Finishing UPSC Mains Paper on Time

One of the biggest problem you may face at this stage in Mains preparation is finishing paper on time. At times, I receive very good copies from Test Series students.. but then I realize that they’ve taken a lot of time extra than it was allotted. While it’s okay in the beginning stages of preparation, right now, less than a month before exam, you should be finishing paper on time.

Have a proper plan w.r.t. GS as well as PSIR paper. Have milestones in between.

For example

1. In GS you can plan to give 7 mins to each 10 marker and 10 minutes to each 15 markers. It will make up 170 mins total. 10 mins can be buffer.
2. Now, each question will take different amount of time in reality. But the average should come out like this.
3. Accordingly, you should be on 9th question (10marker) at the end of 1st hour, at the end of 2nd hour, you should be on 15th question…
4. If at end of one hour, you’re still lagging behind, you can pace up and catch up. If you’re already ahead, you can afford to give some more time to a difficult question.

Similarly for PSIR

1. Total 250 marks, 3 hrs. (10 – 10 markers, 6 – 20 markers, 3 – 20 markers)
2. You can plan to write questions worth 85-90 marks every hour.
3. That would mean that you finish 1st question ( 5 sub-questions) and 2 sub-questions from 2nd question by end of first hour (total 7 questions), same in 2nd hour (total 7 questions).. and then remaining 5 questions in last hour.

Having milestones really helps. You can plan in a different manner than given above.. but have a plan. This will ensure that you get timely feedback and accordingly adjust yourselves.

Hope all of your studies are going well. Do not even slightly give up at this stage. Nobody knows whether he’ll clear the exam until results are out. While Prelims is somewhat predictable in this sense, Mains is totally not. So do you best for remaining days and you may very well find your name for the next phase.