The outbreak of Coronavirus has had an impact on everyone and every sector of the economy. In the middle of this nationwide lockdown, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has also postponed the 2020 preliminary examination, and the revised dates of the examination are yet to be announced as the situation begins to improve.

Also, due to this situation, many aspirants are stuck in different parts of the country. This has made it difficult for them to access study materials.

The UPSC examination is one of the examinations that draws lakhs of aspirants every year. And this year too, there are a number of applicants that have registered themselves for the examination.

But, the Covid-19 lockdown has impacted their preparation. However, the preparation for the examination becomes a more difficult task now, but if you follow the right strategy, you can still prepare yourself for the UPSC examination.

The aspirants can take this lockdown as an opportunity and use this time to build up new strategies to take up the examination. They can take up more mock tests and also adopt other strategies to excel in the examination.

The lockdown has no doubt affected the preparation, and it has also affected the study pattern of the candidates. But, at this difficult time, it is even more challenging for the aspirants to use this time optimistically and effectively.

Here are some of the ways you can use the lockdown to prepare yourself for the UPSC Prelims 2020:

• One of the great ways that you can utilize this lockdown is that you can try out many mock test series, which is one of the best ways you can prepare yourself for UPSC. The mock tests allow you to analyze your strengths and weaknesses. You can note down your weak areas and try to work on those areas more and take up the test again to evaluate if you have covered up the mistakes. It is important for the aspirant to at least complete one full mock test in a week. Also, if you want to prepare yourself for the Prelims in an effective way, you need to try and score more than 125 marks in these mock tests. If you score fewer marks, then you need to identify your mistakes and start revising the concepts again.
• Practising Multiple choice questions is also one of the best ways, and this lockdown has given an opportunity to the aspirants to practice more than 8000 MCQs and improve their ability to solve the questions in a given time. This will also allow them to adopt various approaches and help them to solve the questions more easily. So, the aspirants can use this time to practice a lot of MCQs as the more you practice, the more you can find ways to solve the questions in an effective way.
• As the candidates have been in lockdown for quite some time now and he/she is free from all the distractions. This means that they can use this time effectively to study. So, instead of studying of 11-12 hours, you can manage your time by having a sound sleep as well. You will also get time to enjoy and socialize with your family and friends, and this will help to relax your mind and keep you stress-free. Therefore, instead of taking this lockdown in a negative way and stressing yourself, you can use this time positively. You need not study for 24 hours, and you can use some of your time for easing your mind as well. You can devote some of your time watching YouTube videos as there are a number of videos which will help you to manage your time and also provide you with better revisions of various subjects. Also, in your free time, take a sound sleep or meditate and keep yourself free from any kind of stress and use this time in an optimistic way.
• It is an obvious fact that most of the aspirants will be impacted psychologically as they are forced to stay indoors and has affected the socialization pattern, which might hold importance for most of the students. As most of the candidates engage themselves in group discussions, the lockdown has impacted their discussions. So, to overcome this factor, the aspirants can try to conduct their group discussions via video chat or video conferencing. This can help them to carry out the group discussions and discuss important points for the examination. You need to prepare a new routine in order to compete with candidates who have already appeared the examination for more than two times. Keeping this in mind, you need to test your emotional competence, and despite the competition, you need to try preparing yourself for the examination.
• While you are deciding everything about your Prelims preparation, it is also important for you to divide your time between the subjects. You need to choose those subjects first, which you can finish faster as you can complete these subjects quickly. After completing the shorter subjects, you can then move on to the subjects with the long syllabus. The aspirants should be aware that they need to adopt various strategies if they wish to complete most part of their syllabus. You can also use this time to go through current affairs and give most of your time to the major topics. Also, make sure you go through past year papers so that you can know how to go about in the examination

However, these were some of the tips you can follow in order to prepare yourself for the examination. So, in this difficult situation, every aspirant needs to be consistent in their preparation and needs to give proper time to their studies.

In this process, you also need to stay calm and ease your mind, as this is the last few months of your preparation. So, make sure you take good sleep and rest your mind. Also, in these last few days, make sure you revise all the important topics and practice mock tests for better preparation.

Source – India Today