Essay paper in UPSC is like an elevator button. This is the only chance in the entire exam process where the candidate is the king of his choice.With four options at your disposal for each of the two essays that you’re required to write, you can either soar to the peak or ebb away to oblivion.

I have always had self doubts about handling this paper as I was never good at writing essays and my vocabulary was average too, modestly speaking.

When prelims got over , there were exactly 120 days for mains. And before that I had not even written one essay. Just like every other aspirant, it became clear to me that ESSAY,ETHICS and OPTIONALS were the game changers of the examination as there is no denying the fact that GENERAL STUDIES is an unpredictable beast, difficult to tame.

The marks trend of my optional paper (Tamil Literature) in the past 5 years was not encouraging. It hovered around an average of 260-270. So it became evident that I have no other option but to strengthen my score in essay and ethics.

I got inputs from senior aspirants at Anna University on dealing with this essay paper and started going through previous years’ question papers. Check out the Analysis of previous year papers here -