How to prepare for UPSC

 UPSC conducts the Civil Services Examination (CSE) to recruit IAS, IPS, IFS, and other officers for allied services. Lakhs of aspirants apply for the exam, yet only a few qualify the exam. So, what is that which brings about the difference, you ask!

Well, it's the preparation strategy! Most aspirants wonder, "How to prepare for UPSC" or "How to prepare for UPSC to qualify the exam in the first attempt" or “How to prepare for IAS Exam”! In this article, we have tried to answer this question in an extremely comprehensive way.

Stages of UPSC Exam:

As you may already know, the UPSC Civil Services examination has three stages, namely, Prelims, Mains, and Interview. The first step is the Preliminary Examination. Hence, in this article, we will begin by answering How to prepare for IAS Prelims effectively!

UPSC Prelims:

The UPSC Civil Services Prelims consists of two exams namely General Studies-I and General Studies-II (CSAT).

In the preparation strategy for the Civil Services Prelims examination, the General Studies portion is always considered to be the trickiest to crack because of its perceived complexity. Moreover, since the UPSC cutoff is determined based on the score in the General Studies paper, it is an extremely important paper.

Before preparing for any exam, it is important to know the nitty-gritty of the exam well enough. Read through the notification of the UPSC exam carefully in order to acquaint yourself with the exam syllabus, exam pattern, exam timeline, and eligibility criteria. Once you’re through that, pick up the previous year papers and skim through them to get an understanding of what is actually asked in the exam. 

If you give dedicated amount of time to do this exercise, you will save a considerable amount of time through your preparation journey! Alternatively, you can glance through the articles on our website to get comprehensive information about what the exam is! At this time, you should also start reading the newspaper. Check this article to understand how to read newspapers for UPSC!

No matter what your background is, you need to understand the basics of the core subjects of the UPSC syllabus.

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• https://welchwiley0.doodlekit.com/blog/entry/14910400/some-people-in-the-medical-world-refuse-to-take-stress-seriously-they-believe-its-nothing-more-than-a-bad-mood-well-even-if-it-were-the-way-we-feel-can-definitely-have-a-negative-effect-on-how-we-live-and-this-is-why-its-important-to-learn-about-stress-follow-this-article-and-pay-attention-to-the-stressrelated-tips-within
• https://wileyhemmingsen3.wordpress.com/2021/05/08/ways-you-can-relax-and-avoid-stress/
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• https://www.evernote.com/shard/s701/sh/8bea3ea8-2945-f1bb-d032-48806b185bbe/37153200fd7138f8ee7e24b0bd9593fb
• http://www.astro.wisc.edu/?URL=www.examyear.com/nursing-questions-and-answers/
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• https://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/bye?https://www.examyear.com/nursing-questions-and-answers/

Hence, refer to NCERTs, they can be downloaded from the official website of NCERT for free. Read them at least twice before making notes, and then read our NCERT compilations. You can get the NCERT compilations on our Telegram Forum (cl_civils) for free. Prepare your notes alongside these compilations in order to save time! Check out which NCERTs you need to refer to from here.

Once you have read all the NCERTs, it’s time to expand your knowledge by reading the standard books. You can get the entire booklist for UPSC preparation in the linked article. Read the books at least twice and then make your handwritten notes to be used for answer-writing practice at the later stage! You can also watch video lectures on our YouTube channel for important topics to supplement your knowledge.

Reasoning on Instruction Sets

There are three bottles of water A, B, C whose capacities are 5 liters, 3 liters and 2 liters respectively. For transferring water from one bottle to another and to drain out the bottle, there exists a piping system. The flow thorough these pipes is computer controlled. The computer that controls the flow through these pipes can be fed with three types of instructions, as explained below

Instruction type	Explanation of the instruction
FILL (X, Y)	Fill bottles labeled X from the water in bottle labeled Y, where the remaining capacity of X is less than or equal to amount of water in Y.
EMPTY (X,Y)	Empty out the water in bottle labeled X into bottle labeled Y, where the amount of water in X is less than or equal to remaining capacity of Y.
DRAIN (X)	Drain out all the water contained in bottle labeled X.

Initially A is full with water and B and C are empty.

Q1. After executing a sequence of three instruction bottle A contains one liter of water. The first and the third of these instructions is given below

First instruction FILL (C, A)

Third instruction FILL (C,A)

Which of the following statesman about the instruction is true?

i) The second instruction is FILL (B,A)

ii) The second instruction is Empty (C,B)

iii) The second instruction transfer water from B to C

iv) The second instruction involves using the water in bottle A.

Q2. Consider the same sequence of three instructions and the same initial state mentioned above. Three more instructions are added at the end of the above sequence to have A contain 4 liters of water. In this total sequence of six instructions, the fourth one is DRAIN (A). this is the only DRAIN instruction in the entire sequence. At the end of the execution of the above sequence, how much water is contained in C?

i) 1

ii) 2

iii) 0

iv) None of these

Audition for a Reality Show

A TV channel arranged an audition for their upcoming reality show “Superstar of India”. After preliminary they call 9 candidates of different categories (e.g Singer, Dancer.. )for final audition from different states in India. Each competitors are marked with unique character and code where the character carries their state’s name and the code their number which is unique. Some other information is given bellow.

