UPSC IAS IPS Strategy IntroFive Part article series on How to approach UPSC Civil Service IAS/IPS Exam: Prelims, Mains and Interview
BooksTips on Notes-making, Standard reference books, Yojana Kurukshetra etc. Explained here
Prelim-Mains-InterviewDetailed Strategy for General Studies, science-tech, yearbook, economy, history, polity, IR-Diplomacy with booklist, free study material given here.
DoubtsBasic doubts regarding Coaching, Working professional, time Management and Non-English medium
BackupSome guidelines for adopting career backup plans incase you can't make it to UPSC
SSC CGL
GK / GAHow to approach General Awareness for Tier-I, explained here with free study material download.
MathsHow to approach Maths, Quantitative Aptitude, Trigonometry, Geometry for Tier I and II? To-the-point strategy n tips given here +free study material
ReasoningGeneral Intelligence and Logical reasoninig for Tier I of SSC-CGL exam: booklist, tips shared here.
EnglishHow to tackle vocabulary, grammar and comprehension for Tier I and II.
SBI PO
GA/Computer/Marketingstrategy booklist for approaching General Awareness, Computer, Marketing, Current Affairs in SBI PO 2013, includes free material as well!
Reasoning (High)strategy booklist for approaching Higher Level Reasoning in SBI PO 2013
English (Descriptive)strategy, free studymaterial, essay list for the SBI PO English MCQ and Descriptive paper! Others
CAT (IIM)Ragtag strategy on get 90+ percentile in CAT-prometric test.
LIC AAOStrategy for the upcoming LIC Assistant Administrative officers' exam with free studymaterial, jobprofile.
CSIRStudyplan + Free study material for CSIR combined Administrative services (CASE) exam
State PSCHow to approach RAS, MPSC etc explained here
CAPFHow to become an Assistant Commandant in BSF, CISF, CRPF: strategy, booklist, free studymaterial provided here.
RBIRBI Grade "B" Officer studyplan, strategy, booklist and free download material is provided here.
SPIPAFor getting admission in SPIPA, Ahmedabad, which provides free coaching for IAS exam.(Gujarat Only)
ACIOAssistant Central Intelligence Officer recruitment: booklist, strategy
UPSC tips
India Yearbookhow to efficiently utilize INDIA Yearbook for UPSC prelims, mains, interview= explained in this 6 part series article.
5 LevelsExplains five types of players in UPSC competition and why daydreamers fail in this exam.
100 DaysWhy you can't succeed with vague strategies in UPSC Prelims, explained here.
Newspaper?How to read The Hindu/Indianexpress quickly and efficiently in less than one hour for Current Affairs?, explained here.
Art of Aptitude?3 Cardinal Rules on How to approach Aptitude section in any competitive exam.
QuotesMotivational and inspirational quotes for competitive exams.
Essay Tips How *not* to write an Essay in UPSC Mains exam, explained here
IRHow to prepare India World + International relations (IR) topic, explained + free download material
StatApproach to Statistics and Graphs portion of General Studies Mains Paper II+free study material
R.T.IHow to file R.T.I application to UPSC? explained here
Analysis
CSAT'12Analysis of the GS-Prelims paper and how it broke the backs of Coaching classes.
GSM-12Analysis of the General Studies (Mains) Paper I and II of 2012 and how they (again) broke the backs of Coaching classes.
Edu Tech
Auto NoteMakerMrunal's Autonotemaker for quickly taking notes out of PDF files and Webarticles (Win XP only)
Hindu ReaderHow to use Google Reader to efficiently read The Hindu online, for Free!.
OneNoteLearn to use Microsoft Onenote software to organized your notes on computer, quickly and efficiently!
ArchiveMonthly Archive Index page of everything I've published so far. (In the old articles, ignore advice written before Jan 2012, because UPSC trend has changed a lot.)
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[Download] Last 25 years’ General Studies (Mains) Papers (1987 to 2011) Compiled together
Finally, I’ve compiled General Studies (Mains) papers of last 25 years (1987 to 2011) and created a printer friendly PDF file out of it. (Download Links given at the bottom of this article)
Action Plan
- To get really Decent marks in General Studies paper (and thus a high rank in the final merit list) do following
- In the General Studies (Mains) paper, there are two types of question Static and Dynamic (Current Based)
- By and large, General Studies Paper I & II are made up of following topics.
