Using prior year’s question papers to access your preparation is the greatest approach to utilise them. It’s also crucial to evaluate your performance in those papers by comparing your scores to the year’s cutoff. You’ll be able to assess your strengths and weaknesses after that.
Then, based on that, you may concentrate your efforts on bolstering the weak areas while maintaining your strengths. Remember that one of the main goals of this exercise is to ensure that you have covered the entire syllabus.
Benefits of Solving Previous Year Papers
In this section I have talked about the various ways, solving UPSC previous year question paper will benefit you.
1. Know the Exam Pattern Better
Solving previous year UPSC (IAS) prelims and mains question papers can provide you a better grasp of the exam format and the kind of questions that are typically asked.
This knowledge of the exam design and the various sections within it will enable you to answer questions more swiftly throughout the exam.
2. Gauge the Levels of Prelims & Mains
The more you solve previous year papers, the more you’ll be able to familiarise yourself with the massive jump in the difficulty levels from the UPSC Prelims to the Mains papers, and subsequently prepare yourself for the same.
3. Identify Important Topics
Solving more Previous year papers would mean getting to identify the most commonly asked questions in the exams, and from them, the most important UPSC topics. These are the topics that you’d then have to learn about in much more detail, considering that they are the ones most likely to be asked about in the upcoming IAS exam.
4. Be More Instinctive in Exams
More and more practice on previous year papers using the actual exam time limit will train you to be more instinctive and accurate while marking the right answers.
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