Four Months Preparation Strategy for UPSC Prelims

UPSC Civil Services is considered to be one of the toughest recruitment exams in India. To ace the exam an average aspirant needs to invest a minimum of 10 to 12 months with dedication and consistency, this however doesn’t mean that one can not clear the exam in lesser time duration than that. Examples are already present where UPSC aspirants have cleared the exam even in a 120 days long preparation. If your basic knowledge about some humanities subjects like History, Geography, Economics and Polity are clear, then you may too clear the exam in just four months of dedicated studies. In this article we’ll explain the preparation strategy one needs to adopt to clear the UPSC exam in just four months.

Your next 120 days strategy will consist of the following components:

1. Priority
2. Books and Resources
3. Highly Effective Timetable

Prioritise the Everything

Literally everything, with only 4 months time left ahead, you cannot afford to go ahead with an inefficient daily routine and studies aiming to crack the IAS exam. Prioritising will help you pay first and more attention to things that are more important.

• Study/Revise more the topics that have higher weightage in the prelims. For example, the following topics have the highest weightage in the prelims exam in the descending order:
  1. History and Art & Culture
  2. Geography and Environment
  3. Polity
  4. Economics
• Don’t worry much about CSAT, give 1 or 2 full days in a month for CSAT preparation. Remember you just have to score more than 33% in it and not to top the paper.
  1. Identify topics in the CSAT that you are most comfortable with and focus more on them. If your English language skill is fine, then make it finer and study Maths/Reasoning enough to secure that many extra marks in addition to English to score more than 66 marks.
• Don’t waste much time on reading newspapers daily for too long. Watch the Daily Video Analysis of The Hindu by BYJU’S and then give a careful glance to the newspaper for anything important that has been left out. Do watch videos only in the first 3 months.
  1. In the 4th month, kindly do not watch any Newspaper analysis, and also don’t read the newspaper. Dedicate this month fully for Prelims only.
• If you think Video analysis is taking longer and you have fast reading skills, do checkout Daily Comprehensive News Analysis by BYJU’S and save your time to invest in other topics.
• For Current affairs older than these four months, read the Free Monthly Current Affairs Magazine by BYJU’S instead of referring to video analysis, CNA or any other sources.

Books and Study Materials

A four month short timespan requires you to rely on fewer books and fewer revision, although if you have some basic knowledge and understanding of some topics, it gets easier for you to prepare. Following are the Books and Resources you should refer to:

4 Months Schedule

These 4 months or 120 days need not only your dedication and will but also consistency in preparation. Below is a 120 days schedule of your studies, you may also make minor modifications as per your comfort and actual plan:

The above schedule makes up of 90 days from the 120 days you had, if you end up finishing the first reading and/or revision earlier than you may proceed to second revision of the same subject or other subject that you feel less confident about. Of the remaining 30 days, 23 days should be invested in solving only mock tests. Considering that giving a mock test takes 2 hours and then 2 hours more for evaluation and reading of the solution/explanation, it takes a total of 4 hours and you may give 2 to 3 mock tests daily for these 23 days totalling anywhere around 46 to 69 mock tests which is a decent figure.

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