Prelims is gradually becoming the trickiest stage of UPSC. You only need to qualify this stage and hence ideally, limited preparation should be required with more focus on mains. However not qualifying this stage means that your entire mains preparation will not be utilized and you will have to sit for one whole year. Thus, it becomes imperative to study for prelims with full force and not leave even a shred of compromise in its preparation. I have many people focusing on mains preparation to gain top ranks and missing prelims cut-off thus putting their entire preparation to futility.
I myself always paid special attention to prelims, since it’s preparation is directly beneficial to mains (GS-1 paper) as well as indirectly beneficial (enriching answer by factual information). Also, prelims is the stage which can bring you to ground zero if not cleared and thus becomes particularly demoralizing. Consequently I have cleared prelims both times comfortably with 115 marks in 2017 (cut-off 105) and 111.34 in 2018 (cut-off 98).
Coming to the strategy……
I always kept my resources minimal for prelims since this stage requires memory of particular information and consequently multiple revisions in limited time. Moreover, I realized that most of the information asked in exam is given in the basic books and any reliable current affairs source. Please do not fall into the fallacy of reading multiple resources since some XYZ question from a particular year was asked from that material. Remember that, first you do not need to mark all the question and second, if you are thorough with basic materials you can solve many questions by extended logic and intelligent guessing, even if they are not given directly in that book.
Prelims sources:
M. Laxmikant-polity
Spectrum + Bipin Chandra- modern India
Nitin Singhania+Fine Arts NCERT- culture
Tamil Nadu board 11th history NCERT + R.S. Sharma for ancient and medieval history
ShankarIAS- environment
Mrunal lectures+NCERT- economics
11th and 12th NCERTs + G.C. Leong + mrunal lectures- Geography
Vision monthly PDFs + TheHindu- current affairs.
The above resources are are just descriptive and not prescriptive. This is certainly not the bare minimum that you should read and contains extra and reference material. You can always choose your own sources and your own basic booklist.
Most important aspect of prelims is revision. Revision will ensure that you remember the very specific information well. For mains, general idea of a topic may suffice, but in prelims remembering facts is essential. Also, revision ensures that you are confident of your information and thus errors occurring due to confusion will be prevented. If a question which you have read somewhere comes, there is a very strong urge to mark its answer and not having proper revisions will lead you to mark wrong answers increasing negative marking.
I made time table for last 2 months of prelims and sincerely stuck to it so that maximum course can be covered with required number of revisions. My cycle used to be 1 month for first revision, 18 days for second revision and 12 days for third. You can create your own time table depending upon your revision requirements and reading speed. Even if you are not able to cover all the content of a book, ensure that you stick to time-table so as to not mess up your revisions.
I was performing very badly 2 months before the prelims exam (getting marks in 80s). I consistently observed improvement in marks after every subsequent revision (>100 after first revision and >120 after second revision)
Another very important requirement for prelims is test-series. Giving regular test will ensure that you are keeping tab on your progress and performance. Also you will be able to identify your weak areas and information gaps and can work on them accordingly. For example, in my first attempt after giving few tests, I realized that I needed one more revision cycle than I had planned and consequently adjusted my time-table.Giving regular tests will also make you familiar with different formats and varieties of questions which UPSC asks and thus will make your performance better in actual exam.
I had joined VisionIAS test series and also solved ForumIAS series since my roommate had joined it. Make sure that you are solving these tests on time and analyzing the questions after completing the test.
Given the unpredictability of recent prelims papers and the randomness of questions, intelligent guessing has become an important requirement to improve your score. A decent level in this can be also achieved by the two above given requirements- revision and test-series. Revisions will ensure that even if you do not know the answer directly, you will remember some connected information to correctly mark the answer or eliminate wrong options. Try to analyze your intelligent guesses in test-series and how better you can improve your aptitude in it.
Finally, I will try to cover some tips to follow while actually solving the prelims paper.
1.) Try to mark at least 90 questions in the paper (at least that was the sweet number for me). Even if your 3 guesses are wrong and 1 guess is right, you will still achieve zero. In test series, after completing the paper, I would calculate my score for different number of questions attempted, ex. 80, 85, 90, 95. I found that my score was maximizing at 90 and thus I tried to attempt at least 90 questions and leave only those questions of which I had absolutely no idea.
2.) Try to complete at least 2-3 iterations of the questions. This means that read the questions properly from first to last (or any other serial order- many people do from last to first), mark the final answers or atleast the probable answers on the paper in the first 60-80 minutes.
– I used to mark the answers on OMR sheet for the questions I was completely sure about.
– Then I would come back to the questions not marked in 2nd iteration and try to arrive at the best possible option either from memory or logic or even intuition.
– I would still leave some questions which I could leave completely to avoid negative marks. If too many questions were left out, I would still take risk and mark more in the 3rd iteration.
– Try to mark answers on OMR sheet along with iterations, since leaving them at the end creates chaos and panic and you may mark wrong answers or worse leave out marking some completely.
– Also, do not mark unsure questions in first iteration even if the shred of doubt is only a little. Your memory keeps working in background and in 2nd iteration you may remember the correct answer.
3.) Keep your calm even if the paper is telling you that you are screwed. If the paper is difficult for you, it is difficult for everyone. Remember, you do not have to cross an absolute threshold, you just have to perform better than others. Difficulty level of question is mixed in different sets. In 2018 prelims paper, I could mark only 12 questions out of first 50 in first iteration. If I would have lost my calm, I could not have marked 34 answers in the next 50 questions.
UPSC is as much an exam of nerves as it is of knowledge. Try to keep your nerves in those final moments of preparation, in those 2 hours of paper and even in the break time before the second paper of CSAT, you will do just fine 🙂
A peace of my mind 