Anu Kumari IAS

Anu Kumari comes from Haryana, she is a mother, when she started to prepare for Civil Services her child was just two and a half years old.
She had to leave her child to stay focused on her preparation, during this period she had to bear the hate from the society (being a mother leaving her child and following dreams).
But taking all these things aside and studying day and night she got the result of her penance when she got selected with a good rank and getting her dream service i.e IAS.

About Anu Kumari

Anu Kumari comes from a simple middle-class family.
She is the second child among her four siblings, her father works in an HR department of a hospital and her mother is a homemaker.
She did her schooling from Haryana, after her schooling she pursued a Degree in Physics from Delhi Hindu College.
Her daily routine during those days was taking and train from Sonipat to Delhi and back again.
After her college for further studies, she went to Nagpur (Maharashtra) for pursuing an MBA degree, this was the first time when she was so far from her family.
After completing her MBA she got a job via campus placement in a Bank in Mumbai where she worked for 2 years.
After that in 2012, she moved to Gurugram from Mumbai, where she got married.

Till here everything was going Normal in her life: a good husband, a child and her family.

But a sudden day her brother told her about the UPSC examination, this was a turning point of her life.
Soon after Anu Kumari IAS cleared UPSC, she was declared as an ambassador for Beti Bachao Beti Padhao for Sonipat district.

Before preparing for Civil Services, she was working for a private firm for 9 years and was earning ₹20 lakh/year.
In 2016, she left her job and started full-fledged preparation for the UPSC.
For her 1st attempt, she took admission in Nice institute in Delhi.
But she could not clear Prelims, she missed by just one mark.

She says that for prelims one must do stand-alone preparation for 2 months before the preliminary exam. Before this, her preparation was integrated.
Anu Kumari did her daily current affairs from insights of India website and she revised compilations of insights monthly current affairs.
For CSAT, She did not do separate preparation, her English was already okay so no worries for Comprehension, her Maths was already prepared as she had already cleared the CGL (SSC) exam wherein she had revised different Maths formulae.
She did prelims related test series from InsightsonIndia. She revised the questions that she got wrong numerous times. She did various test series for prelims in the last 2 months before the exam. She did not follow any other test series. She also persistently attempted the last prelims revision plan of Insights.
She had prepared an excel sheet wherein she had made separate sheets for various reports released by various organisations, another sheet for various world/regional bodies, another sheet for important statistics. She kept revising these excel sheets for Prelims, Mains and also some for the interview. It came especially handy for Prelims.
Anu Kumari says please pick any one website, don’t get carried away by multiple websites. Because according to her Important thing is to revise, she made sure that she revised all standard books including NCERTs multiple times.

According to her, to start mains answer writing, first, cover all basic books and then practice answer writing.
After prelims, I prepared notes from current affairs (very short notes for quick revision) in soft copy paper-wise (like GS-1,2,3 and 4 separately).
She revised standard books multiple times again and again. She practised answering writing for GS papers by writing 7-8 tests series at her home only and then compared them with model answers provided by various test series. She also sometimes asked her friends to evaluate her answer copies.

Anu Kumari Mains Strategy

She took several mocks at various coaching centres.
It helped her in collecting a variety of Questions and also helped her in analysing reactions to Questions that she did not know the answer to.
One Important thing that helped her greatly was that She along with her friend used to take each other’s mock interview on the cell phone, daily for 1-2 hours.
She started reading newspapers (offline) during the interview section of UPSC preparation (i.e interview and not for prelims and mains which she had covered online).
Anu Kumari says she was very calm throughout her interview. She treated the interview as if she was talking to the elders of her family. She was not at all sure of the duration of the interview. But she thinks it went on for around 35-40 mins.
She felt that her interview went well. She could not answer 3 questions but she calmly managed the situation, smilingly said sorry I don't know the answer.

Grand Total 1124

So what we learnt from Anu Kumari's journey?

There's no age to fulfil one's dream.

Everyone has to pass through great penance to achieve one's dream.

Annu showed the dream which thrives in millions of eyes without the help of his family, regardless of the society, but only a few can do the truth.