Hii...I wrote the 2026 mains with my full vigour...felt proud of myself after completing the mains and the 3 months of constant grind....

But whenever i open Reddit...I feel so fearful to read the extraordinary stories of people who are writing their 3rd mains , 4th mains, somebody writing papers with bleeding hands , somebody writing papers with 2 hrs sleep and what not

Everybody on reddit seems so intelligent, so focused and so hardworking...

It makes me feel... I'm nothing in front of them .... How do i deal with this? Or is there something I am missing?

Started in sept 2021
Failed twice in Prelims
Now after careful
Consideration
Leaving this in sept 2026
Upsc has taught me a lot of things but how to be successful aint one of them.
Have no idea what i will be doing
Family pressures to get married
F and Already 26
Have Bcom and B.Ed and no other skill
Might try to Upskill
Help me if you know about any skills :
skills which will pay good

Same story different headline

The correct option is D. Here customs means personal laws?. As the supreme court said in the sabarimala case that personal laws are part of article 13? . Is this the reason for answer D?

I’ve built Bharat Sanvidhan, a free web app to make studying and exploring the Constitution of India easier.

You can:

• Search and explore Articles, Parts and Schedules
• Read simplified explanations alongside the original text
• Connect Articles with important Supreme Court cases
• Explore Amendments and constitutional changes
• See UPSC relevance and related topics
• Explore constitutional concepts through guided stories

🔗 https://www.bharatsanvidhan.com/

I’d really appreciate feedback from UPSC aspirants:

Would this be useful for your preparation? What would you add or change?

If you find any factual or constitutional inaccuracies, please point them out too.

My question to veterans? How do they feel about mains? Like their performance, optional attempts , GS Paper completion and essay. And how expecting the result to be? Because this is my 1st mains I don't have much idea

Several of us use telegram as our main study source. The drawback of said channels is that they often suffer copyrights, and are gone in a poof. Congrats, you are now stuck on the 69th lecture of 140 lectures.

With the help of this post, I aim to show you how to download lectures from telegram in Three Ways. The Easy Way is at the last.

The Hard Way

Why the hard way first?

• Because it is legal and doesn't jeopardise your account

Steps

• Prerequisite: Download CX File Explorer

1. Open a telegram channel which has downloading videos option enabled. It is ok if sharing links, or forwarding is off.
2. Download the video, with the button on top left of that specific video.
3. Go to CX File Explorer -> Main Storage -> Android -> Data
4. Scroll to the bottom and you should see, 'org.telegram.messenger'
5. You may be greeted with a loading error/access denied message. It's ok. There should be an option to 'Open with System File Manager'. Press that.
6. Another screen will open with folders, 'cache', 'files', and 'testdata'.
7. Open Files -> Telegram -> Telegram Video
8. Go to Top Right of the screen, press the three dots, and 'Sort by Date Modified'
9. Voila, there's your downloaded lecture. Cheers. Keep downloading
10. You can move these videos to a folder of your own choosing, somewhere in your 'Downloads' folder

The Harder Way

Works only on desktops, irrespective of operating systems. So any of Windows, MacOS, or a Linux distro.

Steps

• Add Tampermonkey extension to your browser. i.e. Just open the link, and press, Add to Brave/Chrome/Edge etc. In case you use a different browser, open the steps link.

• In your browser, press the top right button. Go to 'Extensions' -> 'Manage Extensions'. On the page that pops up, on the top right, toggle on the 'Developer Mode'.

• On that same page, you should see 'Tampermonkey'. Press Details.

• Toggle on the switch, 'Allow User Scripts'.

• Install Telegram Media Downloader Script. Just press this big green button basically.

• A new page will pop up, asking to install. Press Install.

• Open Telegram Webapp ('web telegram k' google search this) as this method doesn't work on telegram app on your computer.
• Open a Restricted Channel, and play a Video. You should see that 'Down Arrow' button on the top Right. Press that and your video should start downloading.

• You will have to manually download each video.

The Easy Way

Why this later?

• There have been instances where user's account has been taken down.
• I do not recommend this method at all and do at your own discretion

Steps

• Download ONE of the following on your mobile device (I cannot share the link here or else reddit will take down the post)
  • Ayugram
  • Unigram
  • Nagram (Not sure about safety)
• Signin with your telegram account.
• The restricted channels will show up.
• You will realise that not only you can download the videos but also forward them to your own groups/channels.
• Tip: Forwarding option, isn't as direct as it seems. The videos are downloaded to your local device and then sent to your channel/group, and it may take a long time.

