How should I prepare for the IAS prelims and for how long?
Prelims Examination is the first stage of the UPSC Civil Services Examination. There are many aspirants who start the preparation by keeping Prelims in their minds but it is a wrong approach to start your preparation. If you see the UPSC Syllabus – You will find there are almost 60% syllabus is overlapping in both Prelims and Mains IAS Coaching in Delhi.
This is very useful and well decoded syllabus you can find easily in market on any book stall. If you will see the syllabus, you will realize that there are almost areas overlapping in the prelims and mains syllabus.
If we consider these four subjects as the base subjects – History, Geography, Polity, Economy – we have rest a few more subjects like Environment & Ecology, General Science, Art & Culture. We can see here, if we further divide History of prelims exam syllabus – Ancient, Medieval, Modern, we can say that Modern also comes in IAS Mains examination with Post Independence India & Art and culture with world history in GS Paper I.
If we talk about GS Paper II, the same polity and constitution can be found as one of the major papers in GS II along with the Governance, IR and Social Justice.
Same in GS Paper III you have Economy which you study as a major subject in the prelims examination.
It should also be noted that there is very less time difference between the prelims and the mains examination – which is almost 3 months. And these 3 months are too less to prepare the entire mains.
It is very tough to segregate the Prelims from the Mains preparation. So, it is very beneficial to cover Prelims and Mains together if you talk syllabus wise.
You can apply a different technique if you want to practice the prelims, which should start from the day one you start your preparation. Every aspirant should learn to differentiate between the exam approach of Prelims and mains which is Subjective for Prelims and Objective for Mains.
Even if you are starting your preparation with NCERT, you can find some of the NCERT relevant MCQ. Multiple Choice questions and solve them simultaneously with your reading. This approach can help you better understand the syllabus.
Same stands for the mains answer writing, you should try to get into the soul of the question. Which is its demands, word limit, or its relevance to the current affairs.
Every new aspirant should give at least 4 months to a good revision ands practice of MCQ’s before the Prelims examination. As for an example – If you can start your revision from January. Month of the year and you have your exam in June.
Let say this year 2022 you have your prelims examination on 5th of June.
You must have heard of MISSION PRELIMS course launched every year right 4 months before the prelims examination. This batch is having a very good strategy of revision of GS and Current affairs syllabus. And CA for the prelims along with the CSAT preparation. It has been seen that UPSC is making the CSAT paper tough day by day so you should also focus equally on CSAT UPSC Coaching.
This course opens around the first week of January and has a very good record of selection in previous years.
There also a free program called Prelims Productivity Challenge. Which helps you to check your daily productivity for the Prelims exam way ahead of it.
Give your best to the practice. Practice more number of questions, this is the only solution to combat prelims examination.
