(Article) SSC CGL Exam Strategy by Topper Kaushik Raj AIR-1

SSC CGL 2017 topper Kaushik Raj scored 620.25 out of 700. Kaushik is from the Bhagalpur district of Bihar. He studied in a Hindi Medium School till his 6^th standards, moving on to an English medium ICSE board school till his 10th, and followed it up by completing his 12th from the Bihar State Board in English Medium of education. He completed his B.Tech in 2017 from NIT, Delhi. He had started preparing in his 3rd year of college and immediately after graduating, he got his dream job.

The Importance Of Mock Tests

Kaushik started his preparation by taking mock tests at the very beginning. He only scored a meager 78/200 in his very first mock test. But he refused to give up. He identified his weaknesses and strengths immediately and went to work. Within 2 weeks he found himself comfortably scoring 130+.

Smart Work vs. Hard Work

Kaushik is a big believer in smart work as directionless hard work is seldom fruitful. He prepared based on the weightage of each subject combined in all three tiers and spend as much time and resource as necessary. For example, General Awareness is 1/4th of the total marks to be scored in tier-1. However, it finds no place in tier-II or tier-III. The same goes for Reasoning. So he adapted slightly different preparation Strategies for each General Awareness and Reasoning. 

SSC CGL Tier-1 Exam Printed Study Notes

Reasoning

Kaushik pulled up the CGL previous years’ questions and started to solve them. Any topic he found difficult to solve he used the internet to learn. He did not spend time painstakingly learning each topic as it would not have been worth it was given the weightage of reasoning in the entire exam.

General Awareness

Kaushik swears by Lucent’s General Knowledge book for the static part of the syllabus. He read through each subject first without trying to learn anything. He followed this up by trying to solve previous years’ papers and thus gaining an understanding as to what kind of questions are asked. He then again went back to Lucent’s and read through, this time identifying the important topics and learning them by heart. Kaushik regrets that he did not pay much attention to current affairs in his attempt and advises aspirants today to not repeat his mistake.

Mathematics

Kaushik put special emphasis on mathematics as it holds 250/700 of the marks achievable in this examination. He recommends taking as many mock tests as possible for both cgl tier-I and cgl tier-II as time management is one of the most important aspects of scoring well in mathematics in SSC CGL.

English

English holds 250 marks in tier-I and tier-II. As well as another 100 in the form of descriptive writing in tier-III. Kaushik says it is highly unpredictable, however, there are a few things aspirants can do to ensure that their papers are at least scored. SSC is very strict regarding protocol when it comes to tier-III written tests and candidates must read all instructions carefully and abide by them. 

For example, if you do not write the medium of your answer in the paper or exceed the given word limit, your paper is immediately disqualified. As for scoring well in tier-I and tier-II, the key is to write as many mocks as you can and keep working on your weaknesses to ensure a decent score.

Message To Aspirants

Do not give up over one or two bad scores in mocks, instead, pick out useful questions from mocks and keep practicing. 

This is an extremely achievable examination and with the right mindset, you too will crack it.

BEST OF LUCK.

SSC CGL Tier-1 Exam Printed Study Notes