- Home
- Success Sutra
- IAS Helpline !
( Amit Saxena, BE (4th Year), Greater Noida, Via: E-Mail )
CSC: Dear Amit, Civil Services Exam is all about a planned effort with the right guidance. Your examination process will be about mind over matter. We truly won’t say that it is impossible but, it is a very difficult goal to achieve. You have to refine your thought process for the exam and get ready to work hard. The number of hours don’t matter, it is always the quality of the reading/understanding acquired from the books and other study material. Keeping this in mind you should have a very clear-cut content plan for the coming 5 months (till Prelims) and then for the next 4 months till Mains exam. UPSC exam has blurred the lines between Mains and Prelims. It will be better if in the first three months you integrate your Prelims and Mains studies. Then, channelize all your efforts with focus on Prelims for the next 3 months and then only on Mains for the next 4 months.
Your, first step should be to read standard books (NCERT books from class VI to class XII). The next step is to enroll yourself for a good quality integrated test series for Prelims and Mains. Commit yourself completely for the content plan and follow the test series schedule religiously. It will go in your favour, for the subject based tests will help you how to study the subject. By the end of March, you will complete all the basic stuff and you will be thorough with all the topics. Also, choose one optional and try to finish it by April, so that after Prelims you can easily revise it. Focus mainly on prelims after April. If you have decided to give the exam then go for it with all the guns blazing.
( Shruti Bhatia, BA(Hons), 1st Year, Patiala, Via: E-Mail )
CSC: Dear Shruti, you are an undergraduate student of 19 yrs. The eligibility for Civil Services Examination is 21 yrs. You want to study further and complete your post-graduation first and then later on give an attempt. However, there is no hard and fast rule which tells you when to start reading or studying for this examination. You can start at any age. Many aspirants start preparing for this examination even when they are still at school. Since, it is your childhood dream, I hope that you must have been studying newspapers or relevant magazines to keep you abreast of the current affairs. This will help you cover most of your syllabus. Your choice of the optional will decide other half of your preparation. If you take your undergraduate and post graduate subjects as optional, vast majority of the syllabus will be completed simultaneously. Civil Services is a tough examination. It requires extensive preparation. If you have made your mind to compete for this examination, it will be better if you start preparing at the earliest even though you want to give the exam at a later stage. It is rightly said that ‘Early bird has the worm’!