Hello Friends,
This
blog will focus on strategy to prepare for mains now. I will be writing in
detail for preparation of each & every individual area like Geography,
Current affairs etc. separately. As most of you are now finished with your
prelims exam and must have taken rest of a week or 10 days, it’s now time to
prepare for mains. First of all you should not worry about your prelims result.
Most of the candidates do not prepare for mains thinking that they will not
clear prelims; it can prove to be a big disaster for many as your job is to
give your best shot, rest leave it with the Almighty.
I
take 3 important areas for preparation for any subjective exam; this is termed
as URP i.e. Understanding, Revision
& Presentation. So my focus will be on all these 3 areas and will help you
to improve on all these areas.
Time Management
I
will suggest you to divide your next 4 months into 2 parts: first part 3 months
and remaining one part 1 month. Your first part is most crucial and will give
you best learning, proactive approach and mistakes to be prevented in the exam.
A candidate should cover his/her both optional alongwith the GS & Essay
part in these 3 months. One should devote atleast 10 hours per day apart from
the coaching classes (if any). These 10 hours should be divided into 2 parts
i.e. 5 hours each for both optional & GS part.
Out
of 5 hours for GS part, 2 hours will be spent in the reading newspaper and
remaining time can be given to cover the syllabus for Paper 1 & Paper-2. Similarly,
remaining 5 hours should be given to revise your optional. I think a candidate
should go for one optional & GS at one time i.e. one optional paper should
be covered in approx. one and half month. By this way, at the end of 3 months a
candidate will be covering his/her GS paper, Essay paper & both the optional.
Understanding
This
is first area of my URP plan. For any subject a candidate should have good
understanding. For even reading newspaper one should spent 80% of his/her time
in reading the newspaper and rest 20% time should be give to understand it
properly. Most of the candidates do not spend time on understanding and
thinking part. For traditional areas, one should clearly understand the basics
and read accordingly.
One
important thing to remember is that for better understanding first of all a
candidate should restrict his/her reading material. I have seen most of the
candidates till final exam are not sure about the source of reading. If a
person is not aware about what to read then he is not preparing at all. One
should not collect too many books on same topic, so keep your material limited.
A person should know “less & less of more area” rather than “ more &
more of lesser area” for civil service exam.
Essay Paper
The
essay paper does not demand special attention. What it needs is the ability to
assimilate good points on some topic, a simple and lucid way of writing with
the clarity of thoughts. A candidate needs not to be a writer or a journalist
to write a good essay. Grammatical mistakes, however, should be avoided to the
extent possible. One should practice at least 5 essays to get a good hold over
essay writing during these 3 months. One should him/herself select good & relevant
topics on essay either from magazines or past year papers and write an essay
for around 1200-1500 words. Only a good practice can help a candidate to get
good marks in the essay. One should get these essays evaluated from a good
teacher to assess your performance.
Test Series
During
these 3 months, a candidate should join a good test series for GS & one
optional. More than 2 test series at the same time will be difficult to handle
and test series for second optional can be joined after prelims result.
Although test series will always keep you on your toe but it will give you a
lot of confidence as well. It will
·
Tell you your
mistakes before hand
·
Improve your
writing speed
·
Improve your
writing skills
·
Assess your
preparation for exam
·
Will tell you your
rank among other candidates
·
Will give a new
dimension for your exam
·
Allow you to
experiment some diagrams, charts and their impacts as well.
What if you are not able to join some test series or do not have access to a good test series. One should not worry and should practice questions from past year question papers him/herself for optional. For GS paper, one can write some questions for traditional areas from past year papers in simulated environment at home or by getting online sample question papers for GS paper. Even, some magazines publish model test papers before mains exam and they should be practiced thoroughly.
Revision
Revision is the most
important area for any exam preparation because whatever we remember we write
and more we revise, better will be recalling power. Revision for civil service
exam do not go at the end as it will become very cumbersome to revise such a
huge syllabus in one go. One should have a habit of revising his/her area of
syllabus daily like newspaper notes, class notes and any other material. It
takes extra efforts to revise but in the end it pays a lot in terms of good
marks in the exam.
Apart from daily revision,
last one month should be dedicated for complete revision of GS & two optional.
One should plan this area according to his/her comfort like I had 14 days leave
for my second optional i.e. commerce, so I devoted this month only for GS &
Public Administration, but many candidates have only limited gaps between their
optional so one should revise all the area in remaining one month.
The above strategy is only a
broad way to prepare for mains exam so that one should utilize his/her time in
best possible manner. There is not shortcut for success and also there is
nothing called luck. Luck is one when one’s preparation meets the opportunity.
One should give maximum attention to his/her preparation part and rest will
follow automatically. I will soon also write for the individual areas for GS
& other paper.
“If you think you can you can, if you think you can’t
you are right”- Mary Kay Ash
Start believing on your capabilities guys and this
world will be yours.
Best of luck!
Regards,
Deepak Singla
