Civil service IAS exam preparation: How to select a coaching institute part 2

I had written about the gimmicks certain institutes (not all) employ to fool students in my earlier article. Now let me continue on how you can choose a good coaching institute. A very important thing to keep in mind is the faculty at the institute. There are certain teachers who know the in and out of the civil service exams. All of them may not be even located in metros. The best judge of a teacher is the students who have gone for classes to him. Ask the students who have attended his classes and you will know the truth. There are thousands of fooled aspirants. I wonder why no one writes in web about their failed experiences.

There may be good faculty for certain areas while not for other. See if the good faculty is teaching subjects you need. In case you need info on “Indian economy” and the institute has a real bad teacher in that topic; would it do any good?

There are many institutes which have faculty who are just hired as engineers are hired in an IT company. The motive of some of these institutes is just money making .So they employ faculty just to milk out the money. The aspirant would loose his time as well as money going to such places. Another set of institutions may employ retired professors with big long degrees at the end. The problem is that they would be knowledgeable but may not be able to adapt it to the needs of civil service. So its not big big degree tails at the end of name that is needed but a person who knows the techniques needed for civil service exam.

Also keep in mind your study style. The teaching style has to be in sync with your learning style. There are teachers who like to treat the aspirants like KG children. They would incessantly take class and be hard. If you like that style of ‘strict’ teaching then he may be your choice. There are aspirants who love friendly down to earth easy style of teaching. If you are such a kind then find such a teacher/institute. It fully depends on you. There are some students who would like the teacher to be ‘strict’ ‘tough’ and ‘punishing’. You have to be able to carefully identify the teaching style before you join.

One more thing to keep in mind is regarding study materials  Have you seen the proclamation by certain coaching institutions in ads like these ‘ 100 questions our of 120 questions in general studies was from our material’. Many times this proclamation is useless for the aspirant. I will explain why. Some institutions just print loads and loads of material and push it to students. It wont be practical to learn all this material by any human being. They do it to make sure that at the end of the period , this proclamation of great coverage can be made. It is like saying ‘100 of 120 questions was there in book store!. Here you should select coaching institutions that can guide a person to the question. See what material is being supplied. There are certain institutions which will print same notes year after year with no relevant timely changes being made. Make sure the institute is dynamic and is in tune with times.

A slew of online coaching websites have been started recently. Most of them neither publish the faculty nor method of teaching.Most of them are just taking away your money and giving you readily available stuff which would be of no use for exam. Send enquirer emails and see their response before joining.