I am a upsc aspirant and have recently given my 12th board exam and will be joining an engineering college so what should be my strategy?
Since you have decided to start early, I suppose you wish to appear for the exam right after your graduation without waiting for a year. The strategy below is designed to help you crack the exam in your very 1st attempt.
Another important decision of your life that you have to take now is choosing your optional. Here, we are assuming you have chosen one of the 3 (listed below) as your stream in your undergrad. It is advisable that you choose your own graduation subject as your optional as then both your college and UPSC studies would be synchronized. UPSC gives you the option of choosing from following engineering disciplines:
Electrical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Civil Engineering
If you are graduating from any other stream or dont want to choose your subject then you can choose from any of the technical subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics etc. The reason we suggest on choosing technical subjects is that the engineering and technical subjects have fared well in the recent past compared to humanities subject like Geography & PubAD etc. Also, there is consistency in scoring through these subjects. We take the liberty to say this based on our experience that we have gained through our Made Easy organisation, where we have guided number of students with technical backgrounds in the UPSC exams.
However, if you do have a strong inclination towards any of the humanities subject you may go forward with it with out any second thought.
Now, few things that are a must for you:
Read -TheHindu on a daily basis. You may avoid note making initially. But by 4th year of your college you should make some notes especially with mains perspective.
Try to complete 1st round of reading of NCERTs in your 1st and 2nd year. In your 3rd year revise them. In the 4th year, move towards advanced books/materials like
Laxmikant for Polity,
Bipin Chandra/Spectrum for Modern History,
GC Leong for Geography
ICSE for Environment and other good websites
One monthly magazine
UPSC past papers and UPSC syllabus are your two poles which should always guide the direction of your studies. Read them and try to find a pattern that UPSC follows in asking questions. This will need an in-depth analysis of all the questions asked in the past 5 years. Once you do so you will soon be able to guess what question is expected next year.
By the 2nd Semester of 4th year you will have to focus on prelims- this would need looking for small details, solving mock tests, revising and re-revising.
ALL THE BEST!!
Hello Niranjan,
Since you have just completed your 12th and I think you might have given the IIT or other Engineering entrance exams.
If you haven't than also, don't worry there are plenty of good engineering colleges that take admission on the basis of 12th marks as well.
For further details, if you have any query you can even visit our website, where there is a detailed description which would be quite helpful for you.
https://engineering.careers360.com/