Practice • Improve • Repeat
Internet and Cybersecurity for UPSC ISS is the heaviest single article in this series. Not the hardest. The heaviest. Quick answer. This topic has produced 30 questions in the last ten papers, an average of 3 a year, or 7.5 marks. That is one seventh of the whole Computer section and it is almost entirely … Read more
Quick answer. UPESSC gives +3 for a correct answer and −1 for a wrong one, including for marking more than one option. Three wrong answers cancel one correct answer. With 120 questions in 120 minutes, blind guessing is close to worthless, but guessing after eliminating two of the four options is clearly profitable. The practical … Read more
Computer Networks for UPSC ISS is the physical half of the networking syllabus: how machines are wired together, what carries the signal, and which box does what. The protocols and the security sit in the next article. Quick answer. Networks and topologies have produced 16 questions in the last ten papers, an average of 1.6 … Read more
DBMS for UPSC ISS is a small topic that punches above its weight, because the same two ideas keep coming back and one of them carries the most repeated trap in the entire Computer section. Quick answer. Databases have produced 6 questions in the last ten papers, about 0.6 a year, worth 1.5 marks. Four … Read more
Data and Information for UPSC ISS is the shortest article in this series, and it earns its place on the strength of the section’s own name. Quick answer. The section you are preparing is called Computer Application and Data Processing. This article covers the second half of that title: what data is, what information is, … Read more
The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny is the event most aspirants leave out when they describe how British rule in India ended. Ask how it happened and you will hear about the Quit India Movement, the Cabinet Mission and Mountbatten. Far fewer mention a naval strike in Bombay that lasted a week and ended in surrender. … Read more
Packages and Utilities for UPSC ISS is written into the syllabus in those exact words, and almost nobody covers it. It is also the one part of the Computer section that was clearly written because this is a Statistics examination. Quick answer. Packages and utilities have produced 6 questions in the last ten papers, about … Read more
The Glaw Lake Ramsar site is India’s hundred and first, and it arrived only two months after the hundredth. In June we wrote about Surha Tal in Uttar Pradesh crossing that round number. Two designations in one quarter is not a coincidence, and the pattern is worth more marks than either site taken alone. Short … Read more
Operating Systems for UPSC ISS is the second heaviest topic in the entire Computer section, behind only internet and security. Quick answer. Operating systems have produced 28 questions in the last ten papers, an average of 2.8 a year, or 7 marks. That is a seventh of the whole Computer section sitting in one article. … Read more
There is one sentence that keeps appearing in answers on Himalayan disasters, and it is almost always the point where the answer stops earning marks: the Himalayas are fragile mountains and climate change is making disasters worse. True, and useless. It earns nothing because it skips the part an examiner is actually looking for, which … Read more