Dear friends,
Hopefully you all must be deeply engrossed into the preparation of the upcoming UPSC examination. In this most crucial juncture of the career, this article is meant to help you in sailing through this phase most smoothly. There is an old saying “Well begun is half done”. So the first step, when properly executed will make your job much easier. You have to sit down and make a clear plan about the exam in terms of WHAT to study, from WHERE to study and finally HOW to study. So let us discuss this whole process one by one-
There is no doubt about the fact that ideal preparation must consist of in depth study of each subjects from the respective text books as well as exhaustive practice of MCQs as much as possible. But the problem lies in the fact that we are racing against the time and it is almost impossible to study all the eighteen subjects from their standard text book and retain them till the exam. At the same time memorizing all the MCQ does not help much. Thus the best option that remains is to go through the books that contain the brief explanation about the MCQ and deals the topic retrospectively. Here the next thing that comes in mind is to which book to choose from heap of so many similar looking books on the same subject. Here in choosing the book the focus must be on the fact that how much times it will require you to complete it before the examination. Here I am recommending only those books which helped me in my preparation and can be covered in this short span of time.
We can divide all the subject into four main category
1.Clinical subjects
- Medicine – Mudit Khanna
- Surgery- Amit Ashish/SARP
- OBS- D c dutta(Text book)
- GYN- Sakshi Arora
2. Homeopathic Subjects
- Organon-Organon text book, Text books of homoeopathic philosophy,Success
- Materia Medica-Allen keynotes,selective study from Boericke Materia Medica,Crack the entrance
- Repertory-Text books,Success
- Pharmacy-Text book, Success
(Here we would like to stress that in homoeopathic subject it is better to stick with text books than going after mcqs as you may face plenty of new questions from the texts.)
3.Non Clinical/Quasi clinical Subjects-
- Anatomy – Across
- Physiology- Across
- Pathology – SARP
- Forensic –Sumit Seth/ Across
- PSM- SARP/Deepak Mishra/Vivek jain(Anyone according to availability of time )
4.Short subjects
- ENT- Platinum Notes – 3 Volumes / ROAMS
- Paediatrics- Platinum Notes – 3 Volumes / ROAMS
- Anaesthesia – Platinum Notes – 3 Volumes / ROAMS
- Orthopaedics – Platinum Notes
- Skin – Platinum Notes
- Psychiatry – Platinum Notes
Apart from these subject wise studies we need to go through the previous years question papers from any of the above books-
Preview of the previous papers
- Solve MCQs UPSC & MD by Dr.VK Chauhan
- Turning point by Dr.Alok Mishra
- Success by Dr. Navin Singh
Now the most important thing that remains to be answered is the how to study most efficiently from these books which can fetch us a good score in the exam. In fact HOW to use these books is the most important aspect after selecting your books and requires subject specific approach which we will discuss in some other article. But here in general i would like to emphasize that these books should not be approached from first page to the last page. Instead it is advisable to make a list of common and high yield topic after doing a survey of frequently asked mcqs. Then make a priority list among those carefully selected topics from each subject and go from most common topic of the chapter to least common one .In doing so you always cover the high yield topics in detail and the less common topic are covered according to availability of time.
Friends here we have to bear in mind that these lists of high yield topics contain 80-85% of question in most of our examination and they should be our top priority in the study. We must dig deep in these topics and try all our effort to have a very clear idea about them. You all will agree that most of the time it is a very common topic that traps us more in its very similar looking or confusing options rather than very uncommon question from a rare topic. Thus it better to start the subjects with the approach of most common topic to the least common topic instead of reading from first page to last page.
Wishing you all the very best for your preparation.
