Thursday 1 February 2018

How does group preparation help for an IAS interview?

Group Preparation
The group preparation overcomes most of the shortcomings of self-preparation. This happens between a group of aspirants who all are likely appear in the interview.
Group preparation has major importance because—
(i) It invites diversity of opinion and viewpoints.
(ii) It is the best place to come up and improve interpersonal skills as the session can happen regularly.
(iii) It is reflective of attributes such as—social capital, team-work, leadership and being receptive to diversity of person's character.
(iv) Since, all the contents cannot be dealt individually, this takes care of content diversity.
The students engage among themselves in questioning and counter-questioning and answering each other. Thus, one is helping oneself and others and in the process developing analytical traits.
As part of group preparation, the students can prepare the questions based on DAF very well, and then exchange with others to point out certain observations, traits, omissions and probable questions.
The group preparation is an informal way of preparation. It is often seen that first few sessions are conducted in very efficient manner but later on degree of enthusiasm starts fading. All people do not follow team spirit and thus it is seen that it doesn't last long. And also, the time aspect also gets compromised into it.
Some additional