How I did It- Book list for Prelims and Some Suggestions

Hello friends!

I am sharing below what I did for clearing the Prelims in 2012 and 2013. I believe it should not be difficult for sincere candidates to clear the Prelims but at the same time this stage should NOT be taken lightly!

I began serious preparation for GS in Nov 2011. Devoted about 2 months exclusively for prelims in my first attempt and 15 days in my second attempt. I did not join any test series for prelims but used to solve question papers of ‘reputed’ test series after buying them from the bookshops in Rajinder Nagar.

For Prelims 2014: With about 1.5 months left for Prelims 2014, my advice to candidates would be to focus on ‘conventional’ areas like Polity, history, Geography, Govt. Schemes and Economics. The relationship between inputs and outputs is pretty linear here. More hard work means more marks in these subjects. Don’t spend too much time on ‘unconventional’ topics like Science and Technology and Environment which can prove to be a wild goose chase. These areas can’t be prepared in a short span of time.

My score in 2013 was-Paper 1: 136 and Paper 2: 162.

CAUTION: the book list is not exhaustive!!! These are the things which I read!

PAPER 1

HISTORY

SOURCES

1.     Spectrum’s modern India

2.     Sriram’s class notes (not good enough though!)

3.     NCERT- modern India, ancient India(selected chapters) , medieval India(selected chapters)

4.     ALS wizard’s history book (can read if you have lots of time)

SUGGESTIONS/COMMENTS

1.     For ancient and medieval India, focus only on the cultural and economic aspects. Political aspect eg. Who killed whom is never asked.

2.     Indus valley and Aryan civilization, Jainism and Buddhism are imp. topics for ancient India. Try to know few terms associated with Buddhism.

3.     Modern India obviously has to be studied in GREAT detail

GOVT SCHEMES

SOURCE:

1)    documents compiled by GK today/ vision IAS

2)    SUMMARY of India Yearbook (vishal publication)- Please don’t read the whole (unabridged version) of India Yearbook as it’s a complete waste of time.

SUGGESTIONS/COMMENTS

1)    Know in greater detail about the flagship schemes and those schemes which were in news

CULTURE

SOURCE:

1)    Book of ALS on culture (selected chapters)

2)    NCERT Ancient Indian history and Medieval history(selected chapters)

3)    Websites

1.     http://ccrtindia.gov.in/index.php

2.     http://www.culturopedia.com/contents.html

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    Classical dances, architecture, paintings, dance-dramas ex. Yakshgana etc are important

2)    Generally folk dances/songs etc are not asked. Focus on classical stuff.

GEOGRAPHY

SOURCE:

1)    NCERT- 11^th and 12^th

2)    NCERT -6^th to 10^th (did nt read myself but should be good)

3)    G C leong – selected chapters

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    It was one of my optionals in the last attempt and I have read Geo in great detail from other books too. Don’t know whether the above sources shall suffice. Please consult someone who prepared Geo only for GS purpose.

2)    Spend some time with the atlas.

ENVIRONMENT - A Tough Area To Prepare

SOURCES:

1)    The best way to prepare is to religiously follow the current affairs and to go through the coaching notes of any 2 ‘reputed’ coaching institutes. Questions in Prelims can be quite tough and random but the good thing is that in mains questions usually emanate from current affairs.
2) Modules by GK today on a) Biodiversity and b)Environment were quite good.

3)    People read some textbook by UGC. I have n’t.

4)    My geography preparation helped a lot

5)    Websites(for long term prep):

1.     http://moef.gov.in/

2.     http://www.cseindia.org/

3.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Environment

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    UPSC is giving great importance this section and rightfully so! It’s bit difficult to prepare too as we do not have a single consolidated source.

2)    Know about main endangered species of India-their habitat etc, climate change, conservation efforts(national parks, biosphere reserves), environmental acts etc in great detail.

3)    Cant be prepared in one day and requires a long term approach. I used to randomly search on the Wikipedia portal on environment. Not advisable though as its a waste of time.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY – Another Tough Area To Prepare

Well, Even though I am an Engineer (who did his Engineering well!), I still find this area toughest to score. So apart from following the news and reading notes of couple of ‘reputed’ coaching institutes, nothing much can be done.

SOURCES

1)    The Hindu news items

2)    Vision IAS study material on conventional topics. Please DO NOT waste time reading books of ALS wizard and TMH on SnT. 

