Good question because many of us start preparation for UPSC CSE in Nov-Dec period. Same was the case with me, so here is my personal opinion and approach on this.
- LIST/SCHEDULE:
- Make a list or schedule of months you need to cover. If you are starting in Nov/December, this means that you have approximately 4 months to cover the old 12 months of current affairs and you will also need to cover the next four months of ongoing current affairs along with it.
- Older current affairs (January-December)
- You will need to cover with one of the coaching institute’s free monthly magazines available on their websites. Download these and start from the MOST recent months (October, Sept. and so on) and work backwards to read all of these within the next 2 months or so. Tough task, but doable.
- Ongoing Current affairs (December-Prelims)
- For this, start following ONE daily newspaper. I suggest read the Hindu and don’t spend more than an hour. Skip the opinion section but just do a background reading of the important topics discussed in opinion. For example, if there was a recent summit of the WEF or the ASEAN, do a quick reading on the first summit and the ones held in India. Or if ‘urban naxalism’ is in news, it is your cue to do a read on the background on insurgency in India.
- START INTERNALIZING THESE THROUGH REVISION and with MOCK TESTS
- Time is less, so set a goal to revise these 1.5 years or so of current affairs at least once more during these 4 months.
- Within the first month itself (after finishing one month of current affairs), start taking mock test series of that month from one of the coaching institutes as well. This way your revision will also happen and also if you missed out on anything, that would be covered.
- You can also do so by taking at least 2 current affairs mock tests available from coaching institutes for the past 1.5 years, so that you can automatically learn a lot of facts/happenings and get some quick analysis through the test papers of these coachings.
- 50% of PAPER IS CURRENT AFFAIRS
- Almost 50–60% of the paper is related to current affairs in some way of the other, so there is no way to skip this portion.
- Do a lot of mock tests for current affairs! They really help and many facts are bound to repeat in actual exam.
- NOTES
- If you are on crunch for time, don’t necessarily make full notes. Write on the margins of the magazines you are reading or just make short notes in a notebook/evernote or whatever notes software you are using.
- Youtube
- Use youtube as much as possible to break monotony and revise/listen to news online or use various youtube channels to do backgrounds studies.
