UPSC Optional Subject Most Scientific Approach - OPTIONALYZER TOOL and explanation with LIVE Demo

i think upsc aspirants have a lot to learn from batman because i think he represents their situation better than other superheroes because batman doesn't have any superpowers batman is always faced with difficult choices and he gets away with flying colors most of the times by being very intelligent about it you know and by using technology and so that's why batman has been chosen as the theme for this session about the optionalizer tool which i told you about this is a different type of session because i'll be introducing a tool to you and we'll also be going through some demonstrations for that tool and how best to use it i will demonstrate for you and i'll walk you through the entire thing so that after the session is over you can always come back to this video and refer back to it for any clarification which you might need now the big deal with this optional subject apart from the obvious things which is that it holds a lot of weight in your examination that you need to spend a lot of time getting good at it is the fact that this is a very high risk high reward type decision because not only will you be spending a lot of time in it the level of expertise that you require in it is a lot higher than general studies you cannot treat it as a subject at par with general studies or at par with the other subjects of general studies like quality economics because it's going to be harder than that the level of questions the upsc asks will be difficult and they will expect a certain level of expertise uh from you and it will get reflected from the type of questions which they ask which i observe where i have been observing keenly over the past many years the level of questions in the option subject as well has tend has tended to increase so you'll have to prepare yourself for it and the best way to do it is to choose something which is going to add to that strength of yours and not something which pulls you back right because then you're losing uh you're you're fighting a losing battle right and so the way to do it is to choose the option subjects very carefully based on the requirements of the examination not on some arbitrary decisions which unfortune unfortunately most people do and a good example of that is these three subjects which tend to be uh among the hot favorites depending on whatever is in the trend those years and uh if you find a topper or two getting selected from a number of subjects then those subjects tend to become popular because you presume that that trend will continue there is something called the gambler's policy which is at play here now i don't want to get into cognitive biases but suffice it to say that this choice is very important it should be taken scientifically today we will do exactly that at the end of this session after you have obtained the optionalizer tool you will be able to make the best possible decision best informed decision which is humanly possible and you will have a numerical reason to choose the option subject which you choose now there are certain criteria to consider while choosing a subject one criteria which people consider as important which is not so important is how available is its material how common is it this is because we tend to go towards and move towards things which are familiar to us and things which are familiar to us tend to uh bring us more comfort but this is is not always the best way to go you know because there is an optional subject out there which is better for you than the rest there is an optional subject out there which will get you more reward than other people who have that subject but it is up to you to figure that out even if that subject is not the subject of your graduation or if you have no background in it i did not and i chose reasonably well and it contributed to some part to me qualifying the examination because i had chosen based on criteria my criteria admittedly was not as scientific as the ones that you will be exposed to shortly but the validity and the importance of taking these decisions numerically cannot be understated you will have to dive deep in your options subject like i mentioned the level of expertise will be very high so what do you do the first thing your job before you get started is you need to boil down your choices to the top three you need to figure out the top three optional subjects from their list of entire on from the entire list of options subjects which the upsc allows you to choose from and to figure out the top three which might be the best for you don't worry about which will be the best just eliminate all the rest and boil it down to the three choices which you need to make and it is these three that we will analyze and um compare in a lot of detail and we'll figure out some interesting things along the way you will have found a rather hilarious comic strip which i shared with you go through it because it's not just fun and games there's a very important message hidden in there somewhere and um i would very much like for you to uh get acquainted with it without further ado now let me expose you introduce you and demonstrate to you the optionalizer tool how it works and so i'll share my screen in order to do that this is the part where you might have to come back and refer to my instructions although the tool has been designed to be very intuitive and very easy you will find it is in the format of ms excel it's excel sheet simple enough you'll find that it looks like this you will have some basic information on top you will have a column where you will input your name you will input the date and you will have subject one written here below which you should write the subject which you're trying to analyze the top three one of the top three subjects which i just told you about you need to analyze so let's see let's take for example psychology which was my open subject and at the beginning of my preparation when i was in your shoes or somewhere near that milestone i would have perhaps rated these questions on these metrics so it contains 10 questions for each subject 10 questions for each subjects you have to rate these questions on a scale of 0 to 10 and 0 means a low confidence level 10 means a high confidence level so you need to introspect and reflect on what the question is saying take a minute take a couple of minutes or more and try to figure out the number in your confidence levels subjectively honestly which best reflect your answer so the first question asks if you're well versed with the subject and if you have had previous academic training in it now psychology for me was absolutely new so i would have given it a one out of ten simple enough the second question asks you about deep interest in the subject and it tries to gauge your inclination towards more knowledge acquisition not just the knowledge that you already have how likely are you to continue to gain knowledge in it depends on how curious you are about and how generally genuinely and trusted you are about it so for me it had always been a subject of fascination i would have given it a six perhaps even higher i input six and so on and so forth you will find 10 questions which will cause you to introspect and reflect do that fill in your values and this question in particular requires some explanation it asks you the mental skill set which matches