Essay remains one of the most important and most neglected papers. Due to the marks variations students generally devote a large amount of time in optional and even significant time in interview preparation. However, the same is not carried out for essay paper by most students.
Essay has a huge marks variation from 100-150 marks. This can make or break ones selection and I have seen many students crying over their essay marks getting below 100. On the other hand, a 150+ score is very high and can significantly boost your selection/rank. Moreover, this score can be achieved with a very minimal preparation given the right approach. Importance of essay can be gauged from the fact that devoting 5-10% of time of GS1, you can achieve 50% more marks in essay paper.
I was able to manage a good score of 141 marks in CSE-2018 which is among the highest this time. Moreover, this was a significant improvement from 132 marks in CSE-2017 which a slightly below average score last time. In this post, I will be sharing how to build up your essay preparation, clearing some basic misconceptions about essay and some important tips and pointers.
Building up your essay preparation.
Essay frightens many people since you have to write 1000-1200 words about a topic in 1.5 hours. The first doubt that comes to mind is how will I will be able to produce such a large content. However, this should be least of your worries. Once you progress with your GS and optional preparation, you will find that the given space is very constraining for laying out your thoughts. On the contrary, you will have to practice, so as to compress your writing style to accommodate all that you want to write.
Second issue that students face is the material for preparation. For me, essay preparation never demanded anything other than my GS preparation. Moreover, having a multi-dimensional GS-overlapping optional like Political Science helped me maintain confidence that any extra would not be required for me. GS preparation usually suffices for essay content.
However, keeping in touch with the changing dynamics of preparation, it is advisable to keep some content handy which you may not study in much detail in GS. A good way to do that given UPSC may ask any random topic in essay is to list out all the common recurring topics of essay over the years. I came to know about this when I joined essay series in ForumIAS. Some examples of these recurring topics are water conservation, AI, Mahatma Gandhi, health, education etc. It is better to list down such 30-40 topics and prepare additional information on them. Ex. thought-school of Mahatma Gandhi, latest innovations in AI, stats and data about health, education and popular quotes on these topics. A good reference point in Anudeep Durishetty sir’s notes, which you can find on his blog: https://anudeepdurishetty.in/writing-a-good-essay-in-upsc-mains-explained/.
Finally, most challenging and important issue that students face is structuring the essay. This is where most students face the ire of essay of paper, since despite having diverse and profound thoughts about a topic, students are not able to put their thoughts on paper in right flow.
Initially, essay paper scared me just like it does for many other students. The dilemma of what to put and how to start pestered me. However, a post on essay preparation really opened up my mind structuring its vast content: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2016/06/04/essay-strategy-essay-topper-chandra-mohan-garg-rank-25-essay-marks-149-cse-2015/
This strategy will help you in understanding, how objective essay writing is. UPSC wants people with balanced thought process, a logical exposition and clarity in understanding. Thus, your essay should have clearly defined dimensions. Ex. In a topic about AI, instead of going randomly about AI and its implications, examples etc., start with explaining what AI is, its evolution and then come to first its pros and then its cons. Finally, you can end with way forward and a conclusion. This helps in clearly separating various aspects of your essay and its better understanding, instead of jotting random points and making your essay difficult to comprehend.
I will further help in clarifying the structuring of essay by explaining how to approach writing an essay.
Starting the essay
The first step is choosing the essay. UPSC gives you a choice among 4 essay topics each for both the essays you write. Thus it becomes imperative to choose the right essay where you can perform your best.
-> First, choose an essay where you are most comfortable. By being comfortable, I mean where you have the best understanding and interpretation of topic and where you have a good amount of content at hand.
-> Don’t choose an essay just because very less number of people will choose it. UPSC does not give marks for daring, it gives marks for content.
-> Don’t choose an essay just because you have a brilliant example or stat or a very unique and innovative dimension on it. You get marks for the collective thought consolidation and not just a unique knowledge bit you had.
-> If you have a choice among a philosophical essay and an objective essay, choose a philosophical essay only if you have a prior practice of writing one and have a good confidence and command on such type of essays. Philosophical essays have brought the best and worst scores for people and thus should be chosen carefully.
The second step is deconstructing the essay topic. This step can also be followed while choosing among the topics, so that you can make a more informed choice. Deconstructing the essay is to ensure that you understand the demand of the essay. Ex In CSE-2018, in the topic “Management of Indian border disputes – a complex task”, many students misread and wrote an essay on management of Indian border rather than Indian border disputes.
