(Article) Crack IAS Preliminary in your first attempt
Dear Aspirants,
There are lot of rumour about civil services preparations, what should be done what should not be done. What can be done and what can not be done etc. One among them is the perception that UPSC exam can't be cracked in first attempt. However the fact proves that there are lots of aspirants who crack this exam in very first attempt. In this article we would try to give you the strategy by which you can clear this exam in very first attempt.
First we would like you to go through the entire syllabus and the examination process before starting the preparation. We would also suggest you to go through previous years questions for understanding the level of questions being asked. Please follow this link for assistance. Also please take a look at for learning the process and how to study.
As you can see that syllabus of this exam is very huge and level of questions is also good, so preparation needs to be thorough. It needs time to cover big syllabus in detail. So preparation should be started around an year before the prelims of next year e.g. if you are planning to give 2017exam july 2016 would be the ideal time to start the preparation. This would provide you with enough time to finish both prelims and mains syllabus.
Next big challenge is the choice of the optionals. Your choice of optional can decide your success in the UPSC exam. Lot of thoughts should be given to the decision of optionals. First make a list of few probable optionals, then look at their syllabus and previous year question papers and finally decide the optional which you think is best for you. Please try to avoid the impulse of taking an optional because everyone else is taking it.
Next challenge is about what to study and from where to study. A list of books have been mentioned in the portal, please go through them. However, Initial focus should be on building the concepts, for that purpose NCERT Books are the best source. Only and Only when you have finished NCERT, go to higher level books. UPSC takes special care to check about the concepts of the candidates. Having said that you also need to remember many things from government sources but that comes only after your basics are clear. We keep on saying in all our articles that please go through single source again and again and dont switch the source. Many people make the mistake of trying to read many books and they end up remembering vey things. Its an exam where reproduction of what you have read is the only thing which is important, if you have not seen the same thing multiple times it becomes very difficult to reproduce.