Mains Essay Exam Preparation Strategy: UPSC is India’s most competitive exam considering its vast syllabus and hurdles in the form of multiple tests. Like objective and objective tests, essays play an equally important role as they hold significant weightage to help you qualify for interviews.
But beware of the unpopular opinion that you can crack essays merely by the knowledge you grasped during General Studies (GS) preparation. Merely studying the syllabus won’t be enough to score well in the essays. So why risk your attempt by playing casually with the essays?
With the right essay-writing skills, you will be able to write all essays expertly. In this article, we’ll be sharing essential basic skills that will help you write essays with the right strategy. Follow the below step-by-step approach to understand the essay preparation strategy, which will help you in writing compelling essays for your mains.
Mains Essay
As you would have scanned through the mains upsc syllabus and must be aware that it consists of a total of 8 essays. This means that with a basic essay writing skill, you’ll hold the key to clear all these essay exams.
Out of the 8 essays, 2 essays are to be attempted in 3 hours, in 1,000 – 2,000 words each.
The essay comes in 2 sections i.e. A & B, where each of the sections allows you to choose 1 essay out of 4 essays. Each essay weighs 125 marks, making it to be a total of 250 marks.
But what are the qualifying criteria?
As per the UPSC notification, the written essay should stick close to the subject matter without drifting far away from it. Additionally, credits are given for a good essay presentation, as we elaborate this ahead.
Preparation Strategy: The Secret Sauce for an Effective Essay
The secret sauce behind a top-notch essay is relatable content that is easy to understand. Here’s what UPSC expects from you when it comes to writing an effective essay
“candidates may be required to write essays on multiple topics. They will be expected to keep close to the subject of the essay, arrange their ideas in an orderly fashion, and write concisely. Credit will be given for effective and exact expression.”
With the below essay tips, you’ll have the key to writing a high-scoring essay for the mains exams.
Starting with an outline
Behind every successful execution, there’s planning and strategy hidden in the background. The same holds true for effective essay writing for mains. Your outline is the blueprint for the essay and is the first step towards writing a convincing essay.
An effective essay involves multiple sub-topics to be covered which has to be clearly defined in the first step.
- Consider the topic and consider a few sub-topics that you’ll employ to present the main topic. Having finalized this, consider the examples/stories/analogies that you’ll use to elaborate on these sub-topics.
- Have clarity about the intent of each of these sub-topics while they are connecting the essay to the main topic.
- A well-defined and clear outline gives a good flow to your article, systematically connecting each perspective, keeping the reading simple, and giving a clear understanding.
Use Connecting Perspectives
Often, a complex essay is scrambled with multiple repeating ideas. This is a sure way to have your essay rejected. Instead of writing a hundred ideas, choose 3-4 aspects that you’ll use to connect the readers to the main topic. Go deep and elaborate on each perspective which offers depth and broadness to the essay.
Express Well
Writing an effective essay is not just about blurting out various challenges and ideas that you are aware of. It’s about strategically connecting various dots to make a picture.
If you think that a good essay is about writing in a sophisticated English language, it’s a misconception. No matter how good your grammar and language are, the skill to express the topic in proper words such as to make the reading coherent with the topic is essential.
Powerful Introduction
First impressions are the best impressions. The initial words of your essay i.e. the introduction can tell the examiner how good your essay is. Your examiner can determine the whole essay through a quality introduction. Your introduction should be able to convince the examiner about the efficacy of your essay.
Tips on how to present a powerful Introduction
- A good introduction uses a connecting scenario, followed by a direct explanation of the topic in a straightforward definition.
- If an introduction uses stats or quotes, it clearly makes you the authority of your subject right at the start, and convinces the readers that you know about the subject matter very well.
- At the end of the introduction, just briefly up what the readers are going to expect in the essay ahead, convincing them further on why they should keep reading it.
- An ideal introduction uses popular incidents from newspapers, novels, or books.
Compelling Conclusion
If you have already done with the essay, a compelling conclusion will be the cherry on top. All you need to do is summarise the writeup in just a sentence or two. To make it clear, mention your perspective which will give the direction and clarity to the essay topic. Make sure to not sound too theoretical and optimistic. Come with a practical outlook, preferably an effective slogan as a solution without overdoing it.
Additional Tips to prepare for Mains essay
Apart from the above preparation strategy, below are some additional tips that you can keep in mind to ace your mains essay.
- Read articles, and blogs online to improve your writing skills
- Make sure that your essay has the following – Introduction, body, and conclusion
- Practice writing essays on any current affairs topic to improve your writing skills.
- Get feedback on how to improve your essays from experienced teachers.
- Make it a habit of reading newspapers as most of the essays are about current affairs
Conclusion
UPSC exam essays are never to be taken lightly. It’s not the mere knowledge that can help you write high-scoring essays but a good presentation and expressing ability. This takes some skills that we’ve shared in this article. These simple tips will give you a boosting start for writing essays that will help you rank well and stand out in the UPSC competition