LAST ONE MONTH CGL TIER-I STRATEGY

To prepare for the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) Tier-I, in the last month you must do at least one quality practice set per week (maximum two). Here you should remember that there must not be more than one practice paper a week. Practice papers are just to know weaker areas in terms of topics/chapters as well as the speed. Surely one will need then to remove those weaknesses found. For that one needs time, so the remaining 6 days of the week will help you remove your weaker areas. In the remaining days (after found weaknesses have been covered), do practice of question of questions from good books/study material.

As the tier-I will be conducted in the ONLINE mode, you should only try to do question papers in the online mode, not offline. Not only will it familiarize you with the online mode it will also help you enhance  your speed.

1. Use of FB

Do not use FB much. FB can’t ever be a good source of doing studies. These groups, in my view, are only to ask a query, and see other queries. For this one should open FB twice a day, half an hour in the morning to post your queries/doubts, and half an hour in the evening to see replies to those queries and queries asked by other persons. Instead of using FB as a means to prepare for an exam you are advised to use books/study material that will give you sufficient number of practice questions.

2. Here are some points from me to focus on

a) Prepare your time-table for 8 hours or so, stick to it more or less.
b) Divide this time according to your needs, means how much time you need to spend on English, how much on Maths, how much on Reasoning and how much on GK.
c) While reading, if you wish to post your queries in your choice of group or site and thus remove your doubts.
d)  Fix time to see responses on those queries. Keep in mind that that this time does not exceed half an hour or so as more time will really be killing.

3. SSC CGL  TIER-I Suggestive Timetable

In my opinion a person who is not in job should devote at least 8 hours time each day to his preparation according to the time shown against each component of the syllabus for CGLE though it’s purely suggestive.

1.	Reasoning	30 minutes
2.	General Knowledge	2 hours
3.	Mathematics	2 hours 30 minutes
4.	English	2 hours
5.	Magazine/News Paper (The best way to make antonyms, synonyms, spellings, idioms/phrases, one word substitution, etc. stronger)	1 hour

In addition to this if an hour or so is spent on some activities of sports and some time on programmes of entertainment on TV etc.; it will really be nice for maintaining mental state in good condition. But not more than it.

NOTE-I: A person already in job too should try to spare more and more time for the preparation; I think almost 4 hours a day in addition to the full day timetable for the days of holidays.

NOTE: II: This timetable is purely suggestive; you can change it according to your suitability. But at least 8 hours a day time should be there for studies.

4. SSC CGL Books/Study Material for both Tier-I & Tier-II 

ENGLISH

a) Maha English Grammar (for Competitive Exams) – Written by Maha Gupta
CLICK HERE TO BUY AND SEE SAMPLE PAGES

b) Maha English Practice Sets (for Competitive Exams) – Written by Maha Gupta
CLICK HERE TO BUY AND SEE SAMPLE PAGES

MATHS

a) Quick Arithmetic of Aashish Aggarwaal

b) Quantum CAT of Sarvesh K Verma (You’ll need to be a little selective while doing this book. Do only EXAMPLES & EXERCISES LEVEL one only; and in those only that is in CGL course.)

c) NCERT & R D Sharma (IX & X standard–Editions of 2004 or before) for Geometry, Trigonometry & Graphs of linear equations. As they are only descriptive in nature you must practise objective questions on these topics from Ashish Aggarwal or/and any other good books available in the market. But remember you can’t be a master in ‘Maths Objective’ unless you are good in descriptive.

Also read these, they are all prepared/solved by me.

ARITHMETIC
S. No.	Name of the Topic	Link
1.	Numbers, LCM/HCF, Finding of Unit digit, Sum of Series, etc.	download
2.	Remainders & Divisibility	download
3.	Simplification	download
4.	Allegation or Mixture	download
5.	Average/Ratio & Proportion	download
6.	Partnership	download
7.	Percentage/Profit & Loss	download
8.	Interest & Installments	download
9.	Time & Work	download
10.	Time, Distance & Speed	download

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ALGEBRA
	Graphs of Linear Equations	download

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AREA AND VOLUME (MENSURATION)
1.	Frustum	download
2.	Pyramid & Prism	download
3.	Area & Volume (other topics than above)	download

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GEOMETRY
1.	Geometry (except Circle)	download
2.	Circle	download

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TRIGONOMETRY
1.	Trigonometric Ratios & Identities	download
2.	Heights & Distances	download
3.	Minimum & Maximum Values of Trigonometric Expressions	download

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CALENDAR
	Calendar	download

PRACTICE SETS (Maths)
download

NOTE: SSC CGL/CHSL: Important Properties/Concepts of Geometry 

Geometry is extremely important in SSC or other exams today. I have seen people good in Maths as a whole but not so good in Geometry. Hence I have compiled some important properties/concepts which are integral part of Geometry. If one understands and memorizes them well, I’m sure he will definitely do very good in it. Highly advisable it is that friends take the print-out of the matter and keep it along while practising questions on Geometry.

