IASbaba's Flagship Course: Integrated Learning Programme (ILP) - 2024 Read Details
Dear Students,
If you look closely, life is made of patterns and rituals. When we say rituals, we don’t intend to relate them in the religious sense. What we are talking about activities that we follow without giving them a second thought. Our daily life, the weather, our fairs and festivals, all follow a certain pattern marked by many rituals. You wake up in the morning and brush your teeth, take bath (most of you), exercise, study, go to work, and so on. Many of these activities are performed without realising their true significance. Stop brushing your teeth for a month and see what happens. Don’t go to your office for a week and look at the reaction of your boss. Stay inactive for a month and look how your body starts to swell up. You get the picture! To stay right on the course, you have to follow the pattern, perform the rituals, and there is no escape out of it, period.
Why so much Gyan on pattern and rituals after all?
Well, you must have gotten the picture by now. To succeed in the Civil Services, we have to religiously follow certain rituals. For example, if you don’t write 5 answers on a daily basis, there are high chances that your hands won’t move fast and your brain won’t work efficiently in the Main examination. When we talk about the most important ritual related to the Prelims examination, practicing multiple-choice questions is a must. We have been helping you with this for the past 6 years. Yes, we are talking about the 60 Day Prelims initiative. It is one of our most popular initiatives (and it’s FREE!)
We hardly see any sincere aspirant missing out on a single day of this initiative. Why? What is the reason behind the popularity of this initiative? The answer is simple - it is the closest to the standards of UPSC when it comes to the quality of questions. Secondly, the exemplar performance of the initiative in the past 6 years, it becomes impossible to ignore the 60 Day Programme.
As a testimony to the success and impact of ‘60 Day’ & IASbaba’s Test Series/ILP, we are providing an exhaustive year-wise analysis of HIT RATIO in Prelims and Feedback by Toppers.
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2015 - https://iasbaba.com/2015/08/upsc-prelims-2015-40-questions-from-iasbaba/
2016 - https://iasbaba.com/2016/08/70-hits-from-iasbaba-in-upsc-prelims/
Yes! One small step is what it takes to become successful!
One small step is what it takes to realize your dream of becoming a civil servant!
One small step is what it takes to become what you always wanted to become.
But what is that one small step?
What if we told you that following a simple step of solving 35 objective questions a day can make you clear this examination?
What if you were told that by solving only 35 questions a day, you will be a part of a group that has a much higher probability of cracking the Prelims examination than the others?
What if we told you that religiously learning 35 questions a day would create such strong fundamentals for you that the journey to cracking Prelims would become highly enjoyable?
What if 35 questions a day give you the ammunition to tackle any pressure?
What if 35 questions a day makes you cross the very first hurdle of the examination cycle that you have entered?
What if 35 questions a day gives a high dose booster to your confidence?
What if we told you that 35 questions a day made hundreds of aspirants crack the Prelims stage without taking undue stress?
Does it sound lucrative? Of course, it does. There is no doubt about it. But then, the bottom line is- one small step at a time!
In 60 Day plan, each day, we post 35 Questions. The schedule is provided in advance so that you can prepare yourself as per the detailed micro-plan. You study from the sources mentioned in the schedule or from any source of your liking and try to answer the 35 objective questions posted on a daily basis.
What you actually do is that for a period of 60 days, you stimulate one-quarter of the real-time examination process. For 60 days, your brain stimulates the process of analytical thinking and logical reasoning. For 60 days, you get accustomed to the process of thinking through and coming out with well-thought responses. For 60 days, you are exposed to a variety of high-quality questions that challenge your intellect and critical thinking just like UPSC does. For 60 days, you live and breathe the process that we know as the Civil Services Preliminary Examination.
We will explain by taking a small example. Imagine you are sitting in the examination hall, appearing in Prelims Paper I. You have attempted 70 questions already but still unsure about a few. Then you stumble upon a question that was asked in 60 Day (and believe us, it has happened to hundreds of students countless times). You choose the right answer and submit your paper hoping for the best! Eventually, you go on to clear Mains as well as Personality Test and secure a good rank as well. When the cut-off gets announced by UPSC, you realize that you have scored just one mark more than the cut-off! Yes, that one mark can change your life (and it has done so to many of our students in the past). Now, imagine the kind of impact 60 to 80 marks can have! Isn’t that so fascinating to imagine?
One’s level of preparedness is always different for different subjects. Even within a subject, one’s comfort level may vary with topics. For example, one might be more comfortable in solving questions of Polity than Economics and within Polity also, one might be at ease with questions on Fundamental Rights than Parliament. The level of comfort and ease that one has with a subject/ topic gets manifested in the examination. However, there is no conscious effort by aspirants to micro analyse these aspects. Now, coming to the second aspect i.e. the mistakes that one commits in answering MCQs, it can be said that there are mainly four reasons behind incorrect responses in the OMR sheet. They are:
Let’s analyse them one by one:
You will realise that these problems will have different meanings for different people. For example, one might find lack of information as the main culprit while dealing with questions related to Culture and with regard to Polity, lack of analytical ability may be the possible culprit. The point here is that you must analyse your preparation on these yardsticks by applying them on different subjects/ topics. If one is having a headache, he/ she can’t have the same medicine for fever. Isn’t it.
This is where our revamped ’60 Day’ comes into the picture. It will give you an opportunity to micro analyse your preparation and perform better in the examination.
How to use it? You can go through the entire day-wise plan given in the schedule.
Now, we present you the following scales (with weightage of each scale given in the bracket) to micro analyse your preparation on a daily basis and that too subject/ topic wise:
Micro Analysis Matrix |
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Number of questions not attempted or attempted wrongly |
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Due to lack of information | Due to the inability to apply the concept | Due to silly mistake | Due to excessive risk-taking | Total | |
Number (N) | |||||
Weightage of scale (s) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | NA |
N x S |
Scale 1: Information meter (1)
Scale 2: Analysis meter (2)
Scale 3: Anxiety meter (3)
Scale 4: Risk meter (4)
Suppose on Day 1, questions have been framed from Polity on the topic of Constitutional History. There are 15 questions and you are able to answer 12 out of which 7 are correct and 5 are incorrect. It means you have scored roughly 11.33 out of 30. Now you have to fill on a daily basis, the following matrix to micro analyse your preparation:
Example: Suppose, the filled up matrix gets reflected in the following fashion:
Micro Analysis Matrix- Day 1/ Polity/ Constitutional History |
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Number of questions not attempted or attempted wrongly |
|||||
Due to lack of information | Due to the inability to apply the concept | Due to silly mistake | Due to excessive risk-taking | Total | |
Number (N) | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
Weightage of scale (s) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | NA |
N x S | 3 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 19 |
Based on the total value in this matrix, you have to aim for the following measures on the scale:
Moreover, IASbaba will give a cut-off figure along with the solutions each day. If your total marks exceed that cut off along with your total N x S score lying below 20, you are on the right track and just need to keep the momentum going.
This exercise will hardly take 5 minutes of your daily time but it might do wonders for you as you will be able to gauge your strengths and limitations better.
Finally, it is up to you to take advantage of this framework. We are sure of only one thing- if you follow this programme, assess yourself on the basis of the given framework and keep improving your weaker areas, success will be yours.
All the Best :)
IASbaba Team