Preparation of IAS Prelims (CSAT)

Civil Services offers many jobs, one of them is Indian Administrative Service (IAS). It is a job which helps you to work from the *inside* and become a government servant. Apart, from a healthy salary, the incentives which you get are hard to resist. You get free transportation facility and a government quarter to live in. There are other special privileges that come along with an IAS post. However, you need to earn this post. You have to work hard in order to reach this goal where you are far above everybody else. The Power, vigor and stature that you get once you are appointed, will tempt you to work hard and get selected. You have to undergo many difficult to reach the interview round, where some of you will further be filtered down. IAS prelims and IAS mains are the two exams that you need to clear, with good scores. IAS prelims or CSAT is the first window through which you can enter the recruitment procedure.
A thorough preparation for IAS prelims is very important. It is the first opportunity for you to prove yourself. Therefore, it is the most challenging exam, at times you have to appear many times in order to finally clear this exam. The IAS prelims involves both objective and subjective questions. However, there has been a recent change in the syllabus in 2011. The optional subjects available earlier are replaced by CSAT. It refers to civil service aptitude test, which is a common exam for all candidates. This test contains a speed test which would test your accuracy and a power test which involves high standard questions. IAS prelims, also called as CSAT is a highly competitive exam and also a pre-requisite to appear for the IAS mains exam.
However, how you prepare affects your scores. It is important to be thorough with the syllabus, but it is not sufficient. More than 20,000 candidates appear for the exam and less than 1,000 clear the preliminary round. So as you can see, there is only a handful of students who clear the exams with eligible marks, therefore your preparation has to be better than the rest. Model question papers help you to improve your accuracy and give you a hint of the most frequently asked questions. General Knowledge is another area where you need to pay focus since a large portion of questions are asked from general knowledge.
If you prepare well for the IAS prelims (CSAT), you can clear it easily. This will lead you to the second stage of IAS recruitment, i.e the IAS mains exam which would follow the interview round and finally you would be part of the civil services of India.