Are you amongst the many students in the domain of civil service preparation who have given one full year to prepare for the Indian forest service (IFOS) exam. Then read ahead because this concerns your preparation strategy and mental set up to crack this (IFOS) exam.

Most of the students who dedicate a year exclusively to prepare for the IFOS exam fall mainly in three categories. One, they have failed prelims multiple times and are now afraid to waste another attempt. So as an excuse to save their attempt they choose to prepare for the IFOS exam. The second category are the students who have written multiple civil service mains and have failed to get an interview call. Now to introspect where they are going wrong in their preparation, they want to take a year break. But they say one year is too long for introspection and hence let me apply for the IFOS exam. The third category are students who have a good hold over prelims. They have consistently been good scorers in the prelims stage of the exam. Furthermore they want to take the IFOS exam because they feel some sense of certainty in IFOS compared to civils and also they realize the importance of forest service as an All India Service. This realisation is very important in two ways. One, it makes you research harder about the exam via previous year questions which inturn will help you prepare effectively  and two, you will not treat IFOS exam as a substitute to Civils exam and hence give the same 110% effort  to IFOS exam preparation as well. 

So first decide which category you fall under! 

Category1 Students: Please don’t mask your insecurity in exhausting Civils attempts by taking up the IFOS exam. The reason is one you’ll not learn anything in masking your failures. Instead try to accept your failure. After accepting them, focus on identifying where your weaknesses lie and what are the reasons why you are not able to clear prelims. For instance, people may be weak in basics, some weak in applying logic to deduce the answers and some may be weak in CSAT. Recognise your weak area and then work accordingly. We’ll come up with the prelims strategy soon so i’ll not get more depth into it in this article. 

If you want to save your attempt, you can take a break. Take that break to analyze past mistakes, find a plan B or if you seriously want to crack the IFOS exam, then do two things. One, choose one optional to be finished before the prelims exam, most preferably forestry optional. Two, please work on prelims dedicatedly with more vigor as the cut off is on the higher end for IFOS. Now more vigor doesn’t mean more books, it means more revisions of the same materials and solving a lot of MCQs. 

(Detailed strategy coming Soon)

Category2 Students: You have cleared prelims many times and also written multiple mains failing to make it to the interview. So, you want to take a break from Civils preparation to identify why you have been failing in the mains’ stage. And also  you think since you have written multiple mains, if you choose IFoS exams and dedicate one year for it, You can clear it.

Now the problem with this way of thinking is that you are trying to do two things at the same time and there are high chances that you may not succeed in either one. Our advice would be to choose one path and do it diligently. Either introspect your mistakes in mains and work accordingly, for instance work on your optionals, work on answer writing, essay or ethics or give your entire focus on the IFOS exam and work accordingly. 

(Detailed strategy on IFOS Exam will be out shortly)

Category3 Students: If you fall in this category then you are on the right path already. You have realized the reason why you want to pursue the IFoS exam and that itself will make you sincere in your preparation. Make sure you work on both your optionals, as optionals are very scoring in the IFOS exam. Also please analyze the general english paper as they are highly predictable and hence are high scoring. Another advice would be to make sure you do enough answer writing. Because usually while preparing for IFOS an entire year, students keep studying and neglect writing answers. This will hurt them especially in the General Studies paper as you are required to answer 24 questions in 3 hours. So keep writing answers on a daily basis.

To conclude: IFS (Indian Forest Service) is an All India Service with its own charms and prestige. Now the IFoS exam should not be treated as a substitute and should not be studied alongside preparing for some other exams but make sure if you choose to appear for this exam, research about the exam by analyzing previous year questions, choose the optionals carefully and prepare for the exam with all sincerity and diligence. If you do this, you’ll ace the exam no matter which category you fall in. 

We will make sure to constantly work for your success 🙂