3)    Long term strategy (which I could nt follow :P): You may subscribe to newsfeed from popular science news websites like http://phys.org/, sciencedaily.com etc. Just read 2 articles per day!

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    Very difficult to prepare as again there is no particular source

2)    I am from Chemical Engg background so I had a lot of background knowledge. Others (from non technical background or otherwise) should consider revising science text books from class 6 to Class 10^th I guess.

3)    Don’t spend too much time here as efforts are not proportional to marks. Aim should be to score average marks.

ECONOMICS

SOURCES

1)    Sriram’s notes

2)    NCERT  Class 11^th – Macroeconomics

3)    Budget and boxed items of economic survey

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    Almost all questions asked are current affairs based

2)    International bodies like IMF, WTO are imp topics

3)    Important to understand the concepts. Mugging of data is not required as such

4)    My approach in the first attempt was to google search every term I used to come across and collect it in a word doc. For ex. If you come across the term ‘GDP’ and don’t know about it, search it and make a compilation of such terms

POLITY

SOURCES

1)    Sriram’s Polity notes ONLY. Did not read Laxmikanth but you may.

COMMENTS/SUGGESTIONS

1)    Keep a track of topics in news. For ex. Death penalty has been a hot topic for some time now. Know about such topics inside out

2)    Very very important part of GS Prelims. Its very scoring too as efforts are directly proportional to results in this section

CURRENT AFFAIRS

1)    I read only ‘The Hindu’.   More on newspaper reading on a separate post. Covering Newspapers from 5/6 months before prelims should suffice.

2)    Could not read Yojana, Kurukshetra- but I recommend reading them

3)    Current affair Notes of Vision IAS, Sriram and Vajiram

4)    Could not read frontline and any other magazine and no need for the same.

5)    These days not many questions in prelims come directly from current affairs but needless to say that questions from economics etc will emanate from news

PAPER 2

Hmm.. I did not prepare much for this paper as I was confident of performing well. So I don’t have much idea as to how one should go about this.

Solve the previous 3-4 years papers. If you score an average of say (figures for general category, adjust accordingly)

1)    >160: All seems to be well. Just practise 2-3 papers to get an idea of time management. There is no need of any coaching etc. Don’t waste your time on paper 2-you will do well.

2)    120-160: Practise little more. You are in the safe zone but keep practising. I always prefer accuracy over speed. Try not to attempt too many questions rather attempt every question well. I always find mathematics portion very easy so one might consider solving the comprehensions first which are quite demanding or vice versa depending upon one’s comfort level with maths and English comprehension

3)     Less than 120:  you may consider joining some test series/coaching classes for regular practise and brushing up of concepts. Also work much harder on paper

MISCELLANEOUS

1)    Guessing Policy: I used to make a guess if only 2 options remained to be chosen.

2)    Try to be inquisitive. Whenever you come across some term or something you don’t know about, try to look up on the internet!

3)    It’s not important to just clear the prelims but one should clear it with a big margin. One needs to be sure of clearing the Prelims the day he/she writes the exam. Otherwise crucial 1.5-2 months are wasted in eager anticipation of the result.

If I have not covered something you wanted to know, Please ask questions in the comments section

How I did It- Psychology notes!!!

Guys!

I am pleased to share my psychology  notes. I had scored 249 in psycho (one of the highest).Notes of paper 2 shall follow soon.

How to use these
1) Please use them only as ADD ONs and not as your mainstay of psycho prep. There is NO substitute to textbooks like Baron, Ciccarelli etc
2) The Doc files are the most important files. Read other files (pdfs etc) only when you have sufficient time.
3)Key: CIC means Ciccarelli, PM=printed material, CN=class notes,Baron=Baron, Morgan=Morgan and King

Here is the link: https:

Paper 1
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/58o3kmju8rppf62/AACyCo1yxl_ZgntFqBF-kWRCa

Paper 2
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sauzszd0rs5fswt/AAB69EC4bUo-jObbQJ-DXaLEa

How I did It- My Marksheet

CIVIL SERVICES (MAIN) EXAMINATION, 2013

ROLL NO. :	456769
NAME :	PRABHAV JOSHI
MARKS OBTAINED

SUBJECTS MARKS ESSAY (PAPER-I) 125 GENRAL STUDIES -I (PAPER-II) 074 GENRAL STUDIES -II (PAPER-III) 059 GENRAL STUDIES -III (PAPER-IV) 076 GENRAL STUDIES -IV (PAPER-V) 088 OPTIONAL-I (PSYCHOLOGY) (PAPER-VI) 118 OPTIONAL-II (PSYCHOLOGY) (PAPER-VII) 131 WRITTEN TOTAL 671 PERSONALITY TEST 204 FINAL TOTAL 875