Also, deconstructing the essay helps you in gauging all the possible dimension of the essay. Write down the topics and jot down all the important keyword from the topic. Ex in the above mentioned topic itself, important keywords are “Management”, “border”, “Indian border”, “Disputes”, “Complex”. Thus, you will have to mention about India’s border and its significance, all the borders with other countries and disputes with them, what India is doing to manage these disputes, complexities in these disputes, the other dimension, why they are complex, a touch upon how some of these disputes may not be as complex as they seem- integrating it with way forward and an innovative and futuristic conclusion like making border irrelevant. Naturally, multiple sub-dimensions will have to be touched within these dimensions. Ex. geography, history, politics, society, economics etc. dimensions of complexities. I hope you have received a gist of deconstruction from these examples.
Third and the most important step will have to be flowchart preparation. This is the layout of your essay. How you will proceed with the structure, all the dimensions, examples, stats, keyword etc. should be jotted down. Since cuttings and crossing-out is dangerous for your essay, you need to ensure that you have clarity on what and how to write before writing the essay. A good layout is given in this link https://www.insightsonindia.com/2016/06/04/essay-strategy-essay-topper-chandra-mohan-garg-rank-25-essay-marks-149-cse-2015/.
Ensure that you finish until this part for 1 essay by 20-30 minutes. After that the major part of your essay is over and what remains is replicating your layout. Another piece of advise which I will give you is to allocate pages to all sections of your essay in layout itself, so that you fit your essay within the given space. Stick to this page limit for each section, so that you can do justice to each section.
Writing the essay
Here I will be sharing some tips on improving the essay-writing part of yours. I learnt these tips gradually with my preparation from toppers essays and the test-series of Vision and Forum that I had joined.
Writing the intro: Intro of the essay should summarize the topic for the reader and should give a peak into what you have deciphered from the topic. Thus basically, it involves, explaining the topic to the reader and give a sense of what they will find inside. There are multiple ways in which you can start an essay.
- Quotes: These should be relevant to the topic. They certainly put a good ornamentation and first impression to your essay. You can memorize some good quotes of the recurring topics.
- Definition: You can start by defining each term. Ex. In the border topic, start by describing what borders are and what their significance are to a nation-state and then proceed by opening up the essay topic.
- Story: This is becoming a very popular and effective method of communicating your understanding of the topic. The story can touch one dimension of the essay and open up the essay topic through that. Ex. You can mention story of a Bengali family at India-Bangladesh border living near a geographically changing border due to floods and the social and economic complexities it is creating in their lives as well as for both nations. This is just an example, but you can pick out a story of your own and mention different layers of topic like territorial nationalism. Be sure to make the story emotive and interesting for the reader.
- Poem: This has started to get some parlance among the aspirants. You can prepare some common poems beforehand. I had practiced to make-up an 8 liner children’s poem on spot to highlight major aspects of topic. It took me around 10 minutes, but would create a solid impression on the evaluator as I observed in mocks. I currently do not have a sample, but will soon put up one for your reference.
Headings: Many students prefer writing headings within the essay to demarcate each section. This improves readability of your essay. Although, heading may also constrain you since you have strictly write only that section material and cannot innovate. Thus, it may be your choice to write headings based on your writing style and topic. Ex. I did not use heading in philosophical essays.
Flow of the essay: You have already done the structuring part of the essay to maintain flow during the flowchart part itself. However, to maintain continuity of the essay, you need to link sections as well as sub-sections of the essay for easy readability. Ex. While moving from “complexities in border disputes” to “not as complex as it seems”, do not directly jump to the succeeding section. Write an intervening paragraph mentioning that “till now we have only considered high-altitude complexities, however examples of will-power among the nations have shown that complexities are also in attitude and not just in altitude”.
Similarly write, “not just in geography, complexities find their way in politics too” and then start politics dimension
Way forward: If the topic of the essay permits, then you should certainly write way forward the reasons for this need not be explained. Give some innovative solutions.
Conclusions: Write an innovative conclusion having a futuristic and broad vision. This should ensure that your essay ends on a high note and create a positive mindset in the examiner. Ex. you can write how “nations should strive to make border irrelevant in line of Indian ethos of ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbkum”.
Essay was the most interesting paper for me because of the writing freedom and innovation opportunities it provided. Although not getting carried away in writing and ensuring that you do justice to the topic and demands of the essay in an objective fashion is what will fetch you marks. Remember, innovation is always appreciated, so be creative
A peace of my mind 