Vaishali Singh of Faridabad shines in the UPSC exam with rank 8!

Faridabad’s Law Student, Vaishali Singh has made the city and the state proud by securing the 8th rank in the country in the UPSC exam.

Vaishali said, “I am very happy. My father has been the motivating force behind the success.”

“I came from Lawyers family, both of parents are lawyers here in Faridabad district court and now younger brother is a lawyer”, she added.

Her Study Background

Vaishali did a five-year integrated BA-LLB course from National Law University, New Delhi, where she was a gold medalist. It was her second attempt at the civil services. “I could not clear the prelims in my first attempt as I did not prepare well, but I was sure to clear it in my second attempt,” said the law student. She also mentioned she studied for over 10 hours each day. Besides her father, she thanks her mother Suman Singh and RK Gupta, a joint secretary in the Central Government.

Did she really want to crack this exam?

Vaishali worked in a law firm and she felt something missing there. That was the time she realized what could be better than Civil Services to work at a level.

But she also chose to keep NGO as a backup plan in case it did not work out for her.

“I took my first attempt with CSE 2017. As I started preparing just 3 months before the examination, I knew I wasn’t fully ready, so I couldn’t clear the exam”, she said.

“It was my second attempt with CSE 2018 when I got rank 8”, she added.

Her Mantra for cracking CSE

Vaishali is a law student, so the law part of the exam for not that tough for her. Being a focused and determined student that she is, she gave importance to other aspects of the examination.

She says that the number 1 things that students miss while preparing for the exam are – essays. They are usually neglected by the students but Essay really add up to your final outcome.  One must understand the demands of the Essay paper. I took Essay Course at Triumph IAS under Mentorship of Vikash Ranjan Sir. Vikash Sir Guidance and his Approach immensely helped in improving quality of my answers in General Studies too.

Major tips from Vaishali that could help other aspirants are:

• Reading newspapers twice/ day – keep prelims in mind while reading. It really helps with current affairs.
• Read Year Compilations
• Daily quizzes for current affairs
• Vaishali prepared her subjects via different sources such as Spectrum for History, Lakshmikant for Politics
• Reading the constitution bare act is very important to answer Article based questions
• She also read Shankar ias book for environment
• Revision through mock test/ previous year papers is greatly helpful

Message for Future Aspirants

Vaishali’s message to all the upcoming CSE aspirants is – to focus on your weaknesses rather than your strengths and overcome those.

Self-correction can really prevent whatever is holding you back. And the most important thing is hard work.