UPSC postponing prelims and almost everybody happy now but only a few going to clear, let’s strategize to make you one of the few.

Take a time travel forward to 2022 May/ June when they would have declared 2021 civil services and you would have cleared the exam.

• The end of your preparation is you getting a top rank in civil services.
• For that, you should have attended the UPSC interview. The time gap between mains and interview was enough for you to prepare for the interview.
• However, for getting into the interview, you would have cleared mains within a short gap between prelims and mains ( UPSC has not announced the mains date, and going by last year’s timetable, it is likely to be in January 2022).
• It means that you would have prepared well in advance for mains. Further, for writing mains, you would have cleared prelims and you have around 150 days from now till prelims.
• This time you would have used it for both prelims and mains.

So, the idea is clear – to prepare for mains and prelims now.

Let’s again go to the prelims date i.e., October 10, 2021, and travel back from there to see your strategy till prelims.

• The last 10 days before prelims were earmarked for revision.
• At least two months before that you would have done prelims focussed preparation.
• Despite that, you had around 80 days left from now, which you would have used for mains preparation because that there will not be ample time after prelims.

To summarise,

1. Finish your optional and ethics by June/July 2021. (Even while preparing for mains now, it would be wise to join a prelims test series to keep in touch with prelims subject and revise them once a week.)
2. Exclusive prelims focus from August till prelims.
3. Revising and answer writing after prelims.
4. Interview preparation after mains.
5. Clearing the exam.

Hold on!

Let’s take time travel and move to January. You have around 150 days for the prelims scheduled for June 27, 2021. What did you do?

Had you done things rightly, you would not be very happy with prelims getting postponed. Had you done things not very rightly, you would be very happy and relieved about things getting postponed. Assuming you are very happy with prelims getting postponed, there is every chance that you may repeat the same mistake which you repeated this January. To not repeat the same, you should learn from your mistakes and plan accordingly!