English Medium

download

Hindi Medium

download

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE 

a) GK of Lucent (descriptive)
b) NCERT books for Science from 6th to 10th (If time allows they are really fantastic)
c) Monthly Magazine ‘Pratiyogita Darpan
d) Some good quality English newspaper like ‘The Hindu’

REASONING

Practicing of past papers and the model papers should be enough or you can refer to a good book on Verbal and Non Verbal. But never forget to practise previous papers and model papers to master it all. Papers of Kiran Prakashan are better than others in my opinion.

Also read the contents of the following link on Reasoning 
download

5. REVISION

Some guys prefer to do revision. doing practice  of questions/papers will itself be a revision, so no extra focus on that. But yes, if you have very short notes of a thing then you can do it.

6. VERY IMPORTANT

Do light exercises in the morning or evening or at both times as it’s really a demand to keep yourself fresh physically and mentally, which is the most important need of the hour as unless your mind will be fresh you won’t be able to perform that well in the exam.

7. SPECIAL

ON ANTONYMS/SYNONYMS
I’d advise you that you should not spend much time on antonyms and synonyms. The reason is that they are endless in number and therefore you can’t learn them much. Any word could be there in the question paper, so it will be better if you utilize that precious time in making your other areas of the paper stronger.

Dear friends, word power can’t be made strong just by cramming words for a few months; rather it’s a long term process that starts from one’s school days itself. I mean only to say if you are behind words more than the actual requirement, output won’t be that good.

The same thing applies to IDIOMS/PHRASES and ONE WORD SUBSTITUTION, but here you can spare some of your time for going through them from a good source/study material.

8. How to do Comprehension Passage & Cloze Test

For both comprehension passages and cloze tests your basic understanding of English language should be right. Without this, things are going to be really difficult. For comprehension you should have sharp and quick mind. If you want your comprehension of a passage improved you should read the passage very carefully once only, or at the most twice, and keep in mind the content of the passage so that while answering questions you do not need to go back to it time and again. In an objective exam the speed is very important. So read sufficient number of passages and cloze tests from a good source well in time.

Comprehension Passage

a) Read the passage first; not the questions. If we’ll read the questions first our whole concentration then will divert on finding the answers of those questions, and thus we’ll be unable to understand the passage, which is so important. Without understanding the passage well we can’t answer the questions well.

b) Students normally think that reading the passage 1-2 times is a sheer wastage of time and won’t fetch them desired results. But in my experience – and when I say experience it comes from thousands of students and a decade of time that I have been in this profession – reading the passage first is the best strategy as it not only will save your time but also will help you get more and more marks.

c) When you are through with the passage and its contents you are ready to read the questions and answer them without ambiguity and with complete clarity of what the examiner is asking. That read between the lines concept works very well in comprehension while answering the questions, and that can only be developed by investing a couple of extra minutes by going through the same passage at-least 1-2 times.

d) Read the questions one at a time and answer it immediately after. If you are not getting the answer, leave it to attempt it at a later stage, and go on the next question. As you have read the passage already you will get some idea of the location of material in the passage that answers the questions.

e) After doing all the questions of a particular passage read the left out questions carefully, they might be analytical in nature which requires the analysis of a certain part of the passage, and you might need to use your logical mind.

Cloze Test

a) In a question on CLOZE TEST we are given a text passage with some words missing; and we have to replace the missing words from the given options. For this one needs to have a strong command of grammar along with good vocabulary.

b) In order to fill in the missing words, we should read it slowly 1-2 times first without filling up the blanks. Certainly this will help us to develop an idea about the topic and figure out what the text is about.

c) Once we are known with that we should fill in only those blanks we are 100% sure of. This process will enable us to fill in the remaining blanks well.

d) A Cloze Test is a passage with sentences that are logically connected to each other, so we should keep it in mind that we must not treat each sentence individually while filling in the blanks. Instead we should think of logical connections that link up the sentences together.