Special modules

The Economic Survey and the Union Budget, taken apart in the three weeks after they are presented, while they are still the newest documents on the syllabus. What the Survey argues and which of its numbers UPSC has historically asked about; the Budget's structure, the major heads, the deficits, the year's tax changes and the allocations most likely to become questions; then the Budget read sector by sector, across agriculture, infrastructure, health, education, defence, environment and science.

It is timed by the calendar rather than the syllabus. The Survey is tabled at the end of January and the Budget on 1 February, so the classes begin the next day.

Maps are memory work, and memory fades. So Mapping is taught in the second half of March, after General Studies is complete and close enough to the examination that what you learn is still fresh in May. It sits in the afternoon so that it never competes with any other class.

Most aspirants know mapping is their weakest area and never find focused time for it anywhere. This is that time.

• Physical India: rivers and their tributaries, mountain ranges, peaks and passes, plateaus, lakes, coasts and islands
• Protected areas by location: national parks, tiger reserves, biosphere reserves, Ramsar sites
• The world: straits, seas and gulfs, canals, regions and countries that appear in the news
• Places in news over the preceding eighteen months, placed on the map rather than memorised as a list

The PYQ Lab comes after the whole syllabus has been taught, because a previous year question is only useful once you can see every option it was built from. It is about the examination rather than its syllabus: how UPSC builds a statement, where the traps sit, which questions can be eliminated and how, and what the paper actually rewards. It is the part of preparation that moves scores most and that almost nobody teaches deliberately.

• Week 1, 5 to 10 April: Polity and Governance
• Week 2, 12 to 17 April: History, Art and Culture
• Week 3, 19 to 24 April: Geography, Economy and Maps
• Week 4, 26 April to 1 May: Science and Technology, Environment, current affairs, and the attempt itself: time, order and how many to attempt

The last three weeks before the paper. Every General Studies subject is revised once more at speed, along with maps, schemes and the Budget. The subjects that fade fastest, history and polity, come last so they are the freshest thing in your head on 23 May.

Compact recorded revision of each major subject, released through March as General Studies teaching ends, so the first revision happens while the full classes are still close behind you. Offered only inside PFP.

CSAT is qualifying at 33 per cent, but in recent years it has caught well prepared candidates who left it to the end. The Intensive covers the paper's structure and strategy, basic numeracy, data interpretation, reasoning and analytical ability, reading comprehension and decision making, in evening classes that never touch the General Studies block.

It is the one module not inside any plan, so that students who find Paper II comfortable need not take it. Add it unless you comfortably score above 50 per cent in CSAT mock papers.