Junaid Ahmad IAS, a resident of Nagina in Bijnor in UP (Uttar Pradesh), achieved AIR 3 in the UPSC CSE examinations 2018. Junaid Ahmad’s posting is in the Indian Revenue Service for which he is under training.
An aluminous of the prestigious Aligarh Muslim University Junaid Ahmad completed his Electronic Engineering from Sharda University. Junaid’s father is a lawyer while his mother is a homemaker.
He has three other siblings, out of which one is the elder sister who is married, and two others are a brother and sister are still studying.
His Preparation Journey
Junaid Ahmad IAS had started preparing for the UPSC CSE exam after his graduation. The first attempt in 2014 resulted in failure. But this initial failure did not make him lose his determination towards clearing the Civil Services Examinations.
His continuous hard work and studying daily for five to six hours earned him success in his last attempt in 2017. He got a 352 rank and a selection in the Indian Revenue Service.
Still not happy with the results, he gave the fifth attempt in 2018 and finally fulfilled his dream of cracking the most challenging exams in India by getting an AIR 3.
Junaid Ahmad Schedule for UPSC Preparation
Junaid Ahmad UPSC topper’s date of birth goes back to the year 1991. His first attempt for UPSC CSE exams was in 2014, which brought him an initial failure.
But he believed in handling failures with hard work, never leaving his aim of clearing the civil services exam, which he did in the year 2018 by getting AIR 3. The following is Junaid Ahmad strategy for clearing the UPSC CSE exams –
- The three pillars of his success mantra are aim, hard work, and handle failure.
- Avoid unnecessary study materials
- Be focused and make a simple preparation
- Reading NCERT textbooks and newspapers
- The student should focus more on factual end objective information
- Continuous revision is the key to success
- Write answers with relevant bullet points
- Make self-notes for each topic for better content clarity
- Update the notes from newspapers as and when required
- Time management is crucial for essay type answers
- The introduction and conclusion of essay type answers should be exciting and free from grammatical errors. Also, the flow of the solution should be consistent and presentable
- Self-study is essential for better understanding
Ahmed chose Geography as an optional subject. The reason behind the choice of geography for his mains exams is that Geography overlaps the general studies subject and is easy to cover.