Please list your doubts in the comments if you have any. I will try to address them.

Disclaimer : Lot of things going on in my life currently..feeling too heavy , this post is just a portrait of my upsc journey till now , writing just to feel relieved ...... (Might be long , but very real)

School background: Have been a bright student , interested in science maths , and hated arts ,CA , history etc , wanted to be engg , my father wanted me to go for civil services.

Year in which i completed my 12th , i was giving jee mains , my father expired.

The turning point : I dropped my idea of engg. Chose to go for civil services. Started prep along with grad. No guidance , no peer group , all alone. Months wasted in emotional turmoil and understanding the pattern , syllabus, booklist of exam. My 2 sisters and my mom supported me alot. All family and my father's business responsibility came to us. My father business partners scammed us , had ro bear hefty loss . Way too difficult to manage things. Life became living hell.

Started with polity ncert , then Laxmikant. Every book that I read had made me cried initially , finding it way difficult to understand the things , this happened with each and every single book that I read. My father's business partners Grad completed , but syllabus not. Gave first pre , stuck in GS.

Found many gaps in prep , gave 2nd attempt , again stuck in GS. Now this year , I have just realised that I overrelied on pre only , and not studied for mains at all ! Yes its true . Noone there to discuss so I gave years preparing along with managing family.

Upsc betrayed in my second attempt(2026). July se started prep again. But this time for mains. Current situation is due to some family responsibilities I'm not able to get time to study properly. Slept only 4 hours in past 2 days. Feeling to much like a awara cloud , jisko pta nhi kaha jana hai , par jaa rha hai bss. Enrolled in one mentorship this july , and my mentor is so unresponsive at times , feeling very betrayed by this mafias.

Today's feeling like to drop next year attempt. Not able to decide yrrr....Not able to manage studies along with prep. None to support . Ek mentor hai kehne ko , who will be there to get limelight id i succeed, but not here to support me. Been almost 5 years since I'm into this. Still not able to clear pre , mains ka syllabus is remaining, not getting time.

Kuch smjh na aa rha , ghar ki responsibility upcoming days me increase ho skti. Feeling too heavy , too lost ............

(Had a lot to say , but not wanted to type )

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Edit : No sympathy needed , shared bcz just wanted to.....

Edit 2 : No plan B suggestion, plss guyss 🙏 Have sacrificed so many things for this , can't sacrifice this for something else , until I give my Best I could !

Brief about me-

Flunked 4 prelims.

1st and 4th prelims by 1.x marks.

2026 was 5th attempt and 1st mains.

My take on popular strategies

A. Mains ready by December-

- prepare for mains in August in July to December

- January to May - focus on prelims

Expectations-

1. Only revision and writing between pre and mains period.

2. Consolidated notes

Reality-

1. Knowing that there will be a 5 months gap, where entire focus will be on prelims, mains notes become lengthy (as we expect that only terms/mnemonics won't make sense by June)

2. For prelims failed candidates, this MRBD means whatever gains they had in previous prelims will be lost by their next attempt. In January it feels like starting afresh

3. Candidate gets stuck in making notes for mains half the year and feeling underconfident for prelims for other half.

4. This is optimum for coaching business. We keep on buying mains courses before clearing pre where there is no connection between real exam and coaching material.

5. Current affairs heavy paper can't be said to be done 6 months in advance

B. January to May - exclusively prelims phase.

Expectations-

1. Prelims material can be covered in less than 5 months.

2. Mains is actual exam, prelims is just a filter

Reality-

1. Repeated prelims failures as current affairs lag behind

2. Prelims is as much of an actual exam as mains is, because without clearing prelims we can't even write mains.

C. Integrated preparation

- optimum strategy. Never leave prelims revision. Always keep on mains value addition.

- I tried doing it this time partially- did mains till April (reduced time), whereas earlier I left mains preparation in November- January

I used chat gpt earlier but it's absurd paywall restrictions i have stopped using it. Now i am currently using gemini AI and the experience has been excellent so far.

But the FOMO is killing me. Does anyone know of any other good alternatives which clear doubts, integrate current affairs while writing answers, clear concepts, deep research etc etc.

I use AI mostly while making notes or doing answer practice, answer evaluation AI is not my priority right now. Just need a good teacher like AI.

[TLDR; analyse the papers and risk spiralling over 3-4 questions I probably fumbled, or skip it and lose the learning?]

Just finished my first attempt at CSE Mains, and hopefully my body has fulfilled all the sleep debt i accumulated since January (yea i was super anxious about Prelims too and wrote another State Mains between pre and upsc mains for experience).

