IASBaba were the most crucial aspects of mains preparation.GS1Edit : For this portion, writing answers is very important. What I had done here was downloaded the last years VisionIAS test series which goes on topic wise and written answers to all questions. This helps in 2 waysIt helps you build content and cover any areas you may have missed.It helps you organise knowledge. For e.g. say if there is a question regarding Communist movement in India, you definitely know enough to write an answer but it is scattered in your mind as it was in Spectrum. So the thinking part is utilised now, and in case it comes in the paper you can very easily write the answer without much thinking. Remember, in the paper “more you think the less you write”Topic wise -A&M History - Art and culture questions come - same as pre strategyModern History : Same as pre strategyPost Independence History : VisionIAS printed bookletsIndia After Independence - should be avoided - it only wastes ur time and is a very biased book in my opinion.World history : One needs to realise that in all of tests in UPSC - only 1-2 World history questions will be asked. For this, one needs to put a proportionate amount of work.Read the History optional World History syllabus - note down all the eventsRead the past years questions in World history, History Optional - this is to understand the type of questions that UPSC is expecting us to answerWIKI these topics and make notes accordingly.Supplement this with VisionIAS World history printed notes - around 50-60 pages - not thicker than that, (Not the hand written ones) Keep revising.Society : VisionIAS Printed booklet, Mains 365 and Newspaper reading cover this portion rather well.Geography : Same as pre strategyResources topic in Geography : Topic comes once in 4-5 years And by the end of your preparation you would also be able to make a pretty accurate guess regarding common resources. There is a lot of study material to read. I had skimmed through the material given on Mrunal website regarding this topic.GS2Polity : For this I had got Shubra Mam’s 2 pretty thin booklets on GS2. They were very useful as topics in it are covered in Question Answer Format. A lot of questions I came from here directly or indirectly. Other than this Mains365 is very important.Social Indicators : Poverty and Hunger : Mrunal videos cover these topics very well. Supplement these with all the schemes that have been prepared as well as Yojna magazineInternational Relations ( My optional was PSIR, so I had a lot of help)This is a topic whose one single source for preparation is difficult to find. One learns a lot by reading the newspapers.But the best way to go about this is to get the Mains 365 on IR and read it religiously. I really dont think there is a better source that this to be able to answer UPSC level questions.(For students who have started preparing, referring to Mains365 of the nearest mains will be very helpful to you. As it will make you understand the newspaper much better.)Also the 2 books of Shubra mam which I had got for GS2 had IR portion which was very good, but overlapped significantly with Mains365.Dont go after books like Globalisation of World Politics, or Does the Elephant Dance. One word : Waste of time. Such depth is not required in GS papers. They form a part of Optional Booklist.GS3Having scored 145 in GS3, I will try to tell you everything that I had laid stress on to try and maximise my score here.Again instead of reading something new, download the last year vision booklet and answer its questions. Follow TLP of IAS Baba and write answers. Content building is important through question answer writing format.While writing answers time yourself and word yourself. Focus on introductions and conclusions.Economy : Same as pre. Focus on answer writing and test series.Agriculture :Will be covered by Mrunal videos and Geog videos by Mrunal.It should be supplemented with the Agriculture chapter in ShankarIASEnvironmentNow the focus will be less on the various summits but more on the subjective partDo focus on Envt Impact Assessment (EIA). Rest gets covered by Mains365.Sc&Tech : The Prelims strategy and Mains365 are enough to cover this portion easily.Disaster Management :Roman Saini sir videos on DMgt (Ones taught by Roman Saini sir himself) will help you understand most of the theory.Go on the NDMA website and make notes on all the topics given - especially understand IRS ( Incident Response system as this is one unconventional point that u can have in your answers )Skim through NDM policy and NDM plan - make short notes on these - these are more to observe and understand