Now that UPSC has announced the 2014 IAS exam
schedule, it is worth noting how the changed schedule will affect your preparation strategy and what changes are needed. Instead of February, the 2014 civil services exam will be notified in May and the Prelims will be held on 24th August 2014, three months later than held every year, i.e. in May. And the Mains exam will commence from 14th December 2014.
While the Mains date is not such an issue since it is held in November-December every year, the Prelims date is the real cause for concern here.
Why is the Prelims delayed in 2014?
One possible explanation flying around is that UPSC wants to discourage rote-masters but this does not seem convincing. After all, how will they be deterred even if the gap between the Prelims and Mains is reduced by three months?
A more plausible explanation seems that since the Prelims and Mains syllabus have been made quite similar, UPSC wants candidates to approach the examination as a whole and prepare accordingly. Right now candidates focus on the Prelims separately from the Mains and begin Mains preparation only after the Prelims since there is, at present, six months gap between the two.
Well this will change from 2014 onward.
Prepare for Prelims and Mains simultaneously from 2014
The best way to now approach the IAS exam is to prepare Prelims and Mains together. Also you will need to change the time-frame. In stead of the present June-May approach you will need to begin Prelims preparation in August or September.
But you can no longer focus solely on the Prelims since you will get only three months for Mains as against the six months presently available. And three months is no way adequate to cover one optional subject and four GS papers.
So you have no choice but to prepare GS Mains simultaneously with Prelims.
Should you worry about the changed schedule?
No. Since optional subjects have been eliminated from Prelims and also now that you have to prepare only one optional subject as opposed to two till last year, your main focus will be general studies preparation. And the best part is that the Mains GS syllabus is an expansion or elaboration of the Prelims syllabus.
Once you start preparing from the Mains perspective the prelims syllabus should get covered automatically. Of course, for Prelims you need to keep your eye open for all sorts of statistics and data like GDP growth rate, census figures, summits etc.
But once you re-orient your preparation this way, you will actually reap the benefits since your Mains GS syllabus will be covered. And now that GS syllabus carries more than 65% weight in the Mains marks you just cannot ignore the GS papers.
And UPSC is actually helping you to prepare better by adjusting the examination schedule accordingly. If they had carried on with the present schedule candidates would still approach the Mains as they always do – after the Prelims resulting in low scores and low cut-offs in Mains.
So UPSC decided to do something about this and is forcing you to re-orient your preparation schedule and strategy to focus on GS syllabus, in tune with the new pattern.
Good for the student, good for the exam. This is how I think of this new change. What about you?
