Muskan Jindal wrote the UPSC exam in the year 2019 and secured an all India rank of 87 at the age of 22.

• Interviewer: Tell us something about yourself.

Muskan: I hail from a town called Baddi in Himachal Pradesh, and completed my B.Com from SD College, Chandigarh, in 2018.

Becoming an IAS officer was my childhood dream, and I was very clear with this idea since 5th standard and my father also told me to be entirely focused on the CSE preparation.

• Interviewer: How did you start your preparation for CSE?

Muskan: I took online and offline guidance from some institutes but dwelt mainly on self-study.

I also referred to the topper’s talk, referred to strategies by toppers but didn’t follow the strategies blindly.

You have to keep faith in your strategy and have competition with just yourself. Know your Strengths and Weaknesses and work accordingly.

Self-study plays an important role but it must be open to some external evaluation and hence test Series is a must for both prelims and mains examination.

• Interviewer: What was your strategy for the prelims?

Muskan:  After the first reading of NCERTs, I  referred to the Previous Year Question Papers ( for Prelims) of that subject. It’s very important to refer to the PYQs to understand the demand of the examination and to identify the important topics of the UPSC Syllabus.

I gave 15 mocks one month before my prelims examination, before prelims 2 test in a week. I used to analyze all my tests, identify my weak areas and revise them thoroughly to avoid mistakes in the future.

• Interviewer: What was your strategy for the mains?

Muskan:  I wrote about 3 to4 mains mock test from my home itself.

I relied mostly on the previous year’s paper(2013 onwards ), took help from Arihant’s (model answer questions)book. This was the stage where I started answer-writing.

• Interviewer: What was your overall strategy?

Muskan: Keeping resources least and revising them again and again, kept revision limited 4 to 5 times.

Solve tests, analyze them, identify your mistakes, revise and repeat was my mantra.

• Interviewer: What was your optional?

Muskan: Commerce and Accountancy were my optional.

I referred to the popular Ranker’s notes on Commerce and Accountancy. These notes were enough for me to score in my optional.

• Interviewer: Tell us something about your interview experience?

Muskan:  My interview was happy for me, questions were based on my State(Himachal Pradesh) and from the recent current affairs(media trails and India -China issue).

• Interviewer: Were you sure of cracking this exam and getting a rank within 100?

Muskan: Yes I was sure of getting my name on the list but getting the top hundred rank was an overwhelming thing.

• Interviewer: How did you study for ethics and case studies?

Muskan: For ethics, I wrote down the important topics from the ethics syllabus and prepared real-life examples for it beforehand, which made my answers attractive.

For case studies, I made sure that my solutions were realistic.

• Interviewer: Any words for future aspirants?

Muskan: Never compare yourself with others.

Have faith in yourself.

Focus on your efforts.

Having a positive bend of mind for this exam is very much required.

• Interviewer:  What are your expectations from this service?

Muskan: I would like to work on women empowerment and child labor.

Thank You