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What worked for you (as you think) allowing to qualify CSE(P) 2020 ..Your takes on what to do or not for CSE 21 ? Kindly comment as this time period is reaching high time to start pelim prep ..

The first thing that I started doing is stopped listening to people who haven't cleared the exam or who have not repeatedly cleared prelims. I quickly exited the Prelims groups on Telegram and stopped relying on advices written in good English. 


If a number of topper say something worked for them, it will work for you. Just stay away fromMISGUIDANCE. Every 2nd person on social media platform has started acting like they are an expert and we tend to believe them. Avoid that. Follow toppers, follow people whom you know personally, follow the credible mentors in this field. 


As far as strategy is concerned, a lot of people have already written about it. I believe prelims is a very intense stage that demands a lot. I personallydidn't benefit much from mocks of coaching institutes.Last year Vision made one of the worst papers. I found them totally irrelevant

But I did keep practicing questions especially PYQs repeatedly trying to understand the favorite themes. I also revised a lot, around 6 iterations (Thanks to the lockdown) of the entire syllabus. In my opinion you can have the following strategy


1. Finish basic books.Don't run after trivial thingsfor example the Socio cultural religious reform movement need not be done in that great detail. Focus more on Munda, Santhal etc. This can be learnt from the PYQ analysis only. 


2. Practice some questions. In my opinion, programmes like SFG (I never joined), IGP (IASMocks) & question banks (Like Laxmikanth polity question bank), these are more useful in testing whether you retain what you studied in these basic books



However, you also need to practice FLTs, this requires good simulators. For eg : ForumIAS simulators. I found Edukemy, Rau's papers aligned and mapped as per PYQ requirements. Now why do you need to do these FLTs ?


1. Time management simulation


2. Tackling unknown questions Applying tricks & intuitions (VERY VERY IMPORTANT)


3. Filling up OMR


Hence to sum up there are two aspects to the Prelims preparation : DIRECTED STUDY (PYQ mapping, Books + SFG or chapter or topic wise question bank) and APPLICATION through FLTs and obviouslyREVISION, REVISION, REVISION (SPACED REPETITION IF YOU CAN)





P.S : I have gained the above knowledge from my experiences. Feel free to ignore them if you don't relate with them. Follow at your own risk (I could clear the prelims in my second attempt in 2020). I am just sharing what I have learnt

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