Civil service IAS exam : Common mistakes aspirants make in UPSC exams

The civil service exam is one of the most prestigious exam in India. Graduates from all subjects ranging from pali literature to philosophy to engineering degree take this exam. There is no other exam where you can see IIT’ian ,B.Arts and doctors taking the same exam. The aim of all being same – to become an ias officer. Here many aspirants make some mistakes which form the subject of this article. I have covered other areas too which can be seen in by checking out my articles.

Gross mismanagement of time is a major mistake students make. There are many students who don’t have time left for anything after they have completed paper reading. This is mainly because of the lack of knowledge regarding the time as well as material management.

The common dictum which newbie aspirant (we had given him name Mr Sasi in previous article) follows is : Read all editorials and articles in newspaper Hindu or Times. Mr Sasi starts his reading session early in morning reading each article meticulously and taking notes. The matter he doesn’t get to know is that many articles as well as editorials aren’t needed at all for exam preparation. That is why all aspirants need to go through syllabus thoroughly. In addition to that, he/she needs to ponder the most important issue in the topic stated in syllabus

The articles as well as the editorials need to be categorized by you as ‘needed’ or ‘not needed’ as soon as you see. This can be done by understanding the syllabus. One more thing to keep in mind is the need to know or how much you should know.

 Let me give an example. Say you come across the defects of AAkash the tablet of Indian government. The long list of data and facts would be waste if it is asked as a 2 mark question. The knowledge or thought ‘what question and of what marks can be asked from this topic’ or ‘ is it possible to frame a question from this article’ is of prime importance.

Many aspirants take optional based on hearsay. The earlier trend of getting more marks consistently in certain optionals is disappearing. You need to make a thorough consultation and keep in mind the availability, accessibility and level of competition in an optional before going in for one.

The Part 2 of this article will be published later.

A separate article: How to read Newspaper is there in the blog archive.

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Quote:

 The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually afraid you will make one.

-Elbert Hubbard