128 Days are left from today to UPSC CSE Prelims 2024. Here is how you can plan the remaining days and make best use of same:

Common for All:

• Go through PYQPs of at least last 5 years. You will find that paper is more and more analytical and day to day awareness based than it used to be before. So, prepare accordingly. This means that newspaper reading is must. Coachings may or may not focus on analytical or conceptual aspects in their ready-made current affairs notes and this has been a very common factor of undoing in prelims for those who solely relied upon coaching material.
• Merely attempting tests won’t do any good. Prepare for each test and make notes of questions you found tough/wrong so that you can revise those questions/pointers at least 2-3 times.
• Follow basic sources only. I understand and I am very well aware that pattern is dynamic and ever-changing. One year, UPSC asks questions from a book and next year it asks questions from another book. That does not mean that you will buy and read all those books. It is not possible. Even if you read multiple sources, you won’t have time to revise them and won’t remember a thing. Following is list of sources followed by 152 candidates who cleared Prelims 2023. These are the latest tried and tested sources:

Modern History:Spectrum, NCERT 12th, NCERT 11th, Bipin Chandra & Ghatna Chakra.

Art & Culture:Nitin Singhania Book, NCERT 11th, TN Board Book & Nitin Singhania Notes.

Ancient-Medieval:TN board Book, NCERT 11th RS Sharma, NCERT 11th Satish Chandra, Lucent, Vajiram Yellow Book (Ancient + Medieval), Poonam Dalal & Ghatna Chakra.

Polity:Laxmikanth, NCERT & Bare Act.

Economy: Budget (Only Summary), Economic Survey (Only Summary), Mrunal Notes, Mrunal Lectures, Vivek Singh, Vajiram Notes, Ramesh Singh & Sriram IAS Book.

Environment: Vision IAS Current Affairs, Shankar IAS Book, PMF IAS, Biology NCERT, Google, Shivin Chaudhary Course on EdSarrthi & Sunya Current Affairs.

Geography:11th & 12th NCERTs, Atlas, GC Leong, PMF IAS, 11th NCERT (Not 12th), Rajtanil Solanki Lecture Videos & Sudarshan Gujjar Lecture Videos.

Science & Technology: Vision IAS Current Affairs, Biology NCERT, Shivin Chaudhary Course on EdSarrthi, Sunya Current Affairs & Lucent.

Current Affairs: Newspaper + Coaching Magazine (60.5%), Only Coaching Magazine (30.3%) & Only Newspaper (9.2%)

Which Magazine: Vision PT365, Vision Monthly, Sunya & Insight IAS

• 128 days are not enough to be making fresh notes from scratch. Yet, for topics that you find difficult to understand / memorize / grasp, you should make pointed notes. We tend to remember better when we write!
• Further, revising content multiple times is more important and if notes are handy then doing so becomes easy.
• Make timetable and divide leftover days as per what suits you the best from below scenarios.

For those who are first timers or not confident about Mains:

• Ideally, last 5 months should be completely dedicated to prelims preparation. This is what is the general accepted trend or norm since at least last 10 years.
• However, if you have not completed Mains GS or/and Optional paper then it will be very tough to complete entire Mains GS and Optional after prelims. So, first try to dedicate time to both Prelims and Optional and once Optional is complete, dedicate time to Prelims and Mains GS. In any case and in my personal view, you cannot stretch mains preparation beyond next 38 days as at least 90 days dedicated preparation is must for prelims. Any portion of Mains that will be left beyond next 38 days should be covered after Prelims exam only.

Join here for free UPSC guidance from Mudit Jain, IPS-15, IPS-16, IRS-18, Author of Decode CSAT, Decode Essay, Decode GS2, Decode Ethics 4.0 & Decode History Books

Ethics book referred by CSE 22 Toppers: AIR –76, 91, 176, 189, 249, 288, 297, 299, 326, 356, 476, 541, 611, 616, 700, 737, 739, 746 & others

History book referred by CSE 21 Toppers: AIR – 44, 212, 572, 653 & others

Find PDFs of All Decode Series Books Here

• 2-3 Mains answers can be practiced on daily basis even beyond next 38 days as it hardly takes any time and will be very fruitful after Prelims.
• Ideally, one should practice about 35-40 tests, including both sectional and FLTs. But, if you are dedicating only the last 90-100 days for Prelims then it will be difficult to solve as many tests and you have to devise a way to solve at least 30 tests i.e. 1 test every 3^rd day.
• If you are confident about Mains preparation then you can dedicatedly prepare for Prelims in manner as under:

For those who are confident about Mains or have cleared Mains in the past or are done with majority of Mains syllabus:

• This lot of Aspirants is sailing in much calmer waters compared to above ones and can better structure their Prelims preparation.
• My suggestion is to try to finish entire prelims syllabus 30 days in advance i.e. in next 98 days.
• This will allow you to revise entire course twice in last 30 days i.e. in batch of 15-15 or 20-10 days.
• Make a timetable for next 98 days for structured preparation.
• Start with topics that you like or are comfortable with and then move to tougher ones.
• Formally joining a test series is not important or necessary for Prelims as tests are readily available for free on various platforms. What is important is to prepare for each test, go through each and every topic of concerned syllabus/subject and then only attempt a test. Scoring without preparing will only boost fake confidence and won’t help at all.
• 128 days à 1 test every 3^rd day = at least 40 tests.