Hello friends,
I am creating this new thread so that experienced candidates can share their experience on how to prepare so that they can clear prelims exam with certainty. Please discuss the following issues:-
1. Basic Books to be read for prelims
2. How to cover newspaper
3. Which magazine to follow
4. Are coaching institutes needed for cracking prelims
5. What are the best coachings available which are value for money
6. General strategy@neyawn @Aks @ASingh @shishir bhai
@AyushSinha @valkyrie724 @gambittt please share you valuable tips here
Comments
I am trying to give you full plan, please follow it religiously. Clearing Prelims is all about doing same things again and again from a single source, and not running for study material here and there.
1. Indian Polity - Laxmikant. No any second source. Just one book. You must read it at least 5-10 times. Dont make notes. Its not possible. Read every line and when u read every chapter, every line 4-5 times, u will remember most of it. here u shud be able to answer any question that comes from anywhere in the book.
2. Indian History - Just do Spectrum Modern India . It is summary of Bipin Chandra . every question in last prelims and before that which was in "ANSWERABLE" category (some questions are not to be answered by anyone - dont waste time and energy on finding where those questions came from)
3. Geography - Just do go cheng leong - line by line 4-5 times - every chapter..dont by-heart, but read closely..only memorise conecpets
- Indian geography books (2 of them) 11th & 12th NCERT. Again do 4-5 times. Any question comin from it should be answerable. Dont be the fool who has read the book but is not able to answer question from it. if u r not able to answer, it means u r not honest in ur effort. You have to do all of the above.
4. Indian economy - Get D Kumar notes OR Vajiram Economy Class Notes or Printed Notes or TMH Economy book . if u like reading from book, get the TMH book. Again..reading is to be line by line..every chapter..at least 5-10 times. u will see ur knowledge grow by leaps and bounds..and GS will be conquerable.
Magazine Read at least one magazine every month - dont change ur magazine - try chronicle or wizard.. u shud have all issues of past one year when u write prelims.
To be clear, if we are scoring less in GS, prelims or mains it only because of lack of honest and hard work. Its not possible to NOT clear prelim after having done all of the above 5-10 times. honest , hard work discipline is required.
Why it is getting difficult is because everyone else is doing it. So if u are not doing it, u lose. I was scoring around 115-120 in GS paper..So anyone who has not scored that much will say that its not possible to score that much. But that is what i said when i was near cut -off in my 1st attempt, my seniors used to get net 70-90 out of 150 questions correct while i got 40-50 correct - i used to say 70-90 is impossible.
Why I liked it:-
1. Covers issues with images that u can remember
2. Issues given with points and not like CSC where extracting points is difficult with the cut copy job that they do
3. Indian position given. Like for eg, for LHC experiment, the names of Indian scientists were given and for Russia's entry to WTO, impact on India was given.
Anyone else here reads CST? Best part is that it is also available in Hindi, which is a great news for Hindi medium students.
You may say that nothing came from that, but continuos practice will help you train your mind to act fast and logically. That is ALL that is needed.
You need to know your level in english. Try solving last year's english part in like 30 questions 40 minutes mode. Assess yourself. If you are good, well and good. If not, or if you know you are weak with tenses or articles (a, an, the) or sentence contructions, you may need to brush up wren & martin (A lot of people in Delhi do that, or had to do that)
If you are good at English, you don't need to do anything special.
You will have to know a few types of logical conditional statements which have come in at least 2-4 questions every year. I will try to make a small tutorial on that sometime later.
The most important thing is whatever you do, you MUST do well, having full faith in it.
- Vulture deats
- Tiger Reserve Tourism
- DTAA
- Stolen artefacts
For CSAT, take up any two major coachings test series and solve ALL questions. First do the conecepts from Arun Sharma books and solve LOD 1 , then try to do test series questions and learn all the TYPES of questions possible. You must know all the types.
You must also do the General mental ability portion of GS papers of previous years.