UPSC CIVIL SERVICES(IAS,IPS.) PRELIMS 2012,2013 PLAN

UPSC CIVIL SERVICES(IAS,IPS..) PRELIMS,2011 AND   2012,2013  PLAN

Sr No	Topic in GS	Basic Book(Foundation)	Last Minute Book                  ( gist)( Pre-2011)	Extra edge reading (Mains)
1	Indian History	India Struggle for Independence by Bipin Chandra	Spectrum handbook on History	Gandhi Nehru Tagore & Ambedkar — Gopal Krishna, IN
		NCERT /Jawahar Pub — Ancient India, Modern India,,Medieval India
2	Indian Polity & Governance	D.D. Basu—Indian Constitution,	Wizard handbook on Polity	Indian Constitution- Pylee
		Subhash C. Kashyap : Our Parliament	NCERT —Indian Political System
3	Geography	NCERT : Physical Geography of India for X - XII Std	Khullar : India- A Comprehnsive Geography	National journal - Kurukshetra, Yojana
		Geography - Spectrum
		A Good School Atlas (Oxford)
4	Science	NCERT : (10 level) : Science, (+2 level) : Biology	Science and Technology in India - Spectrum	Popular Science Series (CSIR)
		Human Machine -NBT	Tata McGraw Hill CSP Guide	Hindu survey on Science,Environment,Agriculture
5	Economic & Social dev	Indian Economy -Dutt & Sundaram	Indian Economy-Jawahar book	Economic Survey, Yojana

6.         CSAT Paper-II 2011,   Disha Publications  , 2011 7.         Environmental Studies   DR. R.J.RANJIT DANIELS, DR. JAGDISH KRISHNASWAMY

Other Books for General Studies:
1. India Year Book latest
2. One competitive Magazine (Competition Wizard or Civil services Cronicle)
3. Guides like Tata Mc Graw Hill, Spectrum or Unique For General Reference
4. The Pearson General Studies Manual

 Prelims preparation requires smart hard work as you must be aware by now. One of the first steps in your CSAT preparation is to develop a daily routine. Once you start your Prelims preparation, keep the past five year’s General studies question papers and GS syllabus with you whenever you are preparing for the Prelims.

After selecting a topic to study from the GS Syllabus, go through the past five year’s questions from a good section-wise handbook like Disha or Arihant (they have the most authentic answers Once you do this, then read or more correctly, study that topic. Now you will encounter answers to the questions you just went through and pronto, you know that this part is important and requires extra attention. But wait, there’s more.
Whenever you finish a section, again refer to the past year’s questions to see how many can you answer correctly. If you found some questions that weren’t covered in your first reading go through the material again or even refer additional sources so that all questions are covered.

But if you couldn’t, no need to fret. Just see which questions you had some idea about but weren’t sure about the answer and which ones were completely new to you and had not encountered while reading the articles on Fundamental Rights. Now go back to your source and read again covering the points that you may have skipped earlier. If the material doesn’t cover it, refer additional books or notes so that you’re comfortable in answering all the past five year’s questions on Fundamental Rights. 

Benefits of this Approach

Continuous Tracking: These two reference books, the GS Syllabus and Question Papers, can lessen your workload considerably in the long run and enables you to track your Prelims preparation very effectively. Suppose you were preparing Physical Geography from the Oxford Student Atlas, you can track how well you have covered the map-based questions just after you started going through the Atlas instead of leaving it till the end of February or March which might be just too late for course correction.
Test Yourself: Suppose you don’t have time left to enrol for Prelims or CSAT test series, because you have been solving the previous year’s section-wise questions all year through you won’t feel uncertain about your preparation level. Instead you will feel confident about attempting the IAS Prelims even without the help of any test series. So you save some money for other important stuff related to the civil services, right Anil?
Save Precious Time: Let’s consider a scenario. You’re covering Modern India from Bipin Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence and adopt a ‘read all strategy’. What is this strategy? Well, simply reading a book from the first page to last without bothering to find out the more important topics or chapters from the lesser ones. Also not testing yourself mid-way is included within this. Suppose you take 20 days to cover the book and then after some months you decide to solve some questions related to Modern History but you realize that many of the questions are completely new, the matter for which you never encountered while reading the History material. You panic. It not only spoils your strategy but dents your confidence as well. On the other hand, adopting the above approach admittedly requires more effort but is far more useful for your Prelims preparation in the long run.
Bonus: Here’s a link to download free study materials. Especially for those who have been asking for such stuff. As usual your feedback is always welcome

As you must be aware the Prelims is a 10-12 months affair and long-term affairs need some amount of loyalty as well. Right? Well then let’s learn how we can schedule our day for maximal benefit in some simple steps.

