Civil Servant (IAS/PCS)

A Scoring Optional:
Most IAS beginners choose an optional simply because it is considered scoring. Some of the optionals that are considered scoring are Public Administration and Geography. While Geography has returned marks with 400+ in IAS Mains, many candidates have been scoring 340+ and 350+ in Public Administration in the past few years. In fact the average marks scored by Mains candidates in Pub Ad in 2008 Mains was 266 which is quite high considering that it is the most preferred optional among IAS aspirants. But should score be the sole criteria for selecting the Mains optional or are there other related for selecting your Mains optional? This gets us to the second point.
Popular optionals that come within this definition are geography, public ad, sociology, history, and psychology. These four IAS optionals alone account for about 50 percent share of the Mains pie and the rest 22 optionals, taking literature subjects as one, for the rest. This gives you some idea about the popular optionals for IAS. But why are these optionals so popular while the rest aren't so popular? Here are some reasons:
Subjects like Pub Ad and geography have definite syllabus and Pub Ad has quite limited syllabus especially for P2 so you can cover it within 5 months or so. You require limited coaching for Pub Ad as most of the syllabus involves self-study. The History optional for IAS is quite popular simply because there are so many History post graduates and even graduates with history as a subject. Also we all studied History as part of our school curriculum and most of us found it interesting and some, even scoring. Geography is a semi-scientific subjects and a favourite among engineers and doctors for its laws, principles, and map-based questions. No wonder so many IAS aspirants opt for it. Sociology is easy to understand and very interesting as the topics covered concern the very society we are a part of. Psychology has pulled, I feel, simply because it is a combination of all the above attributes and also due to the fact that it is probably the only optional where only one name prevails for coaching: Mukul Pathak of Vajiram.