Review of MisFits and Naman Shrivastava

Naman sir’s emphasis on staying calm and the regular sessions before Prelims helped me maintain my composure and perform well in the 2024 UPSC CSE Prelims. I cleared the 2024 UPSC Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination held on 16 June, 2024 and was fortunate enough to find myself amongst the top 14,627 candidates in India who were selected to write the 2024 CSE Mains.

P.S. I gave the 2024 UPSC Civil Services (Main) Examination held from 20 September, 2024 to 29 September, 2024, but did not clear it. I am now preparing for the UPSC CSE 2025.

Let me make it clear though that I didn’t clear Prelims solely because of MisFits lectures and Naman Sir. I cleared it because of the cumulative combination of the following – the basic foundations for some subjects that I learned from Byju’s coaching classes, MisFits lectures & Naman sir’s guidance, UnderStand UPSC lectures, resources, & guidance by Satyam Jain Sir, being thorough with the static parts of almost all the subjects, the solving & revising the official CSE PYQs multiple times, following advice, strategies, and resources selectively and adapting them to my needs, strengths/weaknesses, and the requirements of the CSE, 2 years of my hard work, implementing all my knowledge and learnings under pressure in the exam hall, and due to some good luck.

I have talked about how to integrate the MisFits class recordings with the overall UPSC CSE Prelims and Mains preparation and the extent of their usefulness in my YouTube videos giving guidance & summarizing my learnings & experiences: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh3_H704SeprZws3iCG3QL5t36SjbtTKJ&feature=shared

You can read my suggestions about the utility of MisFits lectures below:

When you watch the Misfits lectures, I would suggest that for the following subjects’ lectures, don’t make notes:

1. Ancient and Medieval history (70-80% of what is covered in class is in the Tamil Nadu history book, so better to revise directly from there after watching the lectures, or read the corresponding chapter alongside the lectures)
2. Modern History – read and revise directly from the Spectrum book, it is already simplified and has summaries in notes form at the end of each chapter
3. Polity – just read and revise the corresponding chapter directly from the Laxmikanth book
4. Environment – revise directly from the PPT decks ma’am has uploaded on the portal, and from the PMF IAS book (60-70% of the content in the lectures is directly in the PMF IAS, in notes form, so better to revise directly from there)
5. For Geography, you should read the 3 NCERT books (Naman sir anyways gives some of the chapters of these books as homework):

a) NCERT Class 11 – Fundamentals of Physical Geography
b) NCERT Class 11 – India – Physical Environment
c) NCERT Class 12 – India – People and Economy

6. For Economics, you can make short notes if you want, but do read through a standard book

(I used the Vivek Singh Economy book and found it very useful to cover the gaps)

For science and tech, the misfits lectures only cover the absolute surface basics of many topics, which will probably not be enough for a beginner to solve questions with

So I would recommend watching Dr. Shivin Chaudhary (AIR 297-CSE 2022) sir’s lectures on YouTube – he’s explained the static and current affairs linkages quite well and it covers the current affairs developments up till May 2023

So before your Prelims, you will just need to cover the current affairs from then onwards, static part will be done

The corresponding PPTs and PDFs for Shivin sir’s lectures are available to download for free on

https://www.drshivin.com/science-tech

While watching the Misfits lectures, to save time, skip the random wellness discussions and breakout room discussions, it’s not of any use for you – only focus on what Naman sir is saying, because many of the peers’ answers are conjectures and may be wrong – if the peers’ answers are good & correct, it’ll be obvious from Naman sir’s reaction/response – watch the recordings on 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, or 2x speed, depending on how much you can understand at that speed – you can always slow down and/or rewind in places where you need it.

You cannot rely on misfits for everything in Mains simply because it only covers the mains subjects partially (and for some Mains subjects, not at all)

for Polity, Economics, and Geography, a good chunk of the mains syllabus is covered in the misfits lectures, so you’ll just have to study a bit extra from the standard books or the internet for the topics you see in the mains syllabus and pyqs that weren’t in the lectures

for science & technology, the misfits lectures won’t help you much for Mains – you must study the static portions and current affairs developments for that year from a standard book or a coaching’s notes

for Environment, the mains questions are mostly current affairs based or on general issues like pollution, environment degradation, see the PYQs – so certain sections of the PMF IAS book should be enough for it

for modern history – misfits lectures will help for mains

for culture – misfits ancient & medieval history lectures only skim the surface for a few mains culture topics, it’s not enough to write answers – you need to read a book or some notes for it

for ethics – the misfits lectures give you a good idea of the basic concepts – but once again, you’ll need to do a lot of writing practice and analyzing PYQs on your own

the remaining mains-only subjects aren’t covered in the misfits lectures (some topics may be skimmed in the lectures, but it’s not even close to enough to solve questions on them) – so you need to study the book or notes for them.