Strategies to adopt while preparing for IAS Exam

Manoj K Jha
IAS is the profession that most of Indian students adore. Inspiration, hardwork, proper guidance and right strategy with an appropriate study material is the key to start your preparations with. Before you should opt for IAS, it is also important to know why you are opting for the samebecause that will sail the candidate through the long and turbulent journey of UPSC civil service examination. The reason can be anything but should be strong enough to keep you away from the distractions. As the exam is extremely competitive, so it requires high amount of determination.
Steps for beginners to start their preparations:
Assimilate about an exam: Gain the deep knowledge about the exam in India. If you are going for IAS exams try yourself to get in the shoes of them to know the ground reality. After going through all the things examine yourself that are you prepared for taking it as your career.
Start ASAP : Once you have finally decided that you want to go for IAS Exam then you must start preparing of it at early stage as it is the key to face exam more confidently and efficiently. The soon you start , the more are the chances to get on the higher position.
Know the syllabus: it is must to know about the syllabus of the examination thoroughly and have deep knowledge of the subjects. It’s better to paste the syllabus in front of your study table so it becomes easily accessible while studying.
Get to know about process and pattern:  Get up to date about the process and patterns of the exam and the best way to get it is pick some of the last year’s question paper. To analyse the pattern in detail one can visit website iasscore.in , where they have free resources are available.
Expand your understanding: You must read a lot of general knowledge books and update on current happenings.
One should read newspapers regularly to be updated if you want to appear for IAS Exams. The best way to make your school’s or college’s library your second home. Make sure you are open to all the domains and revise all your information time to time. When you have crossed all the steps discussed above then go with some do’s and don’ts. It’s essential to get on the important topics and stave off dissipating your time and energy on covering unnecessary ones
Here are a few quick do’s and don’ts
1. Most of the aspirants tend to caught up with General Studies Paper 1 – Investing too much time on subjects like Art & Culture, World History and social science is an unwise decision  as queries value less than thirty or forty marks and it is asked from any of those areas within the entire paper.
2. Mugging up on ethics book is a mere waste of time -  instead you can go through the last 3 year papers on ethics and comprehend the answers are all about common sense.
3. Avoid reading large books - if you have got already done it and may avoid or skim through few grey areas like science & technology, Art and culture. target maximising your marks instead of that specialize in irrelevant notions.
4. Do not bollocks time with unnecessary information - The exam accomodates write-ups in less than 200 words within 7 minutes, However candidates tend to bollocks time in browsing for extra information. Even a PhD candidate must write common sense based answers, thus concentrate on it rather than to litter your mind with unnecessary information.
5. Do not waste time by fully covering 5 year reports -  One amongst the foremost common beliefs is that going through the large reports like the five year plan (for economy) and ARC for ethics is required. This might simply be a time depletion task. The dearth of your time will not allow you to analysis extensively on the entire report, thus its recommendable to go through summaries which are more than enough.
6. Be updated with current affairs – General Studies paper 2 and 3 has focus on current affairs, so reading the editorial pages of newspaper and creating short notes are often a great help.
7. Cite personal examples - Extra marks are often achieved in the Ethics exams by citing personal examples. Strive writing on your own, and may see toppers for improvising the writing skills.
8. Add facts and figures - Go through the Economic surveys that clears the idea of GDP, unemployment and agricultural stats. Adding such facts and figures enhances your marks in GS 3
The writer is Director, GS Score