Remain focussed and devote all your energy to this one exam to be successful.
To my mind, the simple meaning of strategy is careful planning to achieve something in the given circumstances within a certain timeframe. After jotting this down, I searched online to check what they say about strategy. After going through it, strategy can be best defined as “the art and science of planning and marshalling the resources for their most efficient and effective use to achieve a desired goal in the given set of circumstances and within a certain timeframe.”
For the candidates who want to become civil servants, the goal is to join the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, Indian Revenue Service or Indian Forest Service.
When I think about the strategy to crack the civil services exam in the first attempt, the foremost idea which comes to my mind is that one should start preparing with sufficient time in hand. If you fail to do this, you may not even cross the first stage which is the preliminary exam, which can have an adverse impact on your motivation level. The best time to start preparing is from the middle of May or the beginning of June, which is soon after your final exams of graduation or postgraduation. If you are appearing for the graduation or postgraduation exam in May 2016, you should aim for the civil services exam of 2017. This gives you one and a half years to prepare before the main exam of 2017. This is a sufficient timeframe to be successful in your first attempt.
The next step would be to utilise this time in an effective manner. You must prepare short notes so that you can revise the entire study material as the exams approach. But to sustain the effort for such a long time, you need to remain motivated throughout this period and maintain good health.
The most important part of the strategy is to remain focused on the main goal, which is cracking the exam in the first attempt. Many of you make the mistake of preparing for different competitive exams with the idea of playing it safe. In such a situation, the amount of time you have gets divided for various exams. You must realise that properly preparing for the civil services exam is not a part-time job. It is a fact that if you are fully devoted to preparing for the civil services exam without pursuing any other studies, competitive exams or job, your concentration level will be at its peak and this would give you the best results. The desire to grab one job or the other and playing it safe leads to failure on all fronts.
It will be interesting to know that there is no competition at the top. If you appear for the competitive exam of clerical-level jobs, there would be lakhs of students who are competing with each other. However, there is less competition for the civil services exam. There were seven lakh students who applied for the preliminary exam of civil services in May 2014. But by the time it was August, only 4.5 lakh candidates could muster the courage to appear for it. I don’t think there is any other competition in which almost 36 per cent of the candidates drop the idea of just appearing for the exam. Also, the cut-off percentage for the preliminary exam is only about 62 per cent, and those who scored this much were called to appear for the main exam in which 17,000 candidates qualified. Of the 17,000 students, 3,308 have been called to appear for the interview for the 1,291 jobs. If you look at the percentage of marks obtained by students in the 2013 civil services exam, you will find that the candidates who got just 32.5 per cent marks were called for the interview, and, after adding the marks of the interview, those who got an aggregate of just 38.5 per cent got the jobs.
Do you think that getting 40 per cent marks is so difficult? Such a low percentage of marks to get into civil services indicate that the candidates who are appearing for the civil services exam are not all that serious. It could be because of several reasons. Maybe they are pursuing some studies, or already have a job, or are pursuing some other competitive exams. But I’m sure that once you leave everything else and focus only on the exam wholeheartedly, nobody can stop you from becoming an IAS officer.
The writer is Commissioner of Income Tax, Indian Revenue Service and ex-Indian Forest Service officer.