Step 1: Determine the average time you study daily

To do this simple observe the time you studied in a week and divide that by 7. If you devote 5 or 6 days a week to IAS prep then divide by 5 or 6 as the case may be. You should have an exact or approximate figure like 10 hours or 10-12 hours every day. 
Step 2: Determine the number of subjects to study daily
I know there are only two papers in the Pre but within each of them there are so many to cover like History, Geography, and Mental Ability etc. Now I am sure you can’t study all of them in one day even if you devote only a small amount of time to each. Some people try this but I don’t think it’s a wise idea to go for ‘study all’ approach. Rather you should take up two or three subjects at most on a daily basis, finish it completely or at least a major portion of it and then switch to different ones. This is essential as finishing a subject in full will give you confidence in your preparation, will enable you to tackle all the questions in a particular section completely, and help you to keep track of your progress more effectively. Remember, reading newspapers or watching news programmes is not included within this. 
Step 3: Divide time between the different subjects
Till last year when you had study one optional subject, I used to devote about 70-85% time to the optional and rest to some section of GS. Obviously I read newspapers on a daily basis and didn’t count it within this time split. But now that both papers are GS based you might pick up one subject each from Paper 1 and 2 or go with both subjects from the same paper or one from P1 or P2 and two from P2 or P1 respectively. After you’ve done this, divide the total time that you determined in Step 1 between the subjects you will be studying daily.
How to do this? While there is no one best method of doing this a simple way is to devote more time to that subject or section that you find a) more difficult b) carries more weightage in terms of number of questions asked c) has many topics to cover, that is, is pretty vast d) quite new as you’ve just started with it.
The exact time to devote to each of the topics will vary from person to person. Also you can be little flexible in this. For instance, if you have been devoting 3 hours to study Modern Indian History every day and have covered a major part of it you might reduce the time devoted to it by 30 mins or 1 hour and allocate this to some other subject that you study alongside Modern History, maybe Data Interpretation. 
Step 4: Stick to your routine
Now that you have a daily schedule ready, stick to it like Bees stick to Honey. In any long term work program scheduling is important but even more important is sticking to the commitment you made to yourself. If you committed to clearing the IAS, stick to it. And for this you committed to devote certain amount of hours every day and then you committed to study one, two, or three subjects on a daily basis till you covered it in entirety. Stick to it. As I mentioned in Step 3 above some flexibility is essential and the odd day off is OK but don’t make it a habit otherwise you will see yourself lying to yourself and the commitments you made.

Benefits of developing a routine

• Track your progress easily: Instead of doing everything in bits and pieces and struggling to up the loose ends learn to cover the major distance before taking up a new path. This way you can test yourself against past papers to know which are your strong and weak areas and rectify the weak ones. If you cover only a small part of every subject, you’ll have to wait till Jan or Feb to test yourself and if for some reasons you deviated off course then course correction might be too late. Avoid this by finishing off a subject as quickly as possible and effective scheduling is a good way to do this.
• Build up stamina to devote long hours of study: If you thought only running and other physical activities required stamina, think again. Mental work is also included within the ambit of stamina. In fact if you’re mentally not up to the task of devoting 8-12 hours daily to your preparation, then other things are of no use. When you devote a consistent time and effort to a particular subject then you not only gain mastery in it but also develop immunity to boredom resulting from studying a topic for long hours.
• Prepare yourself for Mains more effectively: In the mains as you have to cover each optional thoroughly you’ll need to devote long hours and even days on end to just one subject. This will require prior practice as you could easily lose focus and indulge in time wasting tactics if you are bored of a particular topic or subject. But by devoting long hours to a single subject during your Prelims preparation itself, you’re indirectly preparing for the Mains as well. And the benefit of this approach will be quite visible during the Mains.
• Cover the scoring sections early: The Prelims is such that some sections like Indian Polity are easy to score off. And the right way to crack Prelims easily is to cover most or some subjects entirely than covering something of everything. When you consistently devote X number of hours to a topic over a period of time, you secure Y number of marks from it beforehand and this is invaluable.

I am also aware that some people like to divide time in terms of days and not hours. For instance, you might study History for two days and Geography for one day. Even this approach is fine as long as you’re sticking to your schedule to reap the benefits discussed above.