Download Read Free magazines online

It may not be possible for aspirants to buy the hard copy of all magazines(for exam and time pass) . Luckily many of the magazines are available free online. Like newspapers half or more of the content would be entertainment. So read with caution!.

Outlook

Outlook magazine( Click here )

Tehelka

Tehelka (Click here)

Frontline

Front line (Click here)

Week

The week (Click here)

Civil service mentor (Click here)

*The external links may get broken in course of time. The purpose of the post is to show case the free availability of magazines. It doesn't indicate that these magazines are needed for civils. 

Answer writing for upsc mains ias civil services

The writing style is as important as study in mains. Most of the aspirants study loads of info for mains. I have seen guys who would refer every crazy book ever written on a subject. There are guys who subscribe to every magazine on news stand. Many of them end as walking wikipedias but don’t get selected to civils, due to wrong writing style.

Answer ‘the’ question

Answer what is being asked and not what you know. Educationists constantly remind the students of this in their classes. The reason being: Most students tend to write what they know, but fail to transform information into “what is being asked”. Thus ‘explain’ becomes ‘critical analyses, and ‘write short notes’ becomes ‘long answers’. The error in length, content and context is a common error.

Flow

The answer must have a certain amount of flow while being read. How would it sound if a rock song is mixed intermittently with classical music?. Many of answers we write would be like that. The natural flow of thought, a good order etc is needed. This is a difficult thing to achieve. Since we write the answer, we feel a flow in it. The person who reads it must feel it.

Adding colors to your answer

Pictures,Diagrams, depictions, underlining etc add color to the answer. A picture is worth thousand words. Adding pictures, diagrams etc will add value to your paper.

An easy way is using flow diagrams/charts. I found that flow diagrams have 2 benefits. One it consumes lot of space! So my paper would weight equal as other prolific writers. It’s easy to draw and easy to digest for the respected person who values my paper.

Underlining is to highlight the areas we know. This is especially good when gasification is done. The underlining is done to show that we got some solid points along with the gas. If we don’t underline it, the reader may miss it.

 

stages of answer writing

Answer writing for ias civil service mains exams

There is no fixed way of answer writing. Aspirants continuously innovate to make the answer informative and attractive. The article is to introduce you to the ways of answer writing.

New upsc pattern

The new question pattern of upsc is aimed at giving away to rote learning and introducing creative ways of answer writing. One of the changes is the variation is the words in answers. There are 50 words, 20 words, 100 words etc needed for questions. This calls for adjusting your knowledge according to the number of words needed.

The content in your mind while writing the exam is fixed. You need to stretch it, condense it according to need. Some aspirants would have studied loads of material enough for an essay for say: spot fixing, and if upsc asks it for 2 marks!. They they find themselves in a tricky spot.

The skill to expand, contract answers is needed. There are people who are staunch opponents of coaching of any kind for ias exams. In fact, good coaching centres teach these skills. These are skills that the high school teacher forgot to say; unfortunately we got to learn it after graduation!

Word length

There may be topics for which you need only 100 words, but you know more than 600 words. Its well and good that you know the answer, but the teacher can’t put you 20 marks for a 6 mark question. There are aspirants who go on writing answers all they know, forgetting that he has crossed the word limit. In the enthusiasm to “write the best answer”, he ends up with a boring long answer.

Aspirants thought “wow, i wrote all i know”

Examiner’s thought “the kid made a test series when asked about IPL”

In short, when asked to play a crisp short film, don’t play “once upon a time in America” or “the god father”; the MI or F&F would be better option.

Upsc civil service ias topper's blogs

Adding more blogs. These blogs have experiences of civil service toppers. They have taken time to patiently jot down points to help you. Hope it helps you in your future ventures.

A blog by Bijan Ias

Check it out

A blog by Anurag Tripathi

Check it out

Abhijeet aggarwal's blog. It has links to many useful blogs.

Check it out

Topper's blogs

I had put the links of many topper's blogs in an earlier post (Click here to read it).

Here i introduce more blogs to you.

The blog civil service dream written by tanvi, ashutosh and cyril has around 700 members in followers list. There are quite a number of useful articles for you.

