How to prepare for SSC exam at home – Effective Tips!

It always hard to prepare for SSC exams at home without guidance or coaching. In this blog, I am sharing effective tips on how to prepare for SSC exam at home.

The Staff Selection Commission recruit candidates for various group B and group C posts in various government departments/ministries. The Combined Graduate Level Examination for the year 2018 is going to be held in the months of July-August.

The application process is over and now is the time to prepare your heart out for this immensely popular examination. Most of the candidates taking this examination often suffer from the dilemma whether they should opt for coaching or not.

Let’s get it straight here itself – NO COACHING IS REQUIRED for cracking this examination. However, in order to prepare for SSC Exam at home, it is required that you understand the examination pattern and syllabus properly before launching yourself in this race.

Do you want to be a topper of SSC CGL exam this year? So, you can get 7 SSC CGL preparation Tips by Toppers revealed, how to prepare for SSC exam for Better Results. If you want to crack SSC CGL 2018 then here is how to crack SSC CGL in one month day by day process to follow for sure shot success this year.

In this article, I will describe in detail how to prepare for SSC Exam at home so that you can follow it and achieve success. 

How to prepare for SSC Exam at home?

If you will follow these steps honestly then you can learn how to prepare for SSC exam at home for sure shot success.

Let us begin with the examination pattern. The whole examination is divided into four tiers – Tier I, II, III and IV. While Tier I and Tier II are objective papers, tier III tests your writing skill. Tier IV is mostly about typing/document verification etc. 

The Tier I examination is conducted as per the following pattern:

Once you are done with the Tier I examination, the next stage is the Tier II examination which is scheduled in the month of December 2018. 

The exam pattern of Tier II will be as follows:

Once you are done with Tier II and clear it with the cut-off marks and above, your next destination is the Tier III examination, introduced in lieu of the interview phase.

The exam pattern of Tier III will be as follows:

You need to score at least 33% in order to qualify in the Tier III examination.

The exam pattern of Tier IV will be as follows:

The Tier IV examination consists of the Computer Proficiency Test (wherever applicable), typing test, document verification etc. This phase is qualifying in nature. 

The subject wise approach to prepare for SSC exam:

Now that we are well acquainted with the pattern of this examination, our next step is to understand the right approach to prepare the subjects properly with the correct strategy and planning. As we have observed, this examination is mainly based on four subjects:

1. English Language and Comprehension along with descriptive writing
2. Quantitative Aptitude
3. General Awareness
4. Reasoning Ability
   

1) Points to remember for preparation of English language and verbal ability section:

English section is very important since you are at the risk of getting negative marks in this section more than any other section. English section is asked in all the three phases – Tier I, II and III. The syllabus of the subject is more or less the same with a few additions and deletions ranging from one phase to the other whereas Tier III is mainly about creative writing.

This section is the trickiest one in the examination since the options are quite confusing and most of the students end up marking the wrong answer, attracting negative marks. 

Please note we are not reiterating on the theory and practice part in every subject since that is the basic thing and you need to follow it at every cost i.e. you need to get your basics right and practice as much as possible for all the subjects. Apart from that, the following tips will be helpful for this section:

1. Focus more on the exceptions to any rule of grammar: English grammar is very complicated in the sense that there are many exceptions to any rule and you need to go through those exceptions very carefully and remember them also.

2. Do not mark answers you are not sure of: Negative marking can play havoc with your English marks. So, be very careful of making answers in which you are not sure at all. It is better to leave them rather than boasting of high attempts.

3. Vocabulary part is more important in SSC since the application of words finds more weightage: In SSC exams, it is expected that your vocabulary is strong along with your grammar. That is why there are one-word expressions, homonyms, phrases and idioms, synonyms and antonyms etc. It would be to your advantage if you focus on building vocabulary at home on a long-term basis.

4. Practice the unusual ones rather than the normal questions in any chapter: When you are going through any chapter, there will be certain unusual examples deviating from the normal ones. Such as, in voice change you will find these:

Active Voice: I did it. 

Passive Voice: It was done by me. (Normal one with subject and object inter-changing places and agent ‘by’ being used)

But, Active Voice: Honey tastes sweet. 

Passive Voice: Honey is sweet when it is tasted. (No particular rule of voice change has been applied in this question)

2) Be at your best in Quantitative Aptitude since this is the most difficult of all in SSC Exams:

Quantitative Aptitude section is the most difficult one in SSC exams with questions from arithmetic, algebra, mensuration, trigonometry and geometry being asked. Apart from careful study and diligent practice, following tips will come in handy for you:

1. Mind calculation will save a lot of your time: Since you have limited time, you need to have a good practice of calculating within your mind. With this, you won’t require writing down the calculation and solving it. It will also be useful in skipping steps while solving a particular problem.

2. Do not go for short-cuts if you are not comfortable with them: All the coaching centers and blogs are so adamant on teaching short-cuts, but it is your call if you want to use short-cuts or not. 

Please note that without these tricks also, you can solve a problem equally fast if you are good in calculation. It is all about practice and level of comfort. Don’t fall prey to cheap publicity stunts like short-cuts will bring success since it has never happened in the history of mankind. 

3. Focus on application of any theory rather than mugging it up: Suppose you know that, the sum of two sides of a triangle should be bigger than the third one or the sum of all the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, it is not sufficient to learn these properties. 

You need to be able to apply them whenever required in a problem, for example, you are given that the sum of two angles is 120 degrees and the third angle is to be calculated, you need to understand the logic behind the answer of 60 degrees. 

3) For General Awareness, there is no short-cut rather than study and revision:

This is one subject where it is advised that you mug up as much as possible but that will also not be enough to score well in this section in the examination. Please make note that you need to revise on regular basis if you are serious of scoring well in this section. 

Taking mock tests also helps but given the vast syllabus, it is better to keep this in your daily routine so that you never lose touch with general awareness. Another important thing is that SSC can ask more questions from anyone subject such as polity, economics, science, history, geography, current affairs etc. so do not neglect any subject. 

4) The reasoning is the easiest section in SSC compared to the others; hence, standard study and practice are enough:

Now that we are done with the difficult sections, let’s focus on the easiest section in this examination and that is certainly going to be the Reasoning Ability section. 

You just need to know the syllabus properly and study the rules of all the chapters so that you can apply them. Questions are generally straight-forward and easy ones but if you are out of touch, it may take a lot of your time. 

So, practice properly before the examination. This is a scoring section if you have gone through all the chapters in the syllabus with the practice of all such types of questions from each chapter. 

Bottom Line:

This article is not about hand-holding you through a daily routine since we believe that you are mature enough to understand what works best for you. 

It is to let you know that you need to be aware of certain things that coaching centres will tell you and also the things that you should not pay heed to. 

It is important to understand the whole process yourself so that you may be in-charge of everything. Remember, you are going to become a government servant and taking charge of anything is the first thing that is expected of the responsible ones of them. 

I hope, now you can also share these tips with friends for How to prepare for SSC exam at home. 

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Share with me in the comment section what is your strategy or planning to crack SSC exam this year?

Stay tuned with Examsbook for GK, Reasoning, Aptitude and Verbal ability Questions for Complete preparation at home.

All the best!!