A few words on how to write a good essay
Essay carries 200 marks, sufficient to shuffle your rank in the final list. Those students who have one of their optional as History or Geography or Sociology or Pub add or Psycho etc., definitely have an advantage over others in writing essay. Science background students generally lack in this.
Here I can share my experiences. I have got only 85 marks in essay in CSE-2008 and that figure rose to 106 in CSE-2009. I can give a few tips on this:
1. Choosing the right topic: When you are sitting in the exam, there it’s the most important task and most difficult too. Reason is that you do not have much choice. Only 5-6 topics are mentioned. Moreover there wording is vague and quite general in nature. So choosing a right topic becomes very essential.
The main idea that one should keep in mind is that never to choose that topic which is clearly giving an advantage to a particular optional students e.g. let us say there is an essay on Indian Freedom Struggle: Process complete or not. Here I am just taking an example, so do not go into its details. The topic from its name itself is giving a fair indication that it’s a topic which will be best dealt by history optional students. If I having physics and punjabi lit. as optionals will try to do this, then I am having only that much knowledge of history which is essential for GS, which is virtually not more than 5% of that of the other person with history as optional. I hope that this point is clear.
Another thing is choosing that topic for which you have sufficient facts and figures in your hand. Try to substantiate as much as possible with statistics. It’s the best way to answer even in GS too.
Also try to choose that topic on which your ideas flow smoothly while writing the essay. Flow should not be turbulent but a smooth one, like a river.
2. Think for almost 30-35 minutes on that topic. I am telling you the optimum limit of
this.
Never dedicate too much time on thinking otherwise you will be left with very short time to write. Use pencil to accumulate all the ideas that come to your mind for that topic and write them down on the last page of the sheet. After jotting down the points, try to make their order from first to last.
While thinking, think along these lines: Historical, Legal (related to our constitution), Social and Economical (related to market), International.
3. Your start must be very effective. You can begin with a quotation or a question or a short story or anything which arouses curiosity.
4. Do not make headings while writing. This is the mistake I committed in CSE-08. Of course, you have to make paragraphs but without headings or underlinings.
5. Never miss any edition of Yojana. I started reading Yojana regularly after I got less marks in essay last year. Thereafter I did not miss any edition. Kurukshetra can also be followed but its approach is more rural and its more inclined to agriculture. But Yojana covers each and every thing. Try to remember the facts and figures from it.
6. Always write whatever is the latest. Try to follow the latest economic survey. Some basic facts should be on your finger tips like our irrigation potential, roads density: rural and urban, Rail network length, SC and ST population, Drinking water stats, Primary secondary and tertiary health care centres etc. (apart from deficits that you have to remember for GS economics).
7. Length of essay does matter. Try to cover the essay from each and every angle. Never show only one side of the picture. Try to give the best possible answer in a balanced manner. But obviously never try to write just for the sake of increasing the length. Whatever you write must be logically related to that topic.
8. End of essay should also be equally effective. Believe you me, even if your body of essay is not that great, a perfect end will do the job for you. Try not to repeat the same words. Use good synonyms and show the best of your word power while concluding. But beware of using jargons at the same time. Here again, you can use some quotation or try to give the answer if the start was from a question.
9. Practice before the actual exam in strict exam conditions.
Try to write essay on all the possible topics. But nowadays the trend is that they are not putting those topics which are more expected. Like I was preparing an essay on global warming since last 2 attempts but they did not ask despite this was such a hot topic. Essay on our education system was also most expected, because of the changes that are proposed in both the school and univ. education system but it also did not figure in the list of five.So, try to write essay on all the topics which are in news and also which are not that important. You can take such topics from previous 10 year essay papers.
I hope these ideas will help you while writing essay.
Thanks.
May Waheguru G make U an IAS officer.