Check it out 

In his blog, Kashish Mittal shares his ideas about civil service exams

Check it out

Blog by prabhjotsingh. He shares his experiences and nostalgic moments. A good read . Scroll in blog archives to 2010 to see his tips for aspirants. 

check it out

Interview Upsc experience questions answers IAS IFS IPS

Another mega list for upsc interviews for ias ips ifs irs posts. The civil service interview can push your rank to the top of the list. The previous upsc interview answers and questions give you an idea about the way of preparation. It is a direction for you on the type, depth, areas from which questions can come. Do consider the context in which the question was asked. The matter asked in the interview may be unfamiliar to you. This is mainly coz the subject may have been important at the time of the interview but lost its relevance now(say it appeared in that days newspaper), or it was related to that person’s profile.

Rajesh Meena Bujeta’s Interview AIR 36

Click to read

Abhi’s interview

Click to read

Interview @ Rajni razdan board

Click to read

Ravi’s interview

Click to read

Interview transcript Kamnashih sen posted@ Vision ias

Click to read

Sarkar interview blog has a big list of upsc interviews

Click to read

Hope these interview transcripts help you in creating an interview plan 

Upsc civil service interview experience IAS IPS

I post below a mega list of interview experiences found on internet. Reading the interview experience as it happened in the upsc interview room is helpful than reading the interviews done by journalists after a person gets ias exams. Don’t be upset seeing a difficult question, the question may have been asked during a particular context or because the person comes from a particular background. The transcripts must be attended to understand the depth, areas and the context in which they were asked.

Repeat! :To achieve maximum from these interviews look for the context, depth and areas that were asked. By context i mean the timing,occasion, profile of the candidate...else you may get the impression that odd questions were asked. The interview experiences posted range from year 2007 to latest.

2013 interview

Interview experience 1

Chakresh Mishra describes his interview experience 2013

Interview experience 2 , You can read his previous interview experience too in his blog

 LINK1 Interview experience chakresh mishra

 LINK2

A very good collection of interview experiences have been posted in a blog, the download link is given below.

Download from google drive  

Pawan kadyan has posted his experience in his blog

PWWWN

Interview posted on his blog by anuragbuzz

Interview experience 4 (year 2007)

(*Click the hyperlinked terms to reach interview text)

How to crack civil service exams Part 2

Hope you have loved the toddler steps 1, 2 and 3 in earlierpost. In case you didn’t it may be time for you to leave for doing something good. If not lets continue.

The  ncert, the headlines are just the beginning. Now you have to expand the knowledge. We will see how the knowledge can be made little more advanced.

Step1 : Start seeing magazines. There are magazines like yojana, civil service chronicle, civilspedia, kurukshetra etc. At this step just take all these in hand and see the pages. We are checking if they have left any blank pagesJ. Just try to read a few lines here and there. The best place to see them is a book store or a library. Don’t jump start and subscribe for 2 years since you will get 20% discount. In this step you have understood that there are many magazines which are writing about national, international matters and that the authors write thousands of words on each matter.

Step2 : Seeing books. The best way to see (not to buy) is to meet a senior who is trying for civils or library. Touch the books which you have heard from fellow aspirants or heard from topper interviews. Check how it weighs!. If the book doesn’t harm you , then read a few lines. See if it goes inside your head or is it making circles above it.

Step3: Internet. Yeah, the name would remember you of social networking and other things pleasurable. But now were are here for it. Internet is known to be a source for studying too. Dont wait for all the pornnn in the internet to dry , before you start studying. In toddler steps you have seen the syllabus. Take it back, and search a few topics you saw in that. Eg: Biodiversity or population. See what internet has to say and what Wikipedia has to say in particular. The Wikipedia can give you a good introduction to some topics (NOT all topics). See if the information makes you happy or sad.

How was steps 1, 2 ,3 in this page. Did it go well with you?. The journey has just started. If you are okay with steps 1, 2, 3 in this page then its time to sit down and have little thought.

What you gotta think?

Which magazines i saw has written matter and not rubbish? Which is the magazine that i can cover/afford/available?. Are the books too heavy for me? Would social networking eat my time while browsing?

Think and if necessary repeat steps 1, 2, 3 to get a clear view. Ask your friends, search online, ask toppers to have a clear idea. Now after this exercise you must be able to

1 choose atleast 2 magazines which will be useful to you

2. Choose few books which you are going to read

3. Browse internet a bit and see for information that is useful.

In case it doesn’t work out for you even after repeated trials, then again it’s time to say ZULLe’( a term in my local language used to indicate that i am quitting the game)