IAS Prelims 2016 -what can go wrong ?

Hi friends ,

Have you heard of students who are very intelligent or very hard working, and still havent cleared the exams? Inspite of their efforts, there are a set of things you need to get right.

Here is a list of things that can go wrong .Hence, please be careful in not committing these mistakes.

1. Out of enthusiasm, few students tend to answer most of the questions in the exam. And when they check the answer key, they realise they have marked equal number of wrong questions as correct ones.The result is low scores .
1. If you look at question papers of 2014 and 2015, you will find the questions very simple in the first read . And all those candidates who found the paper simple, tried attending a lot of questions. But when they checked their answer keys, they realised the questions werent as simple as they thought. There was some trap by the examiner.  Hence, never get too enthusiastic in the exam.                                                                                                  
2. Skipping one subject entirely during the preparation. In the previous pattern (when there was no negative marking) students would skip one subject they found difficult. In today's pattern, you cannot afford to skip any subject. 
3. Wrong shading of answers in the OMR sheet .This is one of the biggest and most common errors.                                                                                                                                                       
4. Reading new books or materials in the last few weeks. Remember, there are N number of materials and books in the market and it will keep flooding. Stick to one material for a particular subject.                                                                                                                                                  
5. Failing to revise is planning to fail. Repeated revisions is the biggest asset of a topper.                                
6. Getting driven by test performances. Neither should a good performance make you over confident nor should a bad performance kill your confidence. Tests are to help you identify your weakness and monitor your preparation !
7. Failing to take conceptual clarity. In prelims, UPSC tries to test the conceptual clarity of the candidate .So whether it is geography or economics, get the concepts cleared then and there !

All the best !