how the NDMP actually envisages the Mgt. Dont spend more than 2-3 hours on each documentThen supplement the notes with VisionIAS Disaster Mgt printed notes and Mains365 on Dmgt.Tip : Have separate notes for each of the disasters and their corresponding maps which should definitely be drawn in case a question comes on it. For Eg : If a question is asked on Earthquakes, I used to ensure that I made a map of India and marked the Zone IV and Zone V. This ensures that you answer is more interactive and attractive.Have a standard conclusion for all answers on Disasters. Some common points can also be added in suggestions like IRS System, Capacity building of local communities, Effective information dissemination, etc.Internal Security : VisionIAS Printed booklets and Mains365 are good.Language papersEnglish : was easy, no preparation was requiredHindi :Since most of us stop studying Hindi from class 10, some difficulty is definitely faced.One needs to be careful as a number of candidates are unable to make through just because they are unable to clear this qualifying paper.If u fail in language papers, your other copies will not be evaluated and u won’t come to know the marks of other papers and that attempt will do down the drain.Preparation requires at max 4-5 days. Open 3-4 years questions and see the pattern you will notice that Hindi Grammar is easy and doable - so learn up some muhavres in the last days ( My mom used to make me learn Muhavres while I ate my food so that I could save time in the last few days )Next unseen passages are easy Essay can also be tackled easily - practice 4-5 essays so that u come back into the writing practice of Hindi and dont make spelling mistakes The difficult part is English to Hindi and vice versa.I would suggest that take the important terms from Mains Syllabus and convert them into HindiNext - look at last 3-4 year papers and interconvert specific terms like Sovereign or socialist or secular. Now u will have a decent list of words which u can use especially in ur Language essays as well.ANSWER WRITING TIPSAnswer writing is the most important and crucial factor which can make or break your result. The amount of knowledge that you have matters, but what matters more is how well you can Convert that knowledge into good answers. People who are giving 5–6 th attempt have much more knowledge than what I could have, but are unable to properly do answer writing.Writing good answers does not come in a day. Its a long drawn out process, but one that is definitely rewarding in the exams. I was also very bad at answer writing in the beginning. It took a lot of work to improve my answers.How do I improve my writing skills for the UPSC? - You can see this for How i had went about answer writing.Around 70% of your time will go into optional. Do not sacrifice you optional for the sake of General Studies, because good marks in optional are crucial for a good rank. Interview is the most fickle and subjective part of UPSC. Do not depend on it to help you get a rank.I had extensively used IASbaba TLP program and Vision IAS Test series to solve questions. TLP was done to get more relevant content and practice writing answers, and Vision was done to ensure effective time Management. You will find many questions which are new. Consider them as notes and keep revising.Finally some points that you should keep in Mind.Do not ignore Essay practice. It is very important.Create boundaries for your course, so that you can get 3–4 revisions atleast.Stick to the syllabus like it is your mother. Go topic by topic and cover each and everything given in the syllabus.Do not ignore Test series. Giving One test is better than 2–3 days of revisions as in the end time management is everything. Balance out learning raw material and writing answersComplete all the questions in the exam. Write something relevant in the tests even if you dont know much about it. 1–2 marks fetched like this take you a long way. And every question that you knew and left because of paucity of time takes your rank down atleast 50.Though I realise that ideally we should read from various different books to build a holistic knowledge. But paucity of time and vastness of the course often pushed me towards Coaching notes which were very to the point.For all those aspirants who are expecting to give Mains this year, Kudos. Chill for some time because you have a busy schedule waiting for you in a few days.For those, who missed this time. Its okay. Next time will be the golden time. Do not lose hope. Get yourself together and work again with patience !Study hard, Stay motivated and Prepare well !All the Best !