- History (Always Static)
- Culture (Almost Always Static)
- Polity (Most of the Time.)
- Yearbook stuff (Usually current Based)
- Economy (Mixed)
- International Relations and S&T (Lately current Based)
- Statistics and Data Interpretation.(Always Static.)
Now, observe these old papers carefully (attached below), the Static questions/topics keep getting recycled and repeated. For example RIN mutiny was asked in 1998, again in 2011. Same for Polity (DPSP/Funda.rights) etc.
- If you start manually writing answer for each and every question, it would take months and you’ve two optional subjects to prepare! But atleast you can prepare a skeletal framework / keypoint answer, and keep revising it, definitely a few questions or topics would come in the next Mains exam. It’ll also save the precious time during the actual exam, for not having to brainstorm for the ideas. Because you already did that exercise @home, while solving these question.
- and solve all the sums from Statistics and data interpretation portion. That’ll increase the speed and accuracy during the actual exam.
- Have trouble or doubt solving any question? Ask it on indianofficer.com, a forum where serious players hang out.
- P.S. At some places the questions and sentences are missing or incomplete. But it is because the original source itself did not have those questions. (or I might have made some silly mistake writing the RegEx script, using which I compiled this whole database.)
Download Links
Two Paper I and Paper II are posted in separate PDF files for ease in reading.
General Studies (Mains) Paper 1 I (1987 to 2011)
General Studies (Mains) Paper 2 II (1987 to 2011)
Leave a Reply
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thank you
thank you …it can help a lot thanks again..
Thank you! You are doing a wonderful job.
Thank you
Thank you………….you are doing a wonderful job
Pl tell me where can I get General Studies Mock Questions for mains (Subjective answers) for practice. Availability of any other resource besides the old GS mains papers you posted above (preferably free)
Thanks
Thank You! This is really helpful.
Respected sir my request is that can u suggest some books for General studies I & II and some other magazine. Besides i want one more thing can u suggest about PALI as Optional taken by me so please suggest books.
Respected sir, I am a little bit confused about the new scheme of the exam pattern released by the UPSC.. Should we take only one optional paper in stead of two in the mains? Plz reply
respected sir,
I have another question can a candidate take bengali if he had bengali as a pass paper and english as hons. paper?(thisis the case with me.). if d answer is negetive then how would a candidate who is a pass graduate with two literature subjects selct a perticular literature for upsc mains?
@Saikat,we have to opt for ONLY ONE OPTIONAL SUBJECT bro,consisting of two papers each one carrying the weightage of 250 marks.
In the notification it is clearly stated that”..a candidate can opt for the literatures of a language,…,as an optional subject,only if the candidate has graduated in the literature of that particular language as the main subject.”
One can opt for bengali literature only if he/she is BA(H) or BA(MAJOR) in bengali literature.
Happy to see atleast one bengali aspirant in this forum.R u from kolkata?
@Sweta: Thanks for guiding me properly. Yes, I’m from Kolkata. :) And you?
yes,I’m from kolkata and from CU.
@Sweta Dey, Are u also going to sit for upsc this year? What would be your optional subject then? by d way i am also from cu.
Respected Mrunal sir, Please suggest some books according to the new syllabus.
@saikat,I’m not going to sit for ’13.I’m a 2014 aspirant.My optional is geography.What is your’s?
@Saikat
Are u going to sit for 2013.Me too from bengal and was very upset to see the kind of response from bengal as far as civil service is concerned.Good to see that the fire has not died down yet from bengal :)
@Sweta, My optional is English Literature. :)
@Prodipto, I think Bengal is gradually rejuvinating. R u also going to sit for 2013? :)
hi mrunal sir ,i thank you for doing such a great job.i belong from a village and i was not able to get previous years questions papers.i am glad to see that you made it possible.sir you are a boon to students like us.thank you once again and would pray to GOD to grant u courage for such wonderful job.may GGOD bless you ,with best wishes nandini singh.
Thank u sir,help full site.
Thank you.
thanx to you for doing that wonderful job for all of us .trying 1st time for pcs and need ur help by the time come.