Remember its just an exam that you have to Qualify (and not ace)…so prepare like that. It just the hall ticket to Mains. Prelims won’t make you IAS or anything. Hence don’t give more than 65-70 days for its preparation….anything more is futile and improper use of time.
This may be called as a traditionally humanities exam but in my opinion the preparation has to be done in a very scientific manner based of data and numbers…after all its a game of numbers, at all stage. So always measure and track your performance and learn/analyse from that data.
This is more of a game of your attitude than your knowledge. Presence of mind is immensely important and can beat knowledge any day.
Particularly paper like CSE Pre 2020 can be qualified based on option elimination and intelligent guessing.
Keeping positive attitude while attempting exam is extremely important. Often you know the answer and you just get over-critical of yourself and end up leaving the question or wrongly attempting.
Your two biggest enemies — Overthinking (Over complicating) and Over-confidence (esp if its from your strong area) … be cautious of these two.
Give around 20 Full Tests (and sectional tests as per your liking) … and develop a strategy. This exam is very scientific now and you need to have a well-prepared strategy now. Get a safe number of question attempt (around 85) which can easily make you cross the cutoff. For any year…assume cutoff to be 105 …this will help your gauge your performance.
Vision IAS and Forum IAS test series are good here (don’t give Insights)
Preparation Stage
Limited time make you prepare with efficiency and hence you’ll be more productive every day. Here comes the importance of strategy.
Prioritise as per ROI (Return on Investment) — my priority — order of preparation
- 1. Polity
- 2. Environment
- 3. Geography (Mainly maps and places in news)
- 4. Modern India
- 5. Economy
- 6. SnT
- 7. Art and Culture (not ancient history)
- 8. Medieval India
Divide Static-Current into 60-40 ratio … Don’t run mindlessly for Current Affairs. You won’t be able to ace that.
PYQ are quintessential. Spend time with UPSC…make it your GF/BF…. The more time you spend with it, more you’ll get to know its thought process, mindset, option placement. So solving 2013 onwards
PYQ is a must. Also I will recommend to NOT go for section wise segregated PYQ, rather attempt the paper directly as one, downloading it from UPSC site. The arrangement and order of questions is also important.
Use your good mocks as learning and study material … esp for Envt and Current Affairs. Make one-liner notes from each test learnings.
They are really helpful.
Follow Vision Monthly and Vision PT-365 — here I won’t recommend any other as Vision has established its image in the market over the years and it has a decent standard…not too much and not too less (eg.R aus is too much info…though the book is beautiful?).
Also remember this fact….always do that thing which everybody other is doing…you should not be missing those questions which others are doing correctly.
For Geography — Focus extensively on Maps…even for National Parks, Wildlife sanctuaries. Use maps way too much…even for Art and Culture (like which art form where). Geography these days is mostly location based.
Identify your weak area and put it in last priority stage (eg. for me it was Art n Culture). You have to play on your strength and on front-foot. So in your weakest area…the goal is to damage control…like don’t fall into too many negative marking there…a 0 is welcome here.
Revision and test paper are very important…don’t just keep studying all the time…recall what you’ve studied and your implementation of knowledge.
Through Prelims, UPSC is selecting smart people (potential administrators), so you have to study smartly, not just hard. Here comes the importance of internet….use it extensively…don’t always refer the book…..google is far more efficient and informative…eg. you want to recall what are Emergency provisions in Constitution…directly google it and read with in a second of search. Remember service now require tech-savvy officers… Digital India is for a reason. Don’t fear technology.
How to attempt the paper? (My strategy)
The process begins one/two days prior to the actual day of exam. Keep on revising last minute factual stuff, from your notes. It is the time to maximise your short-term memory and picture memory (eg. notes on the margins, random scribbling). And constantly tell yourself that you have worked hard for it and you will qualify the exam … no pressure of topping the exam?
…just qualify.
On the actual day, wake up early and go with a fresh and positive mindset which will boost your confidence.
Fill up all the details with good caution, don’t make any mistake there …. Else
you’ll lose out time and mental peace.
Go with an approx. number number of questions which you will attempt.
Attempt paper in 3 rounds
1st Round — follow the sequence 1 to 100 and do three things —
(i) Do the questions which you know well
(ii) Make a circle on the question on which you can eliminate two options
(iii) Cross the question in big manner in question which you don’t have any clue about … don’t feel bad about it ….its more likely that you’ll end up marking it wrong.
2nd Round — Brain storm on the ‘circle’ marked questions and try to do maximum out of them …if can’t …cross them entirely
Now fill up all the question which you’ve marked on the OMR … this must be done around 90 minutes into the exam…will take around 10-15 mins, at max. Count the number of total attempted questions (actually count the ‘crossed’ questions and subtract from 100)
3rd Round — Now if you’ve reached your approx. planned number of questions which you wanted to attempt (for me it was 87) then leave all the crossed question altogether. DON’T get greedy. Just put your pen down and head down. Now nothing can be done as OMR is filled.
If you’re some short of your number of attempted questions (87 for me)…then go through the ‘crossed’ questions and try to solve them, take gut shot etc and try to reach out to your holy number (87)
That’s it…paper is complete. Come with a strategy and implement it…don’t enter the battlefield like a headless chicken.
How to know your magical number of question which are to be attempted?
For general unreserved, assume that cutoff will be around 105. Now you need to attempt at least 20 Full Test papers (not sectional) and try out different number of attempted questions and check your relative performance (I even did 100 questions once) and then after the tests are done….make an excel sheet with data on question attempted, right, wrong, marks, accuracy %, status of your intelligent guesses …. Doing this for 20 papers will give you a rough idea what is that ideal number which will make sure you cross the 105 mark always. This number can vary for different people and there is no right or wrong answers….it can be 96 (low accuracy people) for some and 75 for others (high accuracy people). I did this exercise very scientifically and seriously….I even plotted graphs and line charts to gauge the performance.
(Make it a management project, data crunching!) For me the number was 85-89 (never touch 90) ….finally towards the end…I fixed my attempt at 87….and in the actual paper also, I attempted 87 questions.
I hope things must be clear now. Enjoy the journey and Trust the Process.
Thanks a lot.