Strategy for General Studies for CSE UPSC

Disclaimer: While aspirants might have come here reading the tag ‘Tips for Civil Services Examination’, I must candidly declare that there are actually no objective tips for this examination as such. I believe that every successful candidate has his/her own style of studying depending upon his/her background, strengths and weaknesses. However a proper guidance always helps and it is my endeavor in this blog to share my experiences and both what I did and what I think should be or should not be done.

General Studies has become very important part of this exam as it carries double the weightage of optional. At the same time General Studies syllabus has become so vast that almost anything under the sun can be asked in the paper. Now this often leads to the confusion as to what to study, how much to study etc. In this post and the next ones, I will try to answer these queries.

While I will try to post the study material for each paper later, here I will take up some important points that I realized during my preparation either from my experience or after interaction with various other successful candidates.

Currently GS consists of 4 papers of 250 marks each with each paper demarcated into a very well defined syllabus. While the syllabus appears to be very vast, and yes it is, but it has also been very well detailed and hence easier to prepare for. Now there is no fixed book or study material that can be referred to for GS, so the candidate should be on a constant look out for relevant material and try to complete each topic in syllabus. But at the same time once a good source for a topic has been recognized (whatever it may be), one should stick to it, revise it again and again and hence make sure that neither any topic is ignored nor over emphasized. Many of us have a penchant for collecting lots of material or even reading whatever comes to the market. While reading more and more may be good and helpful, but given the vast amount of syllabus that has to be completed, time management is equally important. For example, disaster management is one of 60 odd topics in GS. Now if one goes on to read 300 pages of report on Disaster management by MHA, it will become very difficult to do justice to other topics.

While government documents are very well written, but they often tend to be oversized, and the net takeaway is very less. Such documents make a good read, but it may become very difficult to revise them and without revision it is impossible for a normal person to reproduce it in the exam. What I did was to recognize resources for each topic in the syllabus and stick to them, not worrying much about loads of material coming in market or on internet.

Last year the pattern changed in March during which I was busy in interviews for my previous attempt. After that I had to get into preliminary mode. So effectively I had only six months for both GS and optional remaining after prelims. In fact, this is going to be the situation almost every year. I think that at least two months in the end should be kept for revision and re-revision of syllabus. I only kept first four months for reading new things and spent last two months only for revising the notes or books.

This year, unexpectedly, 25 questions of 10 marks each were asked and in each 200 words were expected. Now this is going to be trend (as also recommended in Nigavekar committee). Since it is very difficult to write 5000 words in 3 hours, many will be confused how to write the answers. As they say one should learn from his mistakes, even I tried to learn from the mistakes that I made this year (luckily I will not be needing those lessons again). But I wish to share them with others. UPSC expects candidates to have a detailed knowledge about wide range of topics. But at the same time it also expects candidates to be to the point and have traits like managing time and handling stress. So primarily, it should be tried that all questions of the paper are attempted (it is difficult though). But for that all answers should also be known, which depends on preparation. However once already in examination hall, only those questions should be attempted that one knows. One SHOULD NOT do any kind of guess work or write blabber just for the sake of it. It is very clear that UPSC is not awarding even a single mark to such answers. So instead of wasting time on guess work, it should be tried that one writes the known answers well. But at the same time, one should not leave any question that one knows. For that answer writing practice for speed is a must during preparation. Also I think around 150 words on an average for a question should suffice. And a total attempt of 900 marks out of 1000 can be called very good (mine was only 830), if the answer quality is good. Wherever possible, point format can be used in current scenario (previously para format was better). But the points should be well introduced and well concluded, even if with a single line, in a coherent and grammatically correct manner.

I joined test series of Synergy. But I don’t think it is of much use. While the questions were quite good, the checking was absurd. Discussions were OK. But test series are helpful to the extent that it is important to practice writing continuously for 3 hours in exam like conditions before the actual day of exam. But test series are not alternative to answer writing practice. One should try writing one or two answers daily in fixed time and within word limit. This exercise helped me a lot. The answers should be written to very random questions taken either from some test series papers (available easily) so that one gets prepared to attempt unexpected questions. One may often have tendency to think that the topic is not prepared well, so why not write it after reading the topic. Such times never comes. So whether the topic is prepared or not, answer should be written. This practice will definitely show results in around a month.

This is all that comes to my mind as far as General Studies is concerned. I sincerely hope it is useful. In my next post I will put up sources that I referred to for all the papers.