Why it is difficult to clear Prelims and what are the common

mistakes committed by students in prelims preparation?

As part of a series of blogs on Civil Services preparation, today

I will discuss the common mistakes committed by students in
prelims examination and how it has become almost impossible
for them to clear the most important hurdle.
As all of you know, clearing the Preliminary examination is the
most difficult part of the whole process. It involves lot of
uncertainty. There is no guarantee that a person who got into
services this year would be able to clear the prelims
immediately. Every year, at least 11 lakh people would apply
for the examination. At least four lakh would actually take the
examination. On an average, UPSC would take 10 to 15
thousand for Mains. It becomes much more difficult for
General category students as the number of vacancies and
consequently number of actual intake for Mains is coming
down drastically.
Now let us look at common mistakes committed by candidates
in their prelims preparation.
1. Collecting as much information as possible from various
sources as they believe that more information can reduce
uncertainty.
2. Too much emphasis on only one part of the syllabus while
ignoring other parts. For example, too much focus on
 Geography and Environment can result in neglect of
other critical aspects of syllabus.
3. Not revising the study material sufficiently as they focus
more on reading extensively.
4. Not practicing enough test papers. Here one thing is very
important. When I say test papers, you should only
practice UPSC previous years question papers.
5. Focussing more on practice tests of various institutes.
Most of the questions given in practice tests of various
coaching institutions and websites only complicate
matters further for the candidates. If they get good
marks, it will result in false confidence and if they don’t,
it will lead to depression.
6. Thinking that Prelims preparation is different from Mains
preparation. You can have conceptual clarity only with
integrated preparation.
7. Psychological fear about Prelims examination. This is very
important as they start believing that they simply cannot
crack prelims. You must have conviction in yourself, and
then only you can do it.
8. Answering more questions than necessary in Prelims. It
increases their negative marks which ultimately can
cause their downfall.
9. Not identifying their strong and weak areas in Prelims.
Trying to focus more on their weak areas than on their
strong ones. They will lose both. For example, if you are
 not good with Sciences, leave it than spending more time
on understanding them.
10. Too much focus on current events without knowing
exactly what they are!!!!
11. Problems of plenty.... Another major mistake
committed by candidates is that with so much of material
available on line and offline, they simply cannot separate
the wheat from the chaff. They read everything that
come in their way and don’t realise the fact that it is
impossible to remember whatever they read.

Now that we have seen the mistakes committed by

candidates, let us look at what should be done to reduce
uncertainty in the preparation.
1. As a first step, identify your strengths in General Studies.
It consists of Polity, Economy, History, Geography,
Environment, International relations, Science and
Technology, Physics, Chemistry and other Current Events.
Till 2019, UPSC deliberately made the paper unpredictable by
changing the number of questions asked from different
sections. For example, in 2016 most of the questions were
from current events because of which cut off was very high
(116).. But later UPSC realised its mistake and reverted to
more traditional way of conducting the examination.
In 2019, UPSC made a very significant change to the
examination with each section having almost equal weight age
in the paper.

Topic No. of Questions

Indian Economy 14
Indian Polity 15
History 17
Geography 14
Environment 11
Science and Technology 7
Current Events 22

With equal distribution of questions to different sections of

syllabus, it becomes easier for students to find their strengths
and weaknesses.
Cut off as announced by UPSC for 2019 Prelims was 98 marks.
i.e. net 49 questions. Every year it is hovering around 100
marks. We can safely assume that it will be the same for the
current year (2020) also. A candidate must prepare
scientifically by identifying those 49 questions that he should
definitely get right.
Let us assume that you are attempting around 85 questions.
You can afford to get 25 questions wrong so that your marks
will be around 104 which are considered safe so that you can
immediately start preparing for the main examination.
Now let us see from where we can get those 60 questions
right... It can be explained better with the help of the table
below.
Topic No. of No of No of
Questions questions questions
attempting that should
be right
Indian Economy 14 14 10
Indian Polity 15 15 12
History 17 14 10
Geography 14 11 8
Environment 11 7 4
Science and 7 3 or 4 (non 2
Technology science
background)
Current Events 22 18 13
Total 100 82 59

From the above table it can be seen that you can definitely
cross the 100 mark by following the above strategy... It can be
changed depending on the question paper. Sometimes,
questions on Geography or Environment can be very difficult
whereas Polity and Economy can be difficult in the next year.
But what candidates must realise is that they should identify
their strong areas and make sure that they are getting 80% of
the questions they attempt from those areas right so that they
can easily cross the cut off marks.
With around 40 days left for Prelims, what should they do
now?
1. Revise core areas at least 3 to 4 times... like Polity,
Economy, Current Events, Government programmes,
International Institutions, Global summits, Flagship
schemes, Environment and so on.
2. Practice previous years question papers of UPSC every
day. For example, polity questions can be from the last 25
years of UPSC say 1995 onwards... They must remember
that UPSC keeps on repeating the questions.
3. Similarly they can practice static portions like History,
Culture, Physical Geography, Economic Theory and
concepts.
4. Last 15 days of preparation should focus on revising all
facts and data... especially current events, history,
geography, culture, economy and polity...
5. Instead of practicing the question papers of various
coaching institutes(which can take lot of time... 2hours
for taking test and another two hours for evaluation and
correction), they can just go through the questions and
remember the facts.
6. Focus more on government documents like Economic
Survey, India Year Book, NCERT books, and annual
reports of various Ministries for relevant facts.
7. Never allow negative thoughts to come to your mind.
Have full conviction in yourself that you will definitely
clear the prelims.
 8. Do not try to read anything new during this period except
some facts which you think are important. Make sure that
whatever new information that you have is revised at
least 5 times.
9. Remember at least 25 flagship schemes of the
Government covering Agriculture, Rural Development,
Urban Development, Education, Health, Women
Development, and also the schemes launched by the
Government in the last three years.
10. Remember all recent Supreme Court judgements,
constitutional amendments, important bills, facts in
economic survey, and contents of important articles
(Parliament and financial business of the House). Revise
them till you get the necessary confidence.
Wishing you best of luck...
Pavan Kumar
Director
PAVAN KUMAR’S IAS.