Who determines who should qualify for the mains ? .... It is the General Studies paper. Most of the university toppers, IITians, doctrate holders may fetch good marks in optional but most of them find it difficult to clear it. Thus an harworking average student can find a level playing ground in the CSE exams if he prepares GS paper well. Civil service is a mixture of services, the candidates mixture of all categories, similary General Studies questions is a mixture of several displines.

Composition of Prelims General Studies Paper

• Indian History 25-30 questions
• General Science 30-50 questions
• Geography, Indian geography 15-25
• Polity 10-15 questions
• Indian Economy 10-25 questions
• Numerical mental abiltiy 15-25 questions
• Current Events 20-30 questions
• Other questions 10-30

This is general pattern and composition may change. Anyway for the prepartaion we adopt this as 'basic structure'.

Degree of difficutly in each subject

If we classify further questions in terms of diffulty, in each subject, we can find that questions are composed of easy (basic)questions, medium level questions and advanced questions. Easy questions can be easily answered if u have studied the subject. Most of them are direct questions. But we can find only 2-3 questions from. The second and most important type of questions are with medium toughness questions. A planned and systematic study,revision and constant practise is needed to attempt these type of quesions. These are not always direct questions, may be confusing, sometimes a good guess can help in getting it right. The third is advanced questions, even after careful study, we may find it very difficult, even to trace the answers after exams!. Luckly these types of questions are also very few and my frank opinion is that just avoid it and donot get frightened of General studies prelims seeing this kind of questions. To sum up, a candidate taking history optional may not get all the history questions correct in the general studies and a candidate who has not studied history may get some questions correct.

Plan of Study and systemactic revision

As a first step, i recommend a detailed reading of the subject is needed. Only after two or three reading, you will get an idea of the subject.After an extensive study you can go for an intensive selected study. As CSE is a three stage examination, it is always better to concentrate on Mains general studies also. So a detailed study is required and prepartion of notes will tremendously reduce your stress while preparing for the main examination.

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