Civil Services IAS Exam 2011 schedule announced by UPSC

As the IAS prelims pattern has been changed from 2011 onwards, UPSC will be issuing the notification for Civil Services Preliminary Examination 2011 on 19th February 2011 and the civil services prelims will be held on 12th June 2011, while the civil services mains examination will commence from 29th October 2011.


How should you approach 2011 prelims:


As there will be no more optional subjects in the Pre, you will have to gain a sufficient degree of mastery over the changed GS pattern to score well in the 2011 prelims. But there's a dilemma involved here. As the IAS 2011 Prelims will be held a full one month later than usual you will get only 4.5 months to prepare for the IAS mains than the usual 5.5 months. 



So I suggest that you make full use of the time from now till mid January and try to complete at least one mains optionals before starting with your Prelims studies full steam from 16th Jan onwards. This will ensure that you don't feel overburdened after the prelims as you will have to cover two optionals in entirety besides revise them and attempt test series as well. This will be a real challenge.


Also as the GS paper in Prelims is more or less quite unpredictable preparing one month more will not make much of a difference to the final score. Share your comments regarding the 2011 Prelims schedule.

• Information on Books for CSAT/Prelims/GS is available on this blog. 
• Analysis of changed IAS syllabus is available