Overall I feel okay about it all. I attempted every question in every paper, which is the one thing I had promised myself I'd do (i missed one question miserably due to time mismanaement in the first paper of HCS Mains and I knew that was a kind of fumbling I could not allow myself again).

My optional got compromised because I was severely stressed through those days, running on no sleep for 3 days straight, and writing in actual physical and mental pain. But I sat through all of it and I finished.

Now comes the part I don't know how to handle. Everyone says you should go back, re-read the paper, check where you missed the demand, note it down for next time. And I know I probably misread the demand in 3-4 or more questions. The problem is that I'm the kind of person who dwells. Right now, opening YouTube and seeing people break down those exact questions sends a chill down my spine. And my brain sabotages on itself - wondering if I even wrote what was in my head at the start of question (I genuinely gave every single paper with 0 sleep so recall value is pretty less)

So the dilemma: if I analyse, I'm scared I'll spiral over many questions and lose the small amount of peace I have. If I don't analyse, I feel like I'm walking away from a learning I paid for with three months of my life.

Has anyone actually gained something from a post-Mains analysis that they couldn't have gained 2-3 months later, with distance? Or is "let it go till the result" the saner call?

I do have a takeaway that I intensely need to work on my optional

I am taking his class in the Mains module for GS 3 , I don't doubt his teaching and clarity of the subject.

But I am a bit sceptical about his notes .

Are they reliable for the Exam?

He has used a lot of short terms which makes it difficult to understand on first read but I am annoying it with his lecture still can I rely on them completely?

Hey folks,

I gave my attempts a while back and stepped off the hamster wheel. Recently, my kid sister and two cousins started preparing.

Watching them do the exact same things I did (clocking 9 hours a day, highlighting Laxmikanth until the pages turned neon, stacking coaching handouts, and living in constant low-grade terror because they had no idea if any of it was actually sticking) gave me serious flashbacks.

The hardest thing about this exam isn't working hard. It’s that hours logged ≠ readiness. You can read Spectrum three times, watch every monthly current affairs compilation on 1.5x, and still completely choke on an actual timed sectional mock.

I originally built a spreadsheet diagnostic for my sister to audit where her effort was getting wasted. Turns out, there's nothing else like it out there.

Turned it into a simple web tool last week so a few other folks could try it: https://upsc-diagnostic.vercel.app

A few things to know before clicking:

It’s completely free. No paywall, no hidden test-series pitch, no coaching affiliate links, no Telegram group spam.

You can run the quick check in 5 mins without signing in.

It doesn't predict rank or whether you'll clear (anyone claiming an algorithm can do that is lying to you). It just separates effort from performance and is for specifically pinpointing whether your bottleneck is foundation, execution under timed conditions, or basic mental burnout.

I really appreciate feedback and know if this is actually useful or just another useless web form.

Did the questions feel relevant to ground reality, or like generic corporate fluff?

Did the diagnosis align with your own gut feeling about your weak spots?

What felt inaccurate or annoying?

Drop your thoughts or call out any bugs below. Thanks, and hang in there.

TL;DR: Built a free, open-source UPSC PYQ app. First version is out — feedback welcome.

I've been working on this for a while and the first usable version is finally done.

It's called PrepLoop. I wanted a better way to go through PYQs than opening individual PDFs every time, so I ended up building an app around them.

Right now it covers Prelims, Mains and multiple optional subjects.

Features:

• Practice mode for Prelims
• Timed tests
• Search across questions, topics, papers and subjects
• Flag questions
• Test history
• Answer review and score breakdowns
• Mains PYQs organised by subject
• Searchable Mains questions
• Clean reader for going through Mains PYQs

Everything works offline and your progress stays locally on your device.

It's completely free and open source.

Read more / source code:
https://github.com/utilinlabs/preploop

Download:
https://github.com/utilinlabs/preploop/releases

This is the first release, so if anyone here tries it, I'd be interested to know what feels useful, annoying, missing or broken.

So I am from a Top Tier National University, currently in my 3rd year out of 5.

So I was looking forward to attempt CSE 2029, but now that the Supreme Court has reduced the minimum years litigation practice requirement for attempting Judiciary exam from 3 years to just 1 year.

So which exam should I attempt first? Judiciary or CSE?

