Not special, one has to keep faith in himself and do hard work in the right direction

I am Nitin Singhania and ICS - AIR 51 in 2012. The credit goes to my parents, friends and mentors for encouraging and shown faith in me.

Exploring places of interest

Focus more on conventional topics in the GS as Paper-1 includes Indian History, Polity, Geography, Economics and Arts, and Culture, which covers a major chunk of the syllabus. I also read the Indian Year Book and Economic Survey. For C-SAT, I regularly practiced full-length mock tests in the last 4 months, which helped me to get a good score.

To avoid negative marking one must be careful while attempting Questions. However Questions in which 2 options are eliminated can be answered and it is worth the risk. 

I Focused more on current affairs for the GS paper and put more effort into preparing my optional subjects. Regularly writing the Test Series for all the papers did a great help to me finish the papers on time during Mains Examination. Moreover, as I started my preparation just after the prelims without waiting for the results, therefore I was able to cover the syllabus optimally.

I did not follow any particular book for the essay, but reading Yojna and Kurushetra was helpful in this regard. Developing a strategy to write an essay is more important than preparing different topics for the essay. Using quotes and phrases add to the quality of the essay. The conclusion should be forward-looking and optimistic

P K Mishra Sir