Strategy To Prepare Psychology Optional – For UPSC Examination.

Preparation for any Optional subject should start with the recognition of the fact that ‘One cannot be good at it unless one prepares notes for it”. This adage is very much true for Psychology optional as well. If you are to strategize your preparation with Psychology as an optional, you should have chosen it out of sheer interest and nothing else.Continue Reading Strategy To Prepare Psychology Optional – For UPSC Examination.

A decent score in an optional subject is a must to make it to the final merit list in the Civil Services Exam. The decent score can hover anywhere between 310 and 355 out of 500. The strategy to get this decent score requires some disciplined effort too. The effort which is channeled in the right direction with the right set of books and organized study.

The subject is unlike many other optionals, which generally involve memorizing a lot of content. This subject is more about being able to understand concepts, related theories and constructs. However, one has to bear in mind that being comfortable with ‘jargon’ becomes all the more important.

The most significant advantage one can enjoy with Psychology as an optional is that one has to prepare properly for paper 1. Paper 2 preparation then would take considerably less amount of time. Going by this metric, the length of the syllabus will be relatively shorter. 

The memory techniques one learns in this subject can be applied to learn material of other General studies subjects too. Also, better understanding of concepts and pragmatic outlook would lead to overall personality development, which would matter a lot at the Personality Interview stage.

1. Start with NCERT’s as this would help in mastering the basics and develop an overall understanding of the syllabus. Next, proceed to the standard reference books for Paper 1 as mentioned above. A lot of concepts covered in paper 1 can be directly applied to paper 2 and this indeed reduces the amount of mugging required. Paper 2 deals in detail in the book n Applied Psychology by Smarak Swain. This precisely covers all the topics.
2. The focus should be on having an enhanced conceptual understanding while reading rather than merely memorizing the facts.
3. It is crucial to have a good hold on concepts in paper 1 as it forms the foundation for paper 2. The chapter on statistics has been a hot favourite of UPSC off late and hence requires extra efforts.
4. It is important to root your answers in theory for paper 2 and not write in a very generic manner. Instead one should write the psychological concepts or theories from paper 1 to support your argument. One can make their answers more relevant by using contemporary examples from the Indian context. This way you can enhance your answer and fetch more marks.
5. A standard format should be adopted for answering questions involving attitude and behaviour change. Use principles of operant conditioning, modelling, social psychology, and persuasive communication etc. in the framework and cover every nook and corner of the syllabi. It is advised to skip the questions from the dicey chapters like community psychology and instead answer ones from the topics which have defined course content.
6. Inclusion of case studies, examples, experiments, issues in newspapers and drawing diagrams hold a lot of value to the answers especially in paper 2. Presenting answers using flowcharts is also a good idea as they are easy to remember and one can fetch more marks easily.
7. One must aim for effective revision. It is advised to revise what you have already competed regularly rather than collecting new facts every single day. Revise the same material multiple times and also rely on your own concise notes. Having your own notes written in a simple language aids further revision in the later stages as well.
8. It is essential to develop the ability to interlink paper 1 and paper 2 for effective answer writing.
9. Effective answer writing can be achieved by answer writing practice on a regular basis. A good answer comprises of 2 parts i.e. content and presentation. Hence it is crucial to address both the aspects. The first step is to read the question and understand what it demands and then jot down the points which you feel are relevant and can add weightage to the answer. Try to solve as many questions as possible and solve from the previous years’ papers. Some questions can be repeated and if not entirely repeated, often the areas remain the same. So one can be well prepared by going through previous papers. One more crucial step here is to get these checked by a mentor or teacher so that you are aware of your mistakes and further improvements can be done.
10. Joining test series is another way of improving your answer writing skills as critical feedback helps an aspirant to know where he/she stands and can improve. Test series discussion also helps in gaining a better perspective, interactive sessions builds one’s confidence and one can learn how to present an answer in a critical yet concise manner.
11. Follow some simple rules while writing an answer like underlining the keywords, diagrams which can be well integrated with the answer and concentrate on the structure of the answer. Never lose focus from the central theme else it might lead to negative marking.
12. Another crucial step in preparation is the effective utilization of the exam time of three hours. It is advised to for the first five minutes, brainstorm a little by going through all the questions and decide which questions you can attempt in the best manner. Then stick to the time limit and divide the time accordingly depending on the marks allotted per question.
13. Try to stick to the word limit, with some deviation on either side. This time management skill and speed improvement can also be developed with repeated practice.
14. Lastly, the last few days before the exam should be spent wisely in revising the syllabus covered earlier. Try and do basic revision and don’t burden yourself with any new information.

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