Cracking IAS exam is all about hard work, strategy

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 12

Becoming an IAS officer is what most students aspire for. Inspiration, hard work, proper guidance and right strategy with appropriate study material is the key to successful preparations. The exam will be held in September.

Before one should opt for IAS, it is also important to know why one is opting for the same because that will sail the candidate through the long and turbulent journey of the UPSC civil services examination.

“The reason can be anything but should be strong enough to keep you away from distractions. As the exam is extremely competitive, so it requires high amount of determination,” said Manoj K Jha, faculty at GS SCORE Institute.

Another teacher at a coaching institute said consistency and hard work is the key to success. “Candidates should be clear about their goal and then try to achieve the same without any distractions. Going off the social media will help in focusing more on the preparations. Study breaks can be walks, relaxing exercises or catching up with a friend because scrolling through the social media consumes more time than what can actually imagine,” he said.

Dos and don’ts

1. Most of the aspirants tend to be caught up with General Studies Paper 1. Spending too much time on subjects such as art and culture, world history and social science is an unwise decision, as queries value less than 30-40 marks.

2.Mugging up on ethics book is a mere waste of time, instead you can go through the last three year papers on ethics and comprehend the answers are all about common sense.

3.Avoid reading large books. If you have already done it, you may avoid or skim through few grey areas such as science and technology, art and culture. Target maximising your marks instead of that specialise in irrelevant notions.

4.Do not waste time on unnecessary information. The exam accommodates write-ups in less than 200 words within seven minutes. However, candidates tend to waste 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 five-year reports. One among the foremost common beliefs is that going through large reports such as 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 do analysis extensively on the entire report, thus it’s recommendable to go through summaries which are more than enough.

6.Be updated with current affairs. General studies paper 2 and 3 have focus on current affairs, so reading the editorial pages of newspapers and creating short notes are often a great help.

7.Cite personal examples. Extra marks are often achieved in the ethics exam by citing personal examples. Strive for writing on your own.

8.Add facts and figures. Go through the economic surveys that clear the idea of GDP, unemployment and agricultural stats. Adding such facts and figures enhances your marks.

Steps for beginners

• Assimilate the exam
• Start preparing for exam as soon as possible
• Know the syllabus
• Get to know about the process and pattern of exam
• Expand your understanding