No matter how much or how little you study one thing is crucial for you to realize; you are being tested by an examination so you must practice answering examination questions. How you approach these practice questions will greatly affect your exam success. Here’s what you have to do. Never answer questions with the text book or study notes in front of you. It is essential that you practice your exam questions under the same conditions you will face in the exam!

Even if you promise yourself not to look, a brief glance unknown to yourself will help you answer a part of a question and lead to believe that you know it when you don’t! When you find yourself hitting a brick wall in an exam on material you thought you knew, this can be one of the causes. Even the psychological comfort of having your study notes nearby is something you won’t have in the exam and once you find yourself without them you will feel the pressure.

Time yourself. Write down the time at the start of each question and at the end. Don’t worry if you go over the allocated time, you will improve with practice. But do keep an eye on how long you are taking. If you are consistently over the time, then either you are writing too much or you do not know your content well enough and you are taking too long to think about it.

Usually if you have practiced a lot and are still taking too long, you do know your material but are writing too much. Pay more attention to the wording of your questions, and the marks awarded for each section, if this is available. This will help you gauge the depth required. Ask your teacher to correct some of your answers to see what you can safely leave out.

An extensive study is required for preparing GS Prelims. Start your preparation with ncert books of 10th standard on various subjects like History, Geography, Polity, Science etc. and then go through other books recommended for G.S. It will be better to prepare G.S. Mains first and then for Prelims. In Preliminary exam, multiple choice questions are asked and these can be answered on the basis of facts you have remembered while reading the books on various subjects. One should also try to develop the capacity of answering multiple choice questions as quickly as possible because you have only 120 minutes for answering 150 questions in exam (i.e. less than one minute for each question). This can be achieved only through rigorous practice.

For G.S. Mains start your preparation with recommended books, magazines and newspapers. Here, one should be very careful about the word-limit because you have to answer the questions in limited number of words. This also can be achieved through practice. There should not be any introductory remarks while answering the questions of G.S. Mains. Try to write the answers to the point.

It is very difficult to answer this question. It depends on the capacity and capability of individual.But sometimes a person having quite enough knowledge to get through the CSE fails in his attempt because he does not know how to utilize this knowledge. A little hard work in right direction can open the UPSC gate for you. A good coaching institute provides guidelines i.e. in which direction one should apply his energy of knowledge to get through in this exam.

For preparing Essay, one must be aware of day-to-day happenings around the world, because most of the topics asked in this paper are of current importance. Besides these traditional topics like socio-economic problems, environmental problems etc., are also asked. One should be very careful about the grammatical mistakes. Your essay should be in simple and expressive language because this reduces the chances of gramatical mistakes. One should also enrich his word power. A written practice is must for scoring higher marks in this paper.

It is a very common question which is often asked by the candidates. There is no doubt in it that medium of expression never counts for success in CSE. One should prefer the medium in which one can express oneself satifactorily.

In fact interview is the test of your personality and not the knowledge. It is a well known fact that personality of a human being can not be developed within a week or a month. The coaching institute teaches about the basic manners, ettiquates to be followed during interview. By arranging mock interviews an institute breaks your hesitation.

For this it is very important to understand the question first. Depending on what the question is, whether one is asked to “discuss”, “elucidate”, “explain”,”critically Appreciate” or “give reasons for and against”, the answer should be written Accordingly because it is only through the examinee’s style of answering questions that one can assess his or her originality of thought and analytical abilities. The question should be read properly, in fact the question paper should be read thoroughly in the first five or ten minutes of the exam and then one should decide on the questions which are to be answered first. Time should also be given to frame the answer so that there is no confusion later on.A good way to write effective and precise answers is to pracise writing out answers. our answers should present the facts and concepts in an interesting way and should never read like a passage from a book. It is best to use simple English and avoid flowy and decorative langauage wich takes our attention away from the original facts and our opinions about a given topic. Making a practice of writing out answers is especially useful in managing the time limit set for the exam and to write the best possible answer in the allotted time It not only improves one’s style of expression, but also one gets used to the time and word limits.

Answering Technique
It is just not enough to know all the facts and information but the most important thing to be kept in mind is to write an answer which has a clear and a logical frame, which presents information in a clear and concise manner, which does not contain any irrelevant or piling up of information, which is interesting and able to hold one’s attention.
So the next logical step is to know how to write a good answer. The first step is to prepare the framework where one can list all ideas, thoughts and facts and write them down. It is important to adopt an answering style which is natural, original and to the point. Emphasis should be given to the kind of language used, one which is simple and clear without unnecessary use of nouns and verbs. Use of archaic and fancy words or language should be avoided at all costs. Care should be taken to avoid grammatical mistakes which will give a negative opinion however good the answer may be. Last but not the least, it is very important to have a good and a legible handwriting.