NICE!First of all, a big thumbs up for getting onto Quora and asking questions, you are already ahead of many people doing the IGCSE who are either too lazy or too afraid to ask.I think I would be able to answer this since I finished my IGCSEs at the end of 2014 and came out with straight A's.For my study process or routine that I will share with you, it just involved two simple parts. Many people like to overthink different ways of studying for your exam but for me simplicity is what worked best, based on hard work.What are the two simple parts to how I studied?1. Note taking.Your brain is not going to remember every bit of information so don't even try to walk into the exam hall thinking you're an expert because 'you remember everything from class'. You may think you do, but you probably don't, unless you're a genius, which I by the way am not.When you are in class, Listen!I am not saying take down detailed notes in class or write down every word the teacher says...No. Just listen, listen, listen to what the teacher has to say and take down very brief summary notes of what is most important such as a key concept or an equation for example. Your exercise book should not be filled with more than a page and a half every lesson. Anymore than that, and you probably have not been absorbing or listening to what is going on as much as you should.When you are at home, Write!Once you get home, everyday, review your work and what exactly you have learnt in class, refer back to the textbook or whatever you did that day and refresh yourself on what you learnt. From that, and referring back to the textbook and your school notebook every now and then to grab the key takeaways, write or type up a document of what you should know for that topic based on what you learnt that day. (You probably won't be able to 'take notes' for Maths as you'd do for Science for example, so for that, doing practice papers is probably the best way to go)Do this everyday and it should not take more than half an hour. Leave it to the last minute just before your GCSEs and you are going to be swamped with 101 topics from 101 subjects and its just not going to work at all. Do not carry on with your notes if there is something you are unsure about, only move on if you understand everything you write. If you are writing page 3 of your notes, you should understand Pages 1 & 2 inside out. If not, stop, re-read the chapter and seek help from your teacher.Regarding the notes, they absolutely do not have to be colourful, in your face mind maps or exquisitely designed flow charts (Depends on what works for you though).As for myself, I am not sorry to admit that mine was simply a word document built on sub-headings, bullet points, short explanations and diagrams. That's it. I used limited colour, a very small amount of shapes, and virtually no smart art or word art whatsoever.I just filled my document with the core content of what needed to be known and put it into visible easy to read point form. This allowed me to easily refer back to it if I forgot or did not clearly understand something. The biggest problem I have with exquisite mind maps and notes is that it is difficult to pinpoint something and refer back to it quickly when I needed to, it also is extremely time consuming which for a set of revision notes, in my opinion, is unnecessary, but again, whatever works best for you. Remember, your notes is not a graphic design project.2. Practice PapersI am not an advocate of textbook questions, they are usually too simple and are nothing like what appears in the exam, so only do textbook questions to test your really fundamental understanding of the topic at the beginning, but bear in mind, simply acing textbook questions is not going to get you very far in the exam.I think you should just jump into the real deal of practice papers because they are actually what has come out rather than doing and acing the basic stuff and lying to yourselfIn terms of practice papers, try not to wait till the last minute and cram 3 per day. That is just unsustainable and bloody tiring. Same as with your notes, try and do your practice papers over a pro-longed period of time, 2-3 papers a week of alternating subjects worked well for me, however I increased that frequency to 3-4 per week in the final month of the exam just to make sure I left no stone unturned.You may ask how are there enough practice papers to keep this going? Simple. Just start from the 2009 papers and work your way up to 2014 from there, they all should be available online at Cambridge IGCSE Past Exam PapersWhen you do your practice papers, have a copy of the answer sheet too. The point of this is because what you may begin to notice is that the questions they ask tend to repeat and be pretty similar across the years, therefore, their answers will also tend to be very similar too, the answer sheet will expose first hand to these 'model' answers that will come up and again and again and will also show you exactly what answers Cambridge wants to specific questions, hence, even if you go into the exam and have a familiar question but you don't fully understand the concept, you should know the model answer and therefore could just put it down and have a high probability of getting it right simply because you've done your background work. This also puts you at an advantage above the people who may understand the concept but lack the ability to articulate it in the way Cambridge wants you to do so.After finishing every paper and learning from your mistakes, file it away somewhere so when you need to refer back to it or refresh yourself, it will be easily accessible.And Finally...Do not be lazy, Do not try and cut corners, just put in the damn work, you will reap what you sow, and you will thank yourself later when you get your reward.Start early, Finish early, and most of all, Enjoy the journey.Good luck, and if you need any extra help or advice, do not hesitate to drop me a message, I'd be happy to help anytime! :)Cheers!

