Dear IAS aspirants,

Understand firstly that your ultimate aim is to score top rank in civil Services Examination, for which your score in Mains written exams carries high weightage. To score good marks in exam one has to write answer as expected by UPSC, which requires regular answer writing practice under experts’ guidance and mentorship.

Candidates are required to understand the intention of UPSC in conducting the Mains Written Exams. It has been declared by UPSC itself in the notification in the following words;

“The main Examination is intended to assess the overall intellectual traits and depth of understanding of candidates rather than merely the range of their information and memory.

The nature and standard of questions in the General Studies papers (Paper II to Paper V) will be such that a well educated person will be able to answer them without any specialized study. The questions will be such as to test a candidate’s general awareness of a variety of subjects, which will have relevance for a career in Civil Services. The questions are likely to test the candidate’s basic understanding of all relevant issues, and ability to analyze, and take a view on conflicting socio-economic goals, objectives and demands.

The candidates must give relevant, meaningful and succinct answers.”

It is true that at the initial stage of preparation candidates may not master the art of writing good answers, for the reasons; they may not understand the complex structure of the question, they may not have that much content to answer the question, they may not have skill to sum up the answer in limited words with required requisites etc. Such candidates when join any test series / answer writing program of any institute end up with no improvement. Further such candidates (freshers) can’t dare to wait till they develop the skill to understand the complexity of the questions & to gather sufficient knowledge / content. No doubt you have to start answer writing practice alongwith your study, that means you have to prepare for Preliminary (Prelims) as well as Main Examinations simultanously. Remember Prelims is just a qualifying stage and you have to qualify Mains in the same year of Prelims.

Realising the issue we at A A Shah’s IAS Institute have formulated different levels (Level 1 and Level 2) for answer writing practice as well as for Test Series to suit them;

(i) GS Level 1 for basic level of preparation with direct questions framed on NCERT and other books and

(ii) GS Level 2 for Mains level of preparation with questions as per UPSC pattern.

In addition to this we have also added Current Affairs Question

In this “Answer Writing Practice” program you get FREE questions (GS Level 1, GS Level 2 and Current Affairs), which you have to write and submit as per the instructions given below. Here you get variety of questions covering the relevant topics of the syllabus so that you not only understnad the broad dimensions of study but also get opprotunity to frame good answers.

All the best.