A Little About Me:

Hello Everyone,

This is Mudita Bansal, AIR 44 CSE 2024

With God’s grace, I have been able to clear the UPSC CSE 2024 examination in my first attempt.

My optional is sociology and I will be using this channel to share my notes and strategy with all of you once the marksheet is available.

I wanted to take a moment to share a brief overview of my background and the journey that led me to UPSC CSE. My intent in doing so is to share my unique circumstances, so that you can customise the strategy as per your requirement —because no one size fits all.

A Little About Me:

I graduated with a degree in Economics (Hons.) from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, in 2019. Since then, I’ve been working as a Strategy Consultant at a management consulting firm. I will continue in this role until my formal training for civil services begins.

Why UPSC?

This is the question I get asked most often - Why leave a well-paying job and a fast-track corporate career?

The answer, for me, is simple: As a consultant, I could recommend policies; as a civil servant, I can implement them.

I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with senior bureaucrats—crafting strategies, recommending solutions, and watching them make decisions that changed lives. Every such meeting left me more inspired and more convinced: I wanted not just a seat at the table but also the power to act, to drive real change at scale. I dreamt of becoming one of those transformational officers—not to follow change, but to lead it.

My UPSC Journey

I come from a demanding professional background where 12+ hour workdays were the norm. Balancing that with UPSC prep wasn’t sustainable, so in October 2023, I made a deliberate choice—I took a 1-year sabbatical to prepare for CSE’24. This decision gave me just 8 months before prelims to:

• Build my Mains foundation from scratch,

• Pick up a completely new optional, and

• Prepare properly for Prelims.

Given the limited time, I had to make a strategy that worked for me as well as significantly limit my resources—focusing only on what gave the highest returns.

I’ll be sharing a detailed breakdown of my strategy soon.

But the reason I am telling my story is to say - You don’t need multiple attempts or years of preparation to crack this exam but just a smart strategy, right mentorship, consistency and luck.