Question : How To Make Notes For Civil Services Exam?

Answer :

• The first step is to maintain a dedicated register, book or take down notes on flip cards if you are comfortable with this method. Flip Cards or flash cards are papers where you can write information on both sides that you can quickly revise before exams. Flip cards are best used to make short and crisp notes for Prelims or Mains where the important points are jotted down along with the important facts and figures that you would like to remember at the time of attempting the Prelims and Mains papers.
• Even if you make notes in a register, don’t forget that your notes should be concise and precise (to the point) and should not be a copy of the book or newspaper or the printed notes from where you have sourced the information. This will help you to quickly revise the notes at the time of the Prelims and Mains papers. Also the shorter the notes the more number of revisions you can squeeze in just before the actual exams. And we all know the saying,‘Practice makes a man perfect’.
• While you can use flip cards and registers for making notes for Mains exam, you should include the latest facts and figures which you can use while writing your answers. Answers backed by relevant facts and figures always help you score more marks in Mains than general answers, however well written.
• As mentioned above, whichever method you follow, the notes should make sense to you since you will use them for revision purpose before the exam. So prepare the notes in such a way that they provide the most important information at a glance.

Don’t Rely on Someone Else’s Notes What about other people’s i.e. Toppers Notes? One question that constantly arises is that, “Why should one waste time and effort in making notes when one can get plenty of notes of toppers, etc. that are available in the market/websites? One could directly read from them”. Right? Wrong! Absolutely Wrong! Let’s take an example. Say, you wanted to win a medal in a race. But, instead of participating in the race, you went and bought the same medal from market. But even though both the medals are same; you “own” it but you didn’t “win” it. Same is with Notes. By choosing to take up someone else’s notes you skip the “learning process”. And that will not help you. It will give you a false sense of security that you have covered and understood the topic. Moreover, different people make notes differently. And the purpose of making notes is to aid in revision. So a person will only write what he thinks he needs to revise. And that may not be useful for you at all.