I answered this question as I was tagged in the initial one - and wanted to share what I’ve learned on the topic. So this same answer may appear elsewhere…“For those wondering if it’s possible to answer a hypothetical question “Have you ever heard someone on the flipside explain dark matter, or quantum entanglement?” The answer is “well, yeah, in fact, I have.” It doesn’t mean the answer is accurate - or true. But in the search for truth, and accuracy, we can begin somewhere - which is to look at the data.In the thousands of cases I’ve examined (and anyone can) of Dr. Helen Wambach (2750) or Michael Newton (7k prior to publishing “Journey of Souls”) I can report there are no reports of the Illuminati, or a cabal, or any in charge. And that’s not limited to “in charge of humanity” but in charge, in charge - that is we are in charge of our journeys, we volunteer to come here, we are the ones who are involved with the process.If there’s anything secret here (or withheld) we have to look at the data on that as well. In the 100 cases I’ve filmed (50 without hypnosis) people claim a variation on the theme of our minds being “filtered” or “blocked” from accessing this information. However when we have an event that alters the consciousness (unfilters the mind) we may experience some knowledge, insight into these arenas. Through a near death event, out of body experience, taking LSD (or Ketamine - see the article I posted yesterday on Rich Martini's WebPage that discusses this) or deep hypnosis, or even guided meditation =- we do gain access to this information.So it may very well be that the idea of “councils” (as reported in “Architecture of the Afterlife” where people often see their guides and teachers wearing cloaks (they aren’t really cloaks, they’re an energetic form of them) people started thinking of “secret societies” with handshakes (Masons and Mormons), blood oaths, and other human constructs to help us “gain access to that secret group.”Nope. Don’t need secret handshakes. An LSD milkshake perhaps, but anyone can visit their council, and I demonstrate in “Architecture of the Afterlife” one doesn’t need a hypnotherapist, medium to do so. It helps - but not necessary.So the very idea of a cabal comes from our own vague awareness of classrooms, of councils, or soul groups on the flipside. We all belong to them, they all belong to us - we are never not connected to them (according to the research and personal experience - I’ve done six deep hypnosis sessions and report them in my books).The reason I’m responding to this question - isn’t to denigrate anyone who believes in things like the “Illuminati” or “fill in the blank-ers” - not to denigrate anyone about anything. We are all walking each other home. When we get “home” (the term everyone in the research uses - mind bendingly - to refer to the afterlife) we can observe why we chose our life, what the objects involved occurred, etc.Now - that being said, there are secret societies that cater to money - some not so secret. (As P2 demonstrated.) There are sex groups and secret societies of pedos and creeps and all kinds of folks out there - but they are governed by human constructs. Nothing to do with the flipside. Zero to do with spirituality. Everything to do with the human brain and it’s lizard mind and the need to pretend, objectify, claim that they are superior, chosen or some other mental construct that makes them think their journey to the planet is better, more aware, more interesting.None of that is in the research. What is in the research is the opposite - there is NO HIERARCHY on the flipside. Excuse the caps, but it’s the most important point - none. Everyone is equal. Older “souls” see younger “souls” as equal. Everyone is on the same path. We are all connected to each other. The artificial constructs we create on the planet are exactly like kids in a sandbox creating spaces for their armies, for their troops, for their toys. They’re focusing on the toys and arguing, fighting, throwing sand over them.The adults stop by and say “Now, children, play nice.” They don’t interfere, because interference means people don’t learn lessons, can’t learn them.But I just did. I interfered on behalf of humanity just now. By revealing the secret handshake. By pulling back the veil. (Waiting for the lightning to strike). The reason I do this research? Because if its true what EVERYONE says - that we choose to come back here, we choose our lifetimes, doesn’t it make sense to leave behind a place, a campsite, a stage that has fresh water, air and earth? If not for our children’s sake, then our own possible return.Clean up the sandbox. Take care of each other. We are all, inevitably, irrevocably walking each other home.”