1) Ragini is a singer from West Bengal with code no. 13.

2) Among the code no. only 5 and 9 are single digit.

3) Audition started at 1 p.m and every competitors will get 30 minutes to perform

4) Candidates for Haryana give audition at 3:30 p.m.

5) Janaki is from Arunachal Pradesh.

6) 43 no candidate is from Andhra Pradesh.

7) 32 no. candidate is a dancer.

8) Vinit gives audition after Janaki but not last.

9) Candidate code 43 and 14 both are from same state.

10) Maneka’s code is 32.

11) Robin’s code is 45 and Hamida’s code is 14.

12) Vinit is a magician and form Tripura.

13) Candidate from West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh have single digit code.

14) Candidates from same state give audition one after another.

Now answer the questions.

1) Whose code is 14?

A. Ragini

B. Vinit

C. Hamida

D. None of these

2. Who give audition at 4 p.m?

A. Vinit

B. Maneka

C. Ragini

D. None of these

3. Who is another candidate for West Bengal except Ragini?

A. Maneka

B. Hamida

C. None of these

D. Can’t say

Offer of a Computer Store

A computer company selling two branded laptop LP1 and LP2 of different companies. Some LP1 products are without operating system but not all and all LP2 products are with operating system. The price of both products are same except the following conditions:

I) Extra charge have to pay for LP2 with “duel core” processor but not for 1.6 Ghz processor.

II) Extra charge have to pay for LP1 with operating system “Windows 2007”

III) Extra charge have to pay for LP1 with “antivirus” and for LP2 with “core2duo i3 processor”.

Now answer the questions:

1. Which of the following is true?

A. Extra charge have to pay for all products with operating system.

B. Extra charge is not required with “anti virus” but without “operating system”.

C. Extra charge not required with 1.6 Ghz processor with “anti virus”.

D. None of these

2. Which of the following condition is cheep for buying?

A. LP1 without operating system.

B. LP2 without i3 processor.

C. LP1 with linux.

D. None of these

Security posting of a building

In a 7 storied building seven security officers A, B, C, D, E, F, G start there duty from 9 A.M to 3 P.M. Every floor of the building is not secured every time. Each floor is secured only for 1 hour between that time. Each security officer comes according to there schedule time and take charge of different floor. The floor are named L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7 as per there security level.

F takes charge before the time of L1 in charge and after 2 hours of C.

B takes charge before A but after the office in charge L1.

G take charge 2 hours before D.

Officers of L3, L7 and L5 take charge just one after one in an hour interval.

D takes charge at 10 a.m .

Now answer the questions.

1. Who joins at 3 P.M?

I) A

II) B

III) C

IV) D

2. In which time Officer of L3 takes charge?

I) 9 a.m

II) 10 a.m

III) 2 p.m

IV) None of these

3. Who joined L7 floor and when?

I) A / 9 a.m

II) B / 3 p.m

III) D / 1 p.m

IV) None of these

Invitation to my Friend's House

Once my friend invited me to their family get together party. All of his family members were present there. He introduced me with everyone.

I saw in his family there are 14 members and among them 5 are female members. But after coming my home I do not remember all of there name except some relations with them. I narrate these relation below.

I) A is the mother of N and grandmother of C and E.

II) J is a doctor and X is an engineer.

III) C and D are students and children of M.

IV) E is the daughter of P and a reporter.

V) X is an architect.

VI) F and D is niece of X.

VII) Y is daughter-in-law of I.

VIII) Only one female member of the family is teacher.

IX) N do not have any children.

X) Q have a family relation but do not have any blood relation with the family.

Now answer the questions

Q1. Who is a teacher?

A. A

B. D

C. F

D. None of these

Q2. A is grandmother of ……………………………

A. C

B. J

C. M

D. P

Q3. J is father of ………………………

A. P

B. A

C. E

D. F

Q4. X is the son of ………………….

A. I

B. E

C. F

D. C

Class Schedule of a School

In a school there are 5 groups of subject combinations for the students of new admission of Arts and Humanities department.

Subject Groups are

A -> Sociology, History, Anthropology, Political Science

B - > History, Geography, Sociology, Political Science

C - > Geography, Economics, Eco-Geography, Political Science

D - > Geography, Mathematics, Economics, Statistics

E - > Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer

There are one teacher in each subjects. Class duration is four hours from 8 a.m to 12 a.m and each class is one hour. There are no gap between two periods.

A clerk of that school schedule a class routine. But history teacher said “I shall take first period but not last period”. Geography teacher said “ I will not take last period”. Sociology teacher said “ I will come to school at 10 a.m.

Not the clerk have to reschedule the routine and you have to answer the following questions::

Q1. Which subject will be taught in the first period?

A. Sociology

B. History / Mathematics

C. Geography / History

D. None of these

Q2. Which subject will be taught in the second period?

A. History

B. Economics

C. Geography

D. None of these

Seven Friends in a row

Seven friends A, B, C, D, E, F and G are standing in a row such that

i) A is immediate right to G

ii) G is fourth to the right of C

iii) D was between B and F

iv) C which was third to the left of B, is at one of the end

Which is the right position of E?

A . Left of A

B. Left of F

C. Between F and G

D. None of these