Benjo P Jose (CSE-23 AIR-59) Comprehensive Prelims Strategy
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Hello everyone,
This is Benjo P Jose, AIR 59, UPSC CSE 2023. I am a native Kerala and have graduated in mathematics from St. Stephen’s College Delhi. About one year after graduating, I started preparing for CSE. This (2023 UPSC CSE) was my fourth attempt. After having failed two prelims in my first two attempts and reaching the Personality Test in my third, I got placed in the final list in 2023. Through this post I would like to give a general overview of my Prelims preparation.
Resource List
Ancient and Medieval India: Themes in Indian History, Wikipedia for Timeline
Modern India: Spectrum, Mandar Patki Notes
Art and Culture: Text book in Fine Arts (Class 11 NCERT)
Polity: Indian Polity by M Laxmikant, Mandar Patki notes
Indian Economy: Mrunal Sir’s Handouts
Geography: Class 11 and 12 NCERTs, Youtube videos (Sudarshan Gurjar, Rajtanil Solanki)
Science and Technology: Lotus Arise website, Current affairs, Internet, PYQ
Current Affairs: Insights IAS website Daily News, Microclass list of Topics from Lead IAS, PT 365 (Only for Economy)
Other Resources: I used the internet extensively during preparation, and it is impossible to add all the websites and apps I had used in this single post. I have used websites like Civils Daily, Vajiram & Ravi, Byju’s IAS etc. for prelims. Apart from these, I have also used official websites such as Vikaspedia, RBI etc. to get authentic information about various institutions and practises.
Apps and Tools
Evernote for taking notes eg. Species in News, International Organizations etc. See below the notes I made on Evernote:
A House Built on Solid Ground
Foundation courses are named so because of their ability to create the solid ground required for building a resilient preparation. The primary intention of these courses is to build ‘conceptual clarity’. From my experience as well, building conceptual clarity and learning from ‘Basic books’ is the crucial aspect of Prelims in my opinion. Since I did not rely upon classroom coaching or foundation classes and because I was primarily self-studying, I had to build this clarity from scratch, on my own. It is safe to say that as I built this house, it was difficult for me to do it on my own. I tried to do it to the best of my ability, and gradually I succeeded. Once I felt that I had 80-90% competency in Basic books, I tried to attend mock tests. I urge all aspirants to build their houses on a solid foundation. The length of your preparation might vary, but the depth of your preparation will always depend on the clarity you learn during this initial phase.
My Routine
My first attempt was my worst. I hadn’t even completed one basic book before Prelims. I scored about 54 in Paper 1 in that attempt (CSE 2020). In my second attempt (CSE 2021), I had studied more. I wasn’t competent with basic books, but my preparation was better in every regard. I was taking mock tests and used to score around 80-90 in mocks taken two months before Prelims. Alas, I couldn’t maintain the momentum from there and missed the Prelims cut-off by 1 mark.
In the first two and last attempts, I did not have a set routine for prelims. However, my third attempt can be considered as the best case study for all the prelims I attempted, as this was the only attempt where I prepared for prelims in a regimented and meticulous manner. By this time, I had enrolled in Law and could not devote much time. Thankfully, the summer vacation started around mid-March. Prelims 2022 was to be held on June 5th, so I had about 80 days to prepare solely for Prelims. My routine during that time revolved around studying for 8-12 hours every day. I then simplified my preparation to doing 3 or a maximum of 4 things every day. So, every day I didn’t have to read thousands of pages, solve hundreds of questions, or learn from tens of chapters. I just had to do 3-4 things. This was a ‘3+3+3(+3)’ strategy, meaning I would sit for 3 hours, over three to four sessions every day, rather than 6 two-hour sessions or 12 one-hour sessions. This greatly simplified my learning objectives and time management. This simplification strategy idea was taken from Minal Karanwal’s (AIR 35 CSE 2018) blog on Forum IAS.
This is how my day would normally look like:
Session 1 (3 hours)
Solving and Reviewing Mock Test ( 1.5 hours for solving, 1.5 hours for review) or Heavy Lifting – Core Subject
My daily schedule did not include CSAT prep everyday. I had devoted 7-10 days during this entire 80 day span solely for CSAT. This style suited me, but it might not work for everybody, for some doing CSAT everyday would be better. I have added my CSAT approach towards the end.
I learned from a dear friend of mine, Prudhvi, that in Prelims we must be ready to face and solve questions from areas on which we have little or no idea. I devised a method to make myself more comfortable with that. This is the first aspect about my approach to test taking. It included dissociating Mock Tests from Core Subject learning. So, I printed out various sectional tests and would randomly take those Mock tests. I might not have read anything about some of the topics in that test, but I would still attempt them. For example, even if for the past few days I had been studying Modern India, I might be taking an economics test or an environment test. The biggest disadvantage of this strategy was that I was scoring poor marks in the beginning. But I somehow kept hope, my marks picked up in about 30-40 days when I had finished reading all basic books. But now in addition to that, I was also filled with the chutzpah to answer a question even if I have no idea about it.