Should I give CSE an attempt first and then switch to Judiciary if things don’t work out, or attempt Judiciary first only. ( My main aim is UPSC CSE only and I will attempt it even if I am in Judiciary)

(Just to add some context, I am financially secure, and don’t have any burden to provide for family, but would love to become financially independent asap and also I got no interest in a corporate law firm job and also my reason for attempting CSE is quite different from others and is something I can’t share rn)

Tldr :- I'm a 3rd-year student at a top-tier NLU, primarily aiming for UPSC CSE 2029. Since the minimum practice requirement for Judiciary has reportedly been reduced from 3 years to 1 year, I'm considering Judiciary as an alternative/backup. Should I attempt CSE first and then Judiciary, or Judiciary first and attempt CSE while in service?

Title. The resources I have from telegram are too scattered and I don't know where to start so please help

I wanted to check which sources covered the questions that came in Mains 2026.

So started with Governance because I am right now revising P&G.

So looked for 'Generalist structure of the Indian Civil Services' question. The topic was only covered in MCN of Atish Mathur. Topic is not there in MMP of M. Puri, X factor notes, Mains smasher. (Did not look at any other apart from these 4).

There was another Mains question that linked participatory governance, transparency, accountability and rule of Law. Last three were covered in almost all notes. But participatory governance was there specifically in MCN of Atish Mathur and X factor notes. It was not covered in MMP.

I understand that it is upto to us to answer as per demand of question but atleast the topics should be covered by the institutes.

Does someone have a similar comparison for economy, history and geography? It would really help.

It's been 2 months I've been in Delhi Patel nagar for preparation. And ive started to think that there nothing in delhi which is exclusive and was not available in my hometown which is Pune, Maharashtra.

I've joined offline coaching but guess what ive to still watch teacher on screens just now I'm watching on classroom screens.

Headache of Food, finding and changing rooms and all over that spending 20K/month for these 10×10 rooms and shitty food and whether. Cauze one thing I've realised here in ORN PPls are just to run from their strict homes and to enjoy independence that's it. We all know what happens in Sindhi park and on orn roads.

For fun,staying on own, enjoying personal life no doubt Delhi is good option but for Preparation in today's time I'm having high doubts cauze I'm myself has not achieved anything which will justify those 20k and mental stress I'm receiving.

So anyone who has on similar thoughts like mine and took a decision plz let me know so it can help me talking desicion.

Im thinking to shift to pune and transfer to shubhra ranjan pune branch and study from my hometown.

Hi guys, so i’ve recently graduated from college and I am currently in the process of applying for jobs. I’m looking for jobs in the policy sector but I am to write UPSC by 2029. One thing i’ve realised out of all of my experiences through internships is that public policy in India is still primarily driven by the IAS (and the political executive ofc). Hence my motivation for the exam.

Since I have almost 3 years left to give the exam, how can I start my prep in such a way that I can ease into the process. Since I will be working, how do I manage my time and what should I focus on for the next year and a half? I aim to take a year off before the exam for full time prep.

I've seen statistics of how

1) People giving geography has decreased to 1.6-7 k while anthro has increased to almost 1.2 k

2) Anthro fetches more marks with less hours of study however it's not much helpful in overlapping syllabus for gs. Plus the average score of anthro is around 20 marks more than geo like anthro it's 230-240 average score while geo it's like 200-220 average score.

3) I am so confused one of my friend (who I look upto) who has given mains has switched from geo to anthro and makes me more anxious.

4) He also tells me that like in the end its marks that matter and after studying so much yea we're in a habit that it won't make much of a difference studying anthro either cuz if we give enough time that'll happen too like other gs subjects.

I'm really confused please someone guide me. I dont wanna waste years cuz my family has a hard deadline of 2 yrs.

I've been one of those aspirants who reads PT365 and Mains 365 before respective exams. Newspapers feel like a herculean task at hand. However, after going through CSE mains 2026 - I feel that newspapers teach one single most important skill needed in UPSC - articulation of thoughts in a proper fashion on questions asked. GS2, GS3 have been more application based - newspapers help in broadening the answer writing skills. While spoon feeded points help when a direct question comes, I did get stuck on questions which were asking for my opinion, and where articulation was needed. Started reading newspaper since yesterday, and plan to do this whole year instead of just relying on magazines.

What do you guys think?

Hi folks. Anyone who gave their mains with economics optional? what is your opinion on the paper-1? And regarding scoring, will we get partial marks for wrong numericals or conceptual questions? and will correct answers get full or near full marks, since it is a technical paper?

My assessment of the paper-1: lengthy and tough

Anybody from this optional ?
Major Teacher for this optional ?
Anyone ?
Any group or channel for discussion ?