How to Prepare for IAS Prelims Without Coaching?

In a dream of becoming an IAS? This is not just a question you ask yourself but you can actually conquer your dreams through constant hard work and patience. Most of the IAS aspirants in their initial stage remain tackled thinking about the right preparation strategies for UPSC IAS.

Most of the civil service examinations are about how to begin and what to study.  As a beginner, they follow up with the basic queries in their mind regarding exam eligibility, exam dates, exam pattern, etc. Most of them are confused if they should take coaching for IAS prelims or if it's simply a waste of money.

In general opinion, it is believed that most of the civil services coaching institutes offer an unsure and outdated study package to the IAS aspirants leading which they are left with poor and low-quality study materials. Such coaching classes are not aware of the smart study tactics that can help students in preparing for IAS in less time.

Based on the above scenarios, it is always advisable that students should check the UPSC website for basic details clarification and do self-study in order to achieve better results. Moreover, if you are a hard-working candidate nothing can stop you from achieving your dreams with or without attending any classroom coaching.

How to Prepare for IAS Prelims without any coaching class?

1. Formulate a Basic Strategy

The very first step in targeting an educational objective is to formulate your own strategy. While you attend a coaching class for any civil service exam, you have to follow a strict plan and syllabus provided by them.

But when you have opted for a self-study schedule, you have to collect the right study material and do some smart work in order to crack the IAS exam. This includes:

• Gearing up with the latest IAS prelims syllabus.
• Analyze previous year's question papers and read selective matters out of them.
• Watch videos that guide you on How to prepare for IAS prelims.
• Get enrolled in online courses that guide in learning and understanding that study material.
• Follow regular updates by some educational websites that reorient your efforts.
• Focus on integrated preparation of mains and prelims for 2-3 months.

2. Execute and Rate your Performance

• How to prepare for IAS prelims – Days before the prelims exam

The candidate should focus on the complete syllabus of mains(including optional) and prelims both before 2-3 months are left for the prelims. It will be pointless to ask for multiple revisions in the meantime.

Just 3 months from the date of the prelims exam, your complete attention should be towards clearing prelims. Start appearing for online mock tests so that you are able to analyze your abilities under strict time conditions. Go through a full-length online test in order to learn from your preparation mistakes.

Remember not to focus on the number of online tests you are appearing for, focus on revising those attempted ones to make yourself confident for prelims.

• Heading towards Mains preparation

Once you are confident about getting equal or more than expected cut-off marks for Prelims, gear up yourself for IAS Mains without wasting any time. Prepare a work plan covering the complete syllabus of mains including optional, GS, Essay, and other language papers.

Timeline all the subjects and evaluate your efficiency by solving the previous year's question papers. You can enroll yourself in an online test series that improves and builds your skills by correcting your mistakes in accordance with the scheduled plan. For more intuitive learning, join online discussion groups to learn and share each other’s knowledge.

• Be ready for Interview Call

Evaluate your performance in the IAS Mains exam and get ready for future action. If you expect an interview call based on your performance, then start preparing for the interview just after the completion of Mains. If you are getting a feeling of not qualified then inspect your low points to improve your Mains score for the next year.

• Prepare Mains and Interviews in Simultaneous order

Concluding that you couldn’t achieve the Mains target, you should boost up yourself for the next year. Not every candidate is able to qualify for the IAS exam on the first attempt. Not to worry as the civil service examination offers several attempts to a candidate. Here is a sure work plan that will help you to target  Mains and Interviews for next year.

• Divide time slots for Mains and Interview preparation.
• Inspect your mistakes in Mains to improve your content and answers accordingly.
• Involve yourself in discussions and reading newspapers to crack IAS interviews.
• Prepare the specific list of topics mentioned in the application form of Mains.

3. Analyze and Optimize your efforts

In order to score relatively better and crack the IAS examination, you should necessarily follow some don’t’s while preparing up for UPSC.

• Don’t invest your crucial time in extra information gathering. Eliminate unnecessary work steps and prepare yourself according to a defined syllabus and the previous year's question papers. 
• Be selective in collecting books and other study material. Revise the limited resources in order to bring out the best results.
• Don’t browse unnecessary subjects on the internet as they will kill your preparation time.
• Follow various toppers’ strategies on How to crack the IAS exam or How to prepare for IAS prelims. Prepare any one strategy that suits you to work in an effective manner.
• Stay updated with the UPSC IAS exam alerts on its official website.

The above discussed are some basic outlines that will help you How to prepare for IAS prelims or How to crack IAS exams. Hope you will find this article useful in preparing yourself for the civil services exam. Keep following our latest posts for more such preparation strategies and study material required for the UPSC IAS exam.