Nowadays, when any aspirant thinks of commencing the preparation for the exam of CSS, usually the first obstacle s/he faces is how to choose the right optional subjects?
Let me tell you and mark my words: Choosing the “right” optional subjects gets the job half done. It means you clear half of CSS exam when you choose the RIGHT optional subjects. And when I say right, it means “scoring and according to your aptitude”.

Well, the aspirants face this problem because firstly, there are so many subjects available to opt from and secondly, most of the candidates had not read majority of the optional subjects in their academic career.
Therefore, this creates confusion in the minds of the aspirants that whether they will be able to do justice to the opted subjects or not because they had not studied it before?

Furthermore, there is this so-called myth found among the aspirants as well as the mentors regarding the ‘scoring’ and ‘non-scoring’ subjects. Well, I can share my experience and view regarding this trend with you folks.
I had only three months to prepare for CSS in my first attempt and I opted subjects without giving due attention to this “scoring trend”. As a matter of fact, I had not even heard of it since then. But after qualifying the CSS twice and not getting allocation just because Indo-Pak history screwed my chances of becoming CSP made me realize that this myth DID hold the truth.
Believe it or not, some subjects are bound to be punished by the examiners every single year. You may get good marks in those non scoring but just because of the fact that either your examiner was quite lenient or you turned out to be a really lucky fellow. So, yes, some subjects can be termed scoring while the others can be thrown into the bin of “non-scoring”.

Now, let’s talk about which subjects can boost your overall score and which subjects can push you towards failure?
Subjects like Psychology, Persian, Arabic , Forestry, Geography and Mathematics and all the regional languages will boost your score without any shadow of doubt though Persian, Arabic and Geography are a bit tough to prepare and you need a teacher to study them.
On the other hand, subjects like journalism, sociology, public administration, business administration, mercantile law, British history, law subjects and other science subjects can give you average score.
But subjects like History subjects (Indo-pak, American, Islamic), Urdu, English literature, Economics, Political Science will fetch you very low marks although there are exceptions where aspirants score from 130-160 marks in them. No matter whether you have done graduation or masters in a subject or not but do take into account the scoring trend of that particular subject.

Let me clarify another misconception which often prevails among the candidates of the CSS exam. I have often heard them saying “Maine tou ye subject pehle perha he nae hoa, how can I opt it”, so my answer to them is “k baba, ager nae perha hoya tou ab perho” because it’s all about fetching marks and getting allocation.
Make yourself hard working, tough and a dedicated aspirant toward preparation of CSS exam. Test your limits and beat them. You are more capable than you think of yourself. Once you get yourself into hot waters, you will ultimately learn how to swim in it. Like I said before, choose the right optional subjects, prepare them well and score above 750.