Question : What Matters More - Quality Or Quantity?
Answer :
- Yes, Quality Matters before Quantity. Before purchasing any book, you should take the help of technology and do a good research on the books. There are many toppers and the people who have appeared in the examination who have given reviews on some particularly followed books for the major subjects.
- Mukherjee Nagar and Old Rajinder Nagar are often termed as the ‘Mecca and Medina’ of UPSC preparation in India and the local markets of these UPSC hubs are flooded with various books of numerous authors and publications. However, only handpicked books are genuinely relevant for the effective preparation of the examination. But due to incomplete knowledge of the UPSC CSE preparations, most of the students end up piling books in their room turning it into a junkyard instead of an ideal place of learning.
- An aspirant should consult seniors who have cleared the examination (preferable), experienced mentors and genuine/reliable sources and then go for buying of resources and study material so that instead of becoming a ‘waste’ it turns into a proper ‘investment’.
- Many channels in YouTube also keep sessions of topper’s talks in which they tell about their strategies and the books that they used to follow and the confusions that they used to have in their mind while preparation. All these would help you to stay one step ahead in your preparation. Also, proper importance should be given on the point that the book should be up to the mark in terms of syllabus.
- You should always remember that you have to follow only one book for a subject and read it as many times as you can. If you try to read all the books of only one subject you might end up having your syllabus unfinished in given time.
- An IAS officer is perceived to have ample and sufficient knowledge to deal with all sorts of problems ranging from daily chores to peculiar problems. He/she should be well versed with all possible subject matters. Hence, in light of all these, it can be concluded that an elementary level knowledge pertaining to all themes and substances should be imbibed in an IAS officer. Therefore, subject matters of secondary level should form the foundation of an IAS aspirant.
- Realistically specifying, there can never be a fixed number of prescribed books. Uniformity can never be maintained at
- least in mentioning the number of books to be referred. Some like to read from internet, some like to refer coaching
- institutes’ notes, even some would like to prescribe only standard NCERT books and some may go for amalgamation of all these sources.
- What all books, which all sources and how many in number solely depends upon the comfort and ease of candidates. These vary from time to time, from aspirant to aspirant and from experienced to naïve candidates.