The second aspect of my test-taking was that I tried to complete the paper in 1.5 hours instead of the 2 hours. This ensured that I could finish reviewing in the next 1.5 hours and my mock test session would end in 3 hours. This was very challenging in the beginning and I used to take 4-6 hours to solve and review a mock test. But gradually, it picked up pace, and by the last days, I remember solving and reviewing a paper in 2.5 hours. There is a pitfall here as well. Repeatedly solving papers in 1.5 hours conditioned my brain for 1.5-hour prelims. During prelims, this meant I had a bit of extra time, but not in a good sense. This meant that I had more time to think and not act. This resulted in me attempting fewer questions than I usually do, due to indecisiveness. Hence, anyone trying to implement this must also be cautious of this.
The third aspect of my Tests taking was the Review process itself. George Santayana or maybe Edmund Burke had famously remarked – “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I kept a book called the ‘The Book of Wrongs’, inspired from K Varun Reddy, AIR 07, CSE 2018. After solving the question paper for about 1.5 hours, in the next 1.5 hours I would make sure that I would go through each of those questions and make a 1-page max note of that mock test paper. These are the things I include in this 1-page note-
Things that I have no idea about or information I could not find from any basic book.
Information from basic books that I forget very very often.
A test result including-
Number of questions I got wrong that could be solved from the basic books/my own prepared current affairs
Number of question I got wrong because of carelessness
Number of blind guesses I got wrong.
I made sure that the number of questions that I got wrong from the basic books/my own prepared current affairs and the number of questions I got wrong from carelessness reduce over time. This practise improved my accuracy. I followed this practise not to amass new information, but to check my proficiency in basic books/my own prepared current affairs, hence I would not get dejected if I got too many new questions that were outside them wrong.
In my 2022 prelims, I solved about 10-15 full mocks or whole syllabus mocks. This included Vision Abhyas, Forum IAS, GS Simulator, Lead IAS full syllabus test, and some other all-India mocks that I could find online for free. I scored anywhere between 70-130 in these tests. Despite scoring as low as 70, I knew that I was much better prepared for prelims this time since, on average, I used to score around 100 marks.
How I Used to Attempt Mock Tests
I used to follow a three-round approach for solving mock tests. In the first round that would take about 30-45 minutes, I would only solve the questions that I am 100% sure about. This means that by the end of this round, I could solve about 25-35 questions. I used to mark these questions with a tick on the question number. The second round was a power-play round where I tried to attempt maximum questions or about 60-70 questions. This round took about 1 hour 05 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes. In this round, I used to attempt questions in which I could eliminate at least 1 or 2 options. I used to mark the second round questions with a circle on the question number and as I solved those questions, I put a tick mark on top of the circle. The last 10 minutes or so was my third round. These were the questions in which I could not even eliminate even one of the option. But, I would have a strong hunch on some of these questions based on my own number of attempts and the difficulty of the paper, I used to attempt 5-8 questions in this round. Thus, I would attempt about 90-95, sometimes even 100 questions. Aspirants must use this strategy by changing it to your faculties, accuracy and risk taking aptitude.
I was not a regular reader of the newspaper as far as prelims were concerned. However, I followed Insights IAS daily current affairs on their website during my second attempt. In my third attempt, I could not even do this and rather opted for an unconventional way. I gained access to a compilation of about 2500 topics from the micro-classes taught at Lead IAS by Anuroop Sir, over the course of the whole year. I googled each and every topic and made notes on the ones I found relevant. This was the current affairs compilation that I studied for prelims. I supplemented this with the notes I made from the previously mentioned Insights IAS daily current affairs website and PT 365 for Economy. Find below my notes, which I made from the 2500 topics of Microclasses.
A caveat one must always keep in mind while preparing current affairs for UPSC CSE is that the ROI (Return on Investment) for current affairs is disproportionately low. Hence, one must approach it judiciously and with restraint. If one aims to prepare current affairs ‘thoroughly’, ‘comprehensively’ and ‘completely’, then one will wander in the never-ending ocean of it and not reach any shore. Hence, the best strategy is to prepare only those current affairs that everybody else might know. This ‘common minimum’ approach implies that one can limit one’s preparation of current affairs to established sources such as any one institute’s monthly magazines. Attention must also be given to being ‘competent’ in this source rather than being ‘proficient’. In other words, even if one cannot recall all the details of these current affairs, if one could ‘recognize’ the current affairs from the question/options, one is good to go. In prelims ‘recognition’ is enough, only in Mains is ‘recall’ required.
