“You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly” The words of Poet Rumi kept Kanika Goyal going as she cracked the Civil Services exam 2022. Qualifying the exam on her second attempt, the 23-year-old said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw her name at the ninth spot in the UPSC Civil Services 2022 merit list. “I was not even sure of qualifying, so seeing my name on rank 9 was unbelievable. I checked multiple times to ensure there was no error. It was just my parents' blessings that gave me such remarkable results,” the topper said. Born and raised in Haryana’s Kaithal district, Goyal is an only child of her parents. While her father Lakhmichand Goyal is a grocery supplier, her mother Neelam Goyal is a homemaker. Kanika wanted to be an IAS officer right from childhood and shaped her academic career around the same dream. “It was in Class 7 when I was introduced to an IAS officer and right at that moment, I decided to pursue civil services in the future. In Class 12, I opted for humanities to set a concrete base for civil services preparation considering the exam has more arts related subjects,” the topper said. Goyal graduated with a Political Science (H) degree from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University and then prepared for Civil Services examination. “In my maiden attempt, I qualified the prelims but scored fewer marks in mains optional which was also my graduation subject. This came as a setback as I was expecting to do better considering I graduated in the same. Hence in 2022, I laid more emphasis on optional through and I am hoping I did well,” Goyal said. The topper claims that she didn’t follow a set study schedule but rather scheduled other activities of her day. “Rather than setting number of hours to study. I set the amount of time I will spend on sleep, for eating and recreational activities. The rest time I dedicated to only studying. This helped me in cracking prelims and main. For the personality test round, I gave mock interviews under Unacademy’s last mile mock interview which helped me to answer questions confidently on interview day,” Goyal shared. Sharing her tips with the aspirants who are now preparing or couldn’t qualify for the exams, Goyal said, “I believe that every setback and failure is a stepping stone. It is necessary to make an aspirant humble towards the journey and the service they are applying for. Just be consistent and practice smart work,” she said.
