Lakhs of aspirants every year take up the civil services examination conducted by Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) to fill in various civil services posts such as Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Indian Police Services (IPS), Indian Foreign Services (IFS), Indian Revenue services (IRS), etc. UPSC Civil Services exam 2019 is fast approaching and if you are an aspirant competing for the exam, it is suggested to take up previous year’s question papers and solve them also analyse where you need to concentrate in this final phase of prelims preparation. It is important to know how these question papers can help you hence few takeaways are mentioned below:
1. A clear idea on Exam Pattern
The exam has a vast syllabus which makes preparation a mammoth task. Over a period of time, the aspirant is put in a situation where there are multiple sources to be covered and should be done daily like covering current affairs, preparing General Studies, Optional subject, and other subjects. Therefore it is very easy to lose the track. Looking into the previous year questions regularly will guide the aspirant as to how deep he or she must dive into the subject.
2. Understanding requirements of the questions and its types
One of the biggest mistakes, most aspirants make is concentrating on just completing the subject or just acquiring knowledge and ignoring the presentation of the answer in an appropriate manner keeping in mind demands of the question. In Preliminary exam, we find a lot of questions which requires the aspirant to find the wrong statement out of the 4 options or sometimes the correct option – in which most of the aspirant go wrong because they do not read it correctly. This could have been avoided if the aspirant was aware that the questions would be asked in this manner. Also in Mains Exam the style of answers depends on whether the question directs the aspirant to comment, explain, critically analyse, etc. Each one of which is different from the other.
3. Practice to perfection
There are many advantages of practicing previous year question papers. The aspirant can add on other important aspects of preparation like: time management, building confidence to face the exam, check whether the preparation strategy adopted was fruitful, etc. Undoubtedly there are no better material or essential material to practice and give the confidence to an aspirant. Once an aspirant gets a hang of solving papers they can also act upon analysing their preparation by making tweaks to their preparation strategy and making a better plan for the few months left to prepare for the civil services exam (commonly known as IAS or IPS exam).
One of the important aspects that do not get covered in the previous year paper is the current affairs section which you could take the help of some current affairs materials and practice papers. We at BYJU’S cover current affairs comprehensively on a daily basis also provide other tips and tricks to prepare for the exam. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