CSAT Learning Strategy
I had not cleared CSAT in my first 2 attempts. This is because I had not studied specifically for CSAT. I tried to solve some PYQs, but I have never enrolled in a course or seriously studied it. In my second attempt, I missed the GS cut-off by about 1 mark. But in CSAT, I missed the cut-off by about 20 marks. Hence, in my third attempt, I wished to dedicate more time for CSAT. But with my background in Mathematics, I thought I could manage it with less effort. So, my CSAT preparation had spanned a length of about 10 days only. However, I later came to realise that CSAT requires much more dedicated study and serious preparation. During this 10 days, I tried to identify areas which used to repeatedly appear in CSAT paper. I saw some specific videos from these areas to develop conceptual clarity on these topics. This was completely random and mainly included free videos available in YouTube. I supplemented this with solving PYQs. I had not depended on mock tests as much as PYQs for preparing CSAT. Here is the breakdown of what I did for specific sections of CSAT-
Reading comprehension – did not attend any classroom lectures or read any particular books for this. Just typed ‘CSAT reading Comprehension PYQ solving’ on YouTube and saw those videos to gain an understanding of how to attend different types of reading comprehension questions. This was where I understood the difference between ‘inference’, ‘message’, ‘crux’, ‘assumption’ and other typologies of questions that used to come in CSAT. In addition to this, I solved UPSC PYQs for reading comprehension and cross-checked with the official answer keys released by UPSC. I want to reiterate the fact that aspirants must rely on official answer keys released by UPSC whenever available, rather than depending on other sources.
Quantitative Aptitude – I include 2 things here. (A) Logical Reasoning and (B) Mathematical ability. I did not particularly study for logical reasoning. I just looked up PYQs and tried to understand the sort of questions that come. For Mathematical ability, I referred to some videos freely available on YouTube. One of them is a Malayalam channel called ‘Trig Turn’. As mentioned earlier, I did this for about 10 days. But the reader should make sure they change this strategy according to their style.
CSAT Exam Attempting Strategy
In my Fourth attempt, I followed a strategy given by Dr. Shivin Choudhary IRS in his YouTube channel, particularly his suggestion to spend the first 10 minutes of the exam in not trying to solve the questions but trying to identify the questions which one is about to attempt. So, in the first 10 minutes I would scan the entire question paper one by one and identify the easiest questions which I could attempt from Maths and Logical Reasoning. I would not ‘solve’ any questions in this 10 minutes. After this question identification is done, then I would attempt the questions one by one. My approach was to first solve all the reading comprehension questions. Since this amounted to about 20-25 questions, I only had to solve about 15 to 20 questions more from logical reasoning and mathematical ability. After the first 10 minutes of identifying questions, the next 45 minutes to 1 hour will be in solving the comprehension questions and the next 1 hour would be solving the logical reasoning and mathematical ability questions. My aim was to solve only about 35-40 questions with high accuracy. Here, I could afford to make 5-7 questions wrong(irrespective of my intention to have 100% accuracy), and still clear the CSAT cut-off comfortably.
PYQS – oft Ignored, but Highly Rewarding
UPSC CSE Results of 2022 had come in May 2023, just days before CSE 2023 Prelims. My Personality Test (PT) for 2022 CSE was over by April and I did not prepare anything for about two weeks after the PT. By the time I picked up, I realised i did not have enough time to go through the elaborate strategy I used in my third attempt. I could not read the Basic books again nor could I practise as many Mock Tests. This is where I decided to bank entirely on PYQs. I along with a good friend of mine, sat together to practise PYQs. We did the following in the course of the next 10-15 days.
Solved 2013-2018 PYQs by printing out the Question Papers themselves and checking the answers with the official answer keys. Here, we initially solved the question paper of one year eg. 2013 or 2014, but then switched to a novel strategy.
We divided the entire set of 400 questions from 2019-2022, into different sections as given below and solved them.
Single statement Questions
Two-statement Questions
Three-statement ‘simple’ Questions
Three-statement ‘complex’ Questions
Four-statement ‘simple’ Questions
Four-statement ‘complex’ Questions
Five or more statement Questions
Rather than solving year by year, we solved questions in this style and arrived at certain insights. The objective of this classification was to identify patterns/insights pertaining to certain type of questions. So, we tried to understand if there is a particular way in which answers to two-statement questions or three-statement questions could be arrived at, for example. These are not concrete insights that I could share with you now in a numerical fashion but abstract and subconscious ones. For the concrete insights, I would create another article, but these are already available in public domain as ‘tricks and tips’ to crack prelims. The unfortunate truth about this ‘tricks and tips’ is that they are not absolute rules that one could follow. The naysayers of these ‘tricks and tips’ would say that UPSC is beyond these tricks and tips and that they never work or that they have stopped working. The use of these tips as absolute rules also is guaranteed to fail, but by the use of a combination of these tips and common sense, one stands the chance to clear the CSE cut-off. More on this later.
Find below the way we organised questions. I will upload the PDF of all such divisions later.
I have tried to give a general overview of Prelims preparation and will update on detailed strategy for each subjects in a different post. I will also update detailed strategy for Mains later. Till then, Ciao!
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