the requirement of the main exam with respect to that subject and you should refer to the upsc mains previous year questions of the subject before answering this question it's not just about the knowledge of the subject and the interest of your subject it's about how that knowledge is going to come into play in the main exam on the exam on the day of the examination on d-day how expressive and how clear can you be because different subjects have different requirements right say for instance philosophy is a subject which it does not have a very voluminous syllabus but it can be very technically demanding at least as much as language is concerned language and philosophy needs to be very precise and not an expressive evocative type of prose is welcome like most people presume and end up getting a very average mark because that so you need to figure out what type of demand the questions are throwing at you by judging from the upsc previous year questions and then try to honestly rate yourself on how you uh and how well you can actually do that on the present day on the day that you're taking the test and so the other answers also are to be answered in a similar manner and whenever you see these red pointers here towards the column of the cells towards the corners of the cells is where i have inputted some comments for you just to make it easier for you just to give you explanations now when you insert these values you will find that a score emerges right and this core will change as you change the inputs all of these are to be scored on scale of 0 to 10 right and you will find that these set of 12 questions for a subject are repeated so subject 1 for me would have been psychology two would have been geography i inserted all the values which i thought was best for geography and i got a score of 2.6 this score here which you'll get automatically the application will compute for you is the optional proficiency score which is indicates the likelihood of success for the subject not only with comparison to other subject but also relative to other people who have the same subject and this is a very important number because it will give you a lot of feedback about how well you're doing and i'll talk about that later but once you've full fill in all the details you know all these questions for all the three subjects all you have to do is compare the numbers compare the numbers and the one with the highest score is likely to bring you the most amount of success it is likely to be the best optional subject for you it is likely to lead you to success and because the ups is a relative examination it will help you score better than others much much more important than you just judging based on how others have been using that subject and how others have performed in it and that is how you use the optional optionalize the tool which i hope is uh clear you simple enough play around with it and you'll figure it out you will find it in the emails of your lesson and the details which i have already shared or which will be in coming shortly or which might have already come regardless of the case the application itself is in excel format it's simple enough it just requires microsoft office to run and should be compatible easy to use now excel is a very very powerful tool although it's a very ubiquitous tool and people presume it to be too basic but it's a very sophisticated and powerful tool especially when used for decision making and that too when the decision making is made numerical i have tried this tested this time and time again every time you convert these internal feelings of yours and you convert them into numbers first of all a feedback mechanism starts to happen where you tend to become more objective just by thinking about what number should i give this subjective feeling right and then if you can have them arrange in a structure and output some form of decision for you that is even better i think nothing uh tops that in as much as decision making this is the best possible way to make a decision this tool is very easy very intuitive it will not take much time for you to go through so do that make that investment and you will be highly rewarded for it that much is guaranteed now i have an announcement to make for the people who have the navigator as you know it uh works on a number of uh different dimensions one of which being one one good use which you can make out of it is with these qr codes as you already know if you don't know you will get to know don't worry each of these represents one paper right so this is jesus paper one and mains just paper two g super three this is ethics this is optional subject and this is answer writing now these qr codes are dynamic ur codes like i told you before i can update this qr code from my end so regardless of where you have it in your room and whoever has it if i change things on the back end you will see those changes reflected when you scan the qr code so i have made a change very recently and notice what happens when i scan the qr code for the optional subject takes me to qrcreator.com it's fine to go there it's safe it's the portal through which will it leads us to other urls now it has taken me to the optional subject world it's a very useful place where you will find important resources for your optional subject and recently i have uploaded my own notes for philosophy and psychology out here and everybody who has the navigator can simply scan it right now and access this and it will lead you to this uh very cool page that you will find my notes with all the instructions and so on so that is one way to use it and also i should tell you uh everybody who has the navigator that i keep updating these these resources these big picture formation playlists which i share with you also keep getting updated you will find new videos added and so it is better to have periodic checks right keep checking these resources to end with i'd like to say that this optionalizer tool is meant to give you constant feedback it's not just a one-shot mechanism where you decide a subject and you get it over with as you grow in your journey i would like you to come back to this tool to take those 10 questions again for your subject of choice and see that number creeping up that score that you got for me it was 3.2 or 3.5 or whatever it was will start to creep up and that will reflect the real level of your proficiency right so it is not just a tool to be used in the beginning it's tool to be used all throughout it's a very powerful intuitive tool but it only works if you are honest about it obviously this has been a pleasure to make it took me a while to create this tool i hope it serves you very well because i tried to input all the insights i had relevant which were relevant and having some experience with different options subjects i was hopefully able to do that and i'll leave you with what batman has to say about this and i really hope that you can make the most of this tool and listen to what batman has to say about it because he is the batman thank you and have a great day

Channel: Ravi Kapoor, IRS

Views: 1,782

Keywords: irsofficer, ravikapoor, ravikapoorirs, ultimatecheatbook, upsc exam, upsc syllabus, upsc preparation, upsc prelims, ias exam, upsc, ias officer, ias topper, shubhammishra, unacademy, byjus, vajiram, ias books, ias lecture

Id: 6T2WhERwI3o

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021