1) Understand the Exam Pattern
Many people just for experience sake fill out the form for the SSC CGL exam without thorough preparation. Preparation for an exam not only constitutes of studying the topics from the syllabus but it also requires you to understand and study the exam pattern like number of sections in the exam, questions in each section, marks allocated, etc.
The exam pattern for Tier I exam is as follows –
Total no. of questions – 100
Total time – 75 minutes
Each right answer carries 2 marks and for each wrong answer 0.5 marks will be deducted.
Total 100 questions in the question paper are divided into 4 categories namely – General Awareness, Reasoning, Mathematics and English with 25 questions in each category.
2) Self-Assessment
Before starting your full-fledged preparation for the exam you must make sure to take a mock test to determine how prepared you are from the exam point of view, so that you can figure out where you lack and what sections you need to work on more. Don’t be disheartened if you get a low score rather see the positive in it and think that if without preparation you could have achieved this, then once you’ve started and finished your preparation, you could do wonders.
3) Focus on the End Goal
Your end goal is not to qualify Tier I but to qualify both Tier I as well as Tier II. And since there isn’t much time given between Tier I and Tier II exam thus, you should start preparing for Tier II along with Tier I. Now the subjects that you need to focus more on are Reasoning/ quantitative aptitude and English Language.
4) Don’t Rush
Learning is a slow process and also differs from person to person. Your grasping power may not be as fast as your friend’s may be. So at your own pace complete your syllabus, give yourself small targets and don’t even try to compete with your friends, study and learn according to your pace so that you’re able to retain the knowledge you learn in the long run as well. Also manage your notes, do not rely on your friend’s or the coaching’s bundles of notes rather make systematic notes for yourself, compile different formulae, phrases, important small little pointers, as per your own needs.
5) Practice, practice and more practice
The old adage – “practice makes a man perfect” is indeed true. Once you’ve studied your entire syllabus start practicing, rather as soon as you complete a chapter/ concept practice questions on it. And as soon as you’re done with your entire syllabus start doing more and more mock tests and revise the same concepts over and over again instead of wasting your time in learning new concepts. Practicing with mock tests not only helps you retain the knowledge but also gets you in the habit of better time management during the exam.
6) Adopt the Right Approach to study
The purpose of studying shouldn’t be to clear a particular exam rather it should be to learn, actually gain knowledge. If you study just for the sake of an exam suppose you’re studying with the aim of clearing SSC Tier I exam, instead of understanding a concept you’ll mug it up and you won’t be able to retain it in your mind for long and just in case you manage to clear the Tier I exam and the same concept is asked in the Tier II exam you might get confused, but if you understand the concept, it’ll be easy to revise it and do well in Tier II exam aswell.
7) Keep a Tab on Your Progress
Get into the habit of taking regular mock tests weekly or after every 15days, whatever you’re comfortable with. Also when taking these mock tests, do not be casual rather take it as if you’’re taking the actual SSC exam. Keep a check on the time and also stop as soon as you run out of time designated for the actual exam. Once you’ve solved the mock test, check your answers analyze your performance and score firstly – section wise; secondly – topic wise and thirdly – time taken.
Also, compare your test scores with your previous test scores overall as well as section wise, topic wise and time taken. This will help you identify topics that are your strengths and ones which need more time and ones where you make silly mistakes or are simply confused.
While checking your answers from the mock test, do not do anything else or be half asleep, be focused on the answers you’ve marked and the right answers as well because at times what happens is that few questions are given as it is in the actual exam as were in the mock test, but then because we were distracted at the time of checking the mock test we are only able to recall that we saw and solved the question somewhere but are unable and absolutely confused as to the right answer.
8) Time Management
Once you’ve taken a couple of mock tests and have determined your strengths and weaknesses, you must make a time management guide for your actual exam wherein you need to chalk out the amount of time you will be spending on each section and the order in which you will be attempting the sections. Suppose you’re not that good at Mathematics and are good at English and General Awareness, then you can solve the English section first, then go for the vast General Awareness section, then the Reasoning/ Quantitative Aptitude and in the end you can do the math section, also out of the total time given to you say 75 minutes, decide how you will divide the time in these sections eg. You decide to spend 10 mins on English section; 10 mins on the General awareness; 20 mins on the Reasoning section and 25 mins on the Math section this comes to a total of 65 mins out of 75 mins and always keep a margin of 5-10 mins between the time allotted and between the time that you plan to allocate section wise because you never know, you could get stuck on a section or a question may take extra time.
Now let’s understand the sections and the important topics:
1) Reasoning/ General Intelligence
The questions in the exam under this section are such that test your common reasoning and problem solving ability in day to day life and so it’s best to focus completely on the question at hand.
2) Quantitative aptitude
It’s important for both Tier I as well as Tier II exam and includes advanced math as well. Important topics include –
Coding/decoding ; analogy; odd one out; word arrangement; numeric/alpha-numeric series; logical reasoning; venn diagrams; direction; non-verbal; matrix.
The topics under advanced math cover –
Geometry; co-ordinate geometry ; trigonometry; mensuration; DI – Bar Graph and Pie Chart; number system; percentage; profit, loss and discount; time and distance including pipe and cisterns; ratio, allegation and average; time and work; SI & CI.
3) English
Important topics are –
Sentence improvement; sentence completion; wrongly spelt words; reading comprehension; phrases and idioms; synonyms and antonyms; one word substitution; spotting error.
4) General Studies/ General Awareness–
Best way to cover this section is to go through NCERT Books as well as previous years’ question papers.
