Ashima Mittal was born on June 30, 1992, and as of 2021, she is 29 years old. She is now married. Her current assignment is in Maharashtra. She is from Jaipur, Rajasthan’s capital city. Ashima had gone to IIT Mumbai to complete her engineering degree and had also started working before taking the UPSC exam.
She had taken the UPSC test three times. On her first attempt, she failed the exam. In her second attempt, she received a score of 328, and in her third attempt, she received a score of 12.
While studying for the UPSC exam, Ashima was also pursuing a master’s degree in Anthropology. She worked as a multitasker and studied for the CSE exam with the same attention and hard effort she put into her master’s programme.
The UPSC Journey of Ashima Mittal
She was considering taking the Civil Services Exam, but she wasn’t sure. She only intended to work in the private sector for the purpose of gaining experience. She acquired a private employment in Gurgaon with the Eastern Young Company.
She worked there for a while before realising that was not what she wanted to do. This was the point at which she decided to take the UPSC CSE exam.
She attempted the CSE exam for the first time in 2015 but did not pass. Everyone thought she’d be able to pass the UPSC on her first attempt. Ashima felt confident that she would pass. She made it to the interview round, however she failed the exam with a score of 10 out of 100.
That was the moment she realised she couldn’t always win. She had always believed that she would pass all of her exams since elementary school, and she did. However, I only scored a tenth of a point on the CSE exam.
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After the first attempt, she felt depressed. After a month of the examination, she also lost her grandmother. It was a challenging moment for her as she dealt with harsh circumstances. She eventually realised that the most essential thing is to figure out how to get out of the difficult position.
Ashima felt confident in her ability to pass the UPSC CSE examination on her second attempt. In the country, she was rated 382nd. Her family was ecstatic to see her succeed and accomplish her goal.
My advice to students and hopefuls studying for this exam is as follows:
- Prepare for this exam with a plan and strategy depending on your time schedule and availability of time in the day. And nowadays, there are numerous internet videos of the toppers that you may watch and pick the things that fit you best according to your knowledge.
- Preparing a complete syllabus for all GS papers. Every term in the curriculum has a specific meaning and application, so study them attentively.
- Today’s questions have gotten extremely analytical, therefore focusing on current events and the analytical aspect is very crucial. So you have to research the topic, analyse it, and then compose the major replies.
- Practice writing answers is crucial, and one should be able to answer all of the questions in the mains exam. Furthermore, you must compose solid replies, which will only come after a lot of practise, and this is not a one-day activity; you must devote months to this task and do so on a regular basis.
- Then there’s the issue of taking notes and consolidating them. Notes are quite helpful in revising the subject, and if you have condensed the information into one document, it will be much easier for you to read and comprehend it. I did the same approach, making different copies of each GS paper and consolidating the static content of each document in one location. As a result, it aids in the development of confidence as well as the rapid revision of subjects several times.
- The next point to discuss is the sources that should be read. I’d want to emphasise the importance of keeping your sources to a minimum and revising them several times. This will be far more beneficial to you than reading from various sources and not being able to modify even once.
- Test series are very crucial for both prelims and mains. It assists you in identifying your skills and shortcomings, as well as areas where you should focus your efforts. It also assists you in determining whether or not you will be able to complete the paper on time, as well as the kind of rivals you will face in the mains exam.
