How to Manage Time in UPSC Prelims Exam?

The Union Public Service Commission conducts the Civil Services Exam popularly known as the IAS Exam every year to recruit candidates to Group ‘A’ and Group ‘B’ services of India. Time management is as crucial while writing the prelims exam as in the preparation phase of an aspirant. Because the exam is conducted in offline mode and the candidate has to mark his/her answers in the OMR answer sheet, it becomes tricky sometimes while marking the responses and results in loss of time as well as incorrect marking of responses. Filling an OMR sheet takes its own time and separate time is not given by the commission for this purpose. Candidates sometimes also mark their responses in the OMR sheet at incorrect circles due to hurry and other silly reasons, therefore it is quite important to manage time in this stage of the exam so as to eliminate all chances of silly errors.

About UPSC Prelims

The UPSC Civil Services Preliminary Exam is essentially a screening test which is used to select aspirants for the Civil Services Main Exam. It consists of two mandatory papers that are administered in two sessions on the same day via offline mode (pen – paper).

• Both of the CSE Preliminary test papers are of objective character (multiple choice questions).
• Time alloted for each paper is 2 hours.
• Each paper is of 200 marks.
• For wrong answers, there would be negative marking. For each incorrect response, a penalty of 1/3rd of a mark (0.66 mark) will be deducted.
• The civil services prelims exam question papers would be presented in both Hindi and English languages.
• The UPSC sets the cut-off for the CSE Preliminary Exam, which tends to vary year on year. In determining the cut-off and choosing contenders for the UPSC CSE Mains Exam, only the marks scored in General Studies Paper – I of the UPSC Civil Services Exam are taken into account.
• The UPSC CSE Preliminary Exam General Studies Paper – II would be a qualifying paper having a minimum qualifying marks of 66 i.e. 33%.

CSE Prelims Pattern

General Studies Paper 1

Time management in this paper follows a different approach than the Paper 2. Here the target is to attempt maximum questions with highest accuracy, and because this is a more difficult paper as well as your fate depends on it, it is important to devise a perfect strategy that suits your comfort. Experts at BYJU’s advise the aspirants to follow the below suggestions and modify them as per their comfort:

• Read the questions properly. Never read half of a question and start pondering over the probable answer. It saves time in only a few instances and in most others it costs your time. This practice also sometimes leads you to a wrong answer as the aspirant fails to notice the demand of the question, sometimes there’s a “not” in the question which changes the answer completely.
• Attempt your favourite topic/subject first. As soon as an aspirant is allowed to open the test booklet he/she should just turn pages to jump over to his/her favourite subject/topic and attempt questions from here which seem “easy”. They can also mark such answers at that very moment in the OMR sheet if and only if the aspirant is 100% sure of the answer he believes is true.
  • Similarly, then jump to subjects which is their second favourite and so on. While doing so, don’t mark responses in the answer sheet. Also, attempt only those questions where you have some idea about the subject matter and you are a little over 50% sure that your answer is correct.
  • Now comes the final round, attempt all the questions that you want, serial wise and tick their answer in the test booklet. After that the aspirant should proceed to mark their responses in the OMR answer sheet with care.
• After completing the above exercise, if the aspirant is left with some time, he/she should give the unattempted and “never heard of” questions a try and if they feel that they’ve suddenly got an answer then they should mark it in the answer sheet.

General Studies Paper 2 (CSAT)

The paper 2 i.e. CSAT should be attempted with a different time management plan. Because there are only 80 questions and the paper is only qualifying in nature, an aspirant should focus on accuracy instead of quantity of questions attempted. Candidates many times start wasting time on a few difficult questions from Maths and Reasoning which gives them less time to attempt English questions leading to erroneous judgement calls and wrong answers. Experts at BYJU’s suggest the candidates to follow the below advises and alter them as per their comfort while attempting the GS Paper 2 CSAT:

• Identify the subject or topic from this paper you are most confident and comfortable about, for example, if you are most confident about English, then attempt all the English questions from the paper you are able to, then move on to other topics. By doing so, the candidate gets calmed and feels confident about the whole paper. There’s also the least scope of errors being committed in this method.
• Move on to the next topic you feel most confident about and attempt as many questions from it as you can. Don’t stress yourself and try to solve difficult questions which are time consuming.
• While solving any question from the Maths or Reasoning section, if you feel it’s difficult or you don’t have much idea about how to deal with this question, it’s better to skip it and move to the next rather than wasting time on it. Even if in the middle of solving a question, if it’s taking too much time, just skip it and move on.
• After you have attempted at least 50 of 80 questions, proceed to mark the responses in the OMR answer sheet. After doing that again start attempting the leftover questions and marking its answer in the answer sheet simultaneously.

CSAT Trend Analysis

The following trend analysis done by BYJU’S for the CSAT paper for ten years from 2011 to 2020 will help the candidate decide which topic/subject to attempt from the paper first.

Managing Time Effectively for UPSC Prelims

Make a study schedule for four weeks. Following that plan of action, conduct a review. Analyse how much of the curriculum were you able to cover within the time span you set aside for that reason. If you were unable to meet your goal, make alterations and adjustments to your study plan to make it more practical and feasible. Spend five hours each day starting your preparation, and you must do this every day without fail. Instead of maximising time consumption, concentrate on maximising time utilisation.

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