It has been 9 years since the UPSC completely overhauled the UPSC syllabus. A lot has been said and written about the mains strategy. There are multiple schools of thoughts about mains strategy.
Two Major school of thoughts
"Writers" School of thought: Advocates that writing practice is the most crucial component of mains preparation and this alone is sufficient to sail you through.
"Scholars" school of thought: Believes in Knowledge of power. Advocates that content is the king and once you are good with the content, your writing style doesn't matter.
Other Schools of thoughts
"Artists" school of thought: Diagrams/flow charts enthusiasts. Have immense faith in their drawing capability and advocates use of diagrams in each and every answer
"Reverse Engineers" school of thought: Takes the worst of both worlds. They procure all available test series in the market and try to read it. They neither practice tests nor focus on their content
The question arises why none has succeeded in discovering the formula for the success in Mains exam. Every year, every topper speaks differently and suggests different methods.
The answer lies in lack of scientific approach towards the Mains preparation. Ill planned courses for mains preparation has done more harm than good. Many instructors often fail to recognize and acknowledge the fact that an aspirant has hardly 80 days after prelims for mains preparation, out of which only 40 days should ideally be given to GS+Essay prep. This roughly translates to 350 hours of productive study.
The need of the hour is to balance between different approaches. Acads Mains Accelerator Combo [MAC] Program balances between the need of writing tests with 3 iterations of test series (1. Diagnostic Tests, 2. Mini CSE and 3. The Final TS ) and comprehensive and exhaustive coverage of complete syllabus using compact and ultra compact study material.
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