Remarks :-RECOMMENDED For the sake of comparison, my marks in CSM 2012 were MARKS OBTAINED SUBJECTS MARKS ESSAY (PAPER- III) 081 GENRAL STUDIES (PAPER- IV) 123 GENRAL STUDIES (PAPER- V) 091 OPTIONAL- I(PSYCHOLOGY) (PAPER- VI) 101 OPTIONAL- I(PSYCHOLOGY) (PAPER- VII) 116 OPTIONAL- II(GEOGRAPHY) (PAPER- VIII) 78 OPTIONAL- II(GEOGRAPHY) (PAPER- IX) 128 WRITTEN TOTAL 718 PERSONALITY TEST 160 FINAL TOTAL 878 My marks in 2012 were pretty competitive except in essay and the interview.  MORAL OF THE STORY:  INTERVIEW and ESSAY can see you in and out of the IAS! My strategy for the interview and essay shall follow soon.

How I did it- Self study vs Group Study

STUDYING IN A GROUP VS STUDYING ALONE

Dear Friends!

One of my juniors from BITS Pilani had asked whether one should study in group or prefer self study. Here is my take on the issue

I am strongly in favour of studying alone for mains. In the interview stage interacting/studying in group obviously helps. More on interview preparation later...

Why I did nt like studying in a group

1)      Snatches away your freedom to study at your own pace and in your own style

2)      Is uncomfortable- time and energy wasted in travelling to a common place, chit chatting etc

3)      Multiple inputs from multiple people may lead to confusion, information overload etc

On the other hand, some of the successful guys I know used to study in groups.

The obvious advantages of studying in groups

1)       is that you can divide the coursework amongst yourself.

2)      Peer pressure increases your motivation

 I personally feel that technology has enabled to collaborate electronically now. So I prefer virtual interaction rather than going to someone’s house and wasting time travelling, chit chatting etc

What we did was we made an online group. We used that for

1)       getting our doubts cleared- specially helped me a lot in psychology

2)      Sharing relevant articles/information. Anyone who came across something relevant which others would have missed, he/she used to share it on the group. VERY VERY USEFUL for preparation of topics like environment/SnT for which specific textbooks are not available

3)      Getting our answers peer reviewed

Studying in groups can help when

·         All the members of the group are highly and equally motivated

·         Are of  similar capabilities

·         The group size is small

I have tried to cover as many aspects of group ‘study vs self study’ issue as I could. In case I have missed out anything, please feel free to ask in the comments section below!

How I did it-UPSC Civil Services Mains-ANSWER WRITING

ANSWER WRITING-MAINS

1.       The first and the foremost thing is to READ the question well and UNDERSTAND what has been asked! You may think its trivial but due to paucity of time in the mains exam, people write what they know and NOT what has been asked! I used to underline the key terms in the question and also used to look back at the question mid way to ensure that I was notstraying from the track

2.       Point wise vs Paragraph form: Writing In points increases the readability of the answer and makes life easier for the examiner. Whenever I had sufficient points, I wrote in point formats. BUT in questions where I did nt have enough points, I had to write in paragraph form to beat around the bush. NOTE: beating around the bush is not advisable as it only consumes your time without giving much return. It better to answer comeback to this question later after answering questions that you know well.

3.       Answer writing ‘skills’-There is NOTHING- let me emphasize again- NOTHING  called ‘answer writing skills’. Just write down all the points that you have!! Completing the paper in itself is such a tough task, forget anything else! CONTENT is the single most important thing. I recommend first thinking for a minute and jotting down all the points in rough and then arranging them in order of importance in the final answer. 

4.       SPEED SPEED SPEED: If you see, the questions this time around were not very tough but the papers were very lengthy. Writing speed is hence of PARAMOUNT importance. Increase it any cost. I still painfully remember leaving out questions like string of pearls, maldivian crisis in paper 2 because I had spent too much time on the earlier questions 

5.       Underlining key words helps.

6.       Stick to the word limit: there are few questions about which you will know a lot. One feels tempted to write down pages and pages for that question (out of sheer joy!). I must have written at least 3 pages on that Nagaland petroleum exploration license question. Avoid doing this! Not sticking to the word limit will cost you time. Hence I recommend sticking to the TIME limit for every question rather than the word limit.

7.       Practise Practise Practise!: form a group of 2/3 people. Take up a predecided topic and write 2 questions DAILY on the topic chosen. Get yourself peer reviewed. We used this technique in Psycho. We formed a online group of 3 people and used to fix up a chapter a day earlier and then used to write down 2 random questions from the old question papers the next day. Spend at least 30-40 minutes on answer writing

8.      Test series: enrol yourself in at least one test series. A test series gives you a schedule to stick to ensuring that you complete the syllabus well within the time and in a balanced way. Writing a paper for 3 hours gives you the actual feel of the exam. Many of my friends used to skip the tests because of non completion of syllabus. Please NEVER do this and appear in all tests and write as much you know. I had joined synergy test series for GS and found it to be very useful. Over 1000 candidates appear in that and my rank used to hover around 30.

I had joined vision IAS test series (psycho and geo) during my first attempt because I was preparing from Chittaurgarh, my hometown. Initially they used to evaluate my answersheets promptly but as  mains approaced, their processing time increased.  Vision’s review varies from subject to subject. But in general its allright for people who are not in delhi. The good thing about them is obviously the flexibilty to choose where and when to write.

 Don’t enrol in too many test series. I did not join any for Psycho. Lastly and the most importantly, 

DO NOT MISS THE FULL SYLLABUS TESTS HELD JUST BEFORE THE EXAMS

9.      Pen: I am a big fan of flair’s writo meter. Its smooth and the fastest but not comfortable. Choose a pen which suites you and is comfortable. Some people write in black ink too.

10.  Hand writing: needless to say, it should be legible. But those like me who have horrific handwriting need not worry! Just write in bigger sized fonts with greater spacing to improve the readabilty

11.  Language: you don’t need to be a Kalidas or a Shakespeare. Use simple and short sentences. Language is no issue if you have good content

12.  Examples: giving examples always help. Specially while explaining technical terms/phenomena

13.   Diagrams: in questions of geography specially and even otherwise, a diagram always help. But make sure its clear and does nt eat up much of your time

14.   Long term approach for improving Answer writing and Essays: start blogging!

To sum up, answer writing skills are nothing but content and time management. It’s a difficult task to complete the paper itself, forget adding frills!

I have tried to cover as many aspects of answer writing as I could. In case I have missed out anything, please feel free to ask in the comments section below!

 

THE SOLUTION. Part 2 of 2

For better organization, I am dividing my suggestions as long term and short term

SHORT TERM

1)    Focus on penalty conversion: PC conversion has become perhaps the most convensient  way to win matches in modern hockey

2)    Strengthen defence: working hard on basics always pays

3)    Play more and more tough matches: the more we play against European teams and Australia, the better it is for us. HIL is a great platform is this regard as it exposes our youngsters to some of the worlds best player. The players can learn a lot from them, their training regimen

4)    Fitness: as mentioned in the earlier post, out fitness level our not comparable to the Europeans. Okay we can grant our players some excuse on the basis of heredity and genes. But we must target youngsters and develop them into athletes who can run back and forth for the complete 60 minutes

5)    And some sports psychology: as some commentators have said that a team’s self confidence takes a beating when it looses consistently against other teams. I think we need to instill the ‘Yes WE CAN’ feeling in our team mates. Also regular yoga exercises might be helpful in holding the concentrations levels high even in the dying minutes of the game when we tend to falter the most

The Long term ones

1)    Making more and more stadiums of astro turfs: we are woefully short of adequate infrastructure with only about 40 astroturfs in India as compared to 440 in Netherlands which is such a small country. In germany, every school and college has one astro turf

2)    Revamping our sport administration : as supreme court has said, the sports bodies should be administered by sportspersons only. The politicians ans businessmen are responsible for the rot in the system (yes! These are SC’s own words)

3)    Have more competitions like HIL: we should encourage our players to participate in league tournaments of other nations

4)    Revive the club culture:

5)    Trap them young : encourage schemes like come and play scheme of govt of Delhi in which children are being allowed to use the infrastructure made during the commonwealth games. This can be extended to our village level where we should throw open the playgrounds of schools to every child of the neighbourhood.  Talent needs to be indentified in platforms like PYKKA

6)    Training of coaches: specially at the ground level. A senior foreign coach has remarked that our coaches are involved more in politicking and no body wants to learn from another. Every one teaches in one’s own style and there is no standardized training method

7)    Increase facilities and incentives at the SAI academies