Zufishan Haque: From Failing in Her 1st Attempt to Getting AIR 34 in UPSC Result Announced in 2024

Brief Introduction

Zufishan Haque was born in Gangtok, Sikkim, and completed her schooling there. She pursued a B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication from Sikkim Manipal University of Health, Medical and Technological Sciences, Gangtok, Sikkim. Her father, Mahfouzul Haque, was the principal of a government school. She did her M.Tech from IIT Patna and got a gold medal during her Master’s. 

She made her first attempt in 2020, in which she couldn’t qualify for Prelims; in her second attempt, she went to Interview. On her third attempt, she got AIR 193 and was selected for the Indian Revenue Service. Then, in her fourth attempt, she finally secured AIR 34 and became an IAS Officer. Her Optional Subject was Anthropology.

She first focused on looking at the Previous year’s question papers, which allowed her to analyze the pattern and how she would approach the questions. Apart from reading basic books, she reads newspapers every day, which helps her understand important topics. She also made her notes subject-wise by reading newspapers, which helped her immensely in Prelims and Mains. For Prelims, she also gave a lot of test series. She also focused on revising the static part from basic books only, not going after multiple resources and revising it repeatedly. 

For Mains, apart from reading books, she referred to topper’s notes and value addition from the internet and added quotes in writing answers, which helped her get extra marks in the actual examination. She also practiced writing answers in 7 minutes, but this did not help when she was writing a full-length test, so she realized her mistake, and she started giving mocks every day for 30 days before the examination to complete it in under 3 hours. She also focused on writing good-quality answers and tried to add more points and diversify her answers. 

She focused on extra sources for her optional subject, which helped her write well-researched answers in the examination. 

Marksheet:

She advised the aspirants to revise the notes again and again rather than relying on multiple resources, which will help them write better answers. She also emphasized focusing more on optional after clearing the Preliminary Exams, as it will help increase the marks. She advised them to work hard and with the right mindset, and something good will surely come out of it. She also focused on remembering the syllabus and planning your studies accordingly. 

Conclusion

Zufishan not only enjoyed the rank but also talked about her journey in which she had to face failure sometimes but again got up and started preparing; she enjoyed this process a lot. She gave credit to her family, friends, and teachers, who supported her throughout her journey, never let her feel down due to failures, and pushed her towards her goal. She is now very excited to work for society and wants to significantly impact society by doing something good for it.