IAS Prelims 2022 Exam: Last Minute Tips

UPSC IAS prelims 2022 will be conducted on June 5 in offline mode at all the designated exam centres across the nation. Read here the last minute important tips for IAS 2022 prelims exam.

UPSC IAS Prelims 2022 is just around the corner and the candidates are gearing up to reach their exam centre one day before if it is not in their city. UPSC will conduct the IAS prelims 2022 exam on June 5. Civil Service (IAS) prelims 2022 will have two papers conducted offline in two sessions. The morning session will start at 09.30 AM and the Evening Session will start at 02.00 PM.

Both the paper will be Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) type papers conducted offline. The candidates need to mark the right answer on the OMR sheet provided at the examination centre. UPSC admit card 2022 will be required to get admission to the examination centre.

Civil Service (IAS) 2022 prelims exam is a filtering exam only because it reduces the number of candidates for the main exam. The marks secured in the IAS prelims 2022 exam will not be counted for the result. But the candidates who qualify in the prelims exam will only be called for the main exam. Though the exam is qualifying only, its cutoff is released after the final UPSC result. Recently, UPSC result 2021 was released where Shruti Sharma topped the exam. The candidates can see Shruti Sharma’s strategy for IAS preparation.

The candidates must be aware of the IAS exam pattern and syllabus to prepare for the exam. The candidates need to know the topics and prepared them in their entirety. IAS exam pattern for prelims is simple as there are 100 questions in General Studies Paper-I and 80 questions in General Studies Paper-II which is popularly called CSAT. The time limit for both papers is two hours.

See here: IAS Syllabus in Detail

IAS Prelims 2022 Last-Minute Tips

The candidates can take help from these tips to score more marks in the Civil Service (IAS) prelims 2022 exam. Let us see the tips

IAS Prelims 2022: Reading the Question and Answer Options Correctly

IAS prelims is a high voltage pressure exam and with the mercury rising, it would be very difficult to remain calm during the paper. The candidates must read the questions correctly. UPSC designed the question in a manner that is not easy to understand in one go. Each question requires the following steps.

• Reading the question correctly
• Reading the answer option correctly
• Deciding the correct option
• Marking the answer correctly on the OMR sheet.

The last part is very important because the candidates need to mark the answer with the ball pen and once marked, it is very difficult to change the answer. On marking more than one option, that answer will be counted as a wrong answer even if one answer is the correct answer.

Also Read: IAS Prelims Syllabus in detail

IAS Prelims 2022: Do not panic if you can’t answer initially

The candidates should attempt the paper in rounds. In the first round, read the question and mark the answer only when they know the correct answer.

In the second round, mark the answers where they can resort to intelligent guesses. Do not waste time on one question only and keep moving to keep a tab on the time.
Naturally, at least one or two questions will go wrong due to the unforced manual error of not reading the ‘not’ word in the IAS question or not analysing the answer marked.

Also Read: UPSC Toppers 2021 Marks

There is no need to panic in case the candidate cannot answer ten or more questions. It is natural. The IAS prelims questions are so designed that most of the candidates know the answers of only 25 per cent of the General Studies paper-I.

The candidates who have extensively prepared for the IAS prelims answer can mark the answers to around 40 per cent of the questions correctly. But it is very difficult to mark the answer to more than 50 per cent of questions without any doubt coming to mind.

IAS Prelims 2022: Practicing with Previous Year Papers

The candidates must practise with mock tests and previous years' IAS question papers to train their minds in reading and understanding the language of the UPSC questions in a better and more time-efficient way. It will help them during the actual examination.

IAS Prelims 2022: Role of Guessing

Firstly we would suggest avoiding guessing in the paper. But it is evident that to increase the number of attempts in the paper, all the candidates resort to guessing. The candidates should not wildly guess the answer if they do not know anything about the answer. But calculated and intelligent guessing plays a very important role in the IAS prelims exam. It only comes with extensive preparation and studying all the aspects of the topic.

Elimination Method

Elimination method is a part of intelligent guessing. The candidates should carefully read the question and eliminate the answer options which they feel are completely incorrect. They should only mark the answer if they can eliminate at least two answer options. This will make the probability of marking the right answer 50 per cent. The candidate can only eliminate the incorrect option if he or she has read extensively about the topic or any related topic where they can infer that the given option is incorrect.

Also Read: UPSC Toppers 2021 Strategy and Study Plans

Negative Marking in IAS Prelims

There is a negative marking of one by three in the IAS prelims exam. It means that for each incorrect answer there will be a deduction of 0.66 marks from the candidate marks because each of the questions is 2 marks. The number goes in the same ratio in the General Studies paper-II where each question is 2.5 marks.

Moreover, if the candidate marks three incorrect answers and one correct answer, their score does not change because the results of the above combination is zero. But in case the candidate marks two correct questions from four. It will result in positive. It will be beneficial because each number counts in the IAS prelims exam.

IAS Prelims 2022: Marking the Answer on OMR

This is a critical part of the IAS prelims exam. The candidates should mark the answers on the OMR sheet after each page of the paper. It implies that the candidates should mark the answers on the OMR sheet after every four questions. It will help them mark the answers correctly because some candidates mark the answer in bulk which make the answer marking more prone to mistakes.

The candidates should understand that 25 to 30 per cent will go wrong so the attempt count should be such that the final score remains above the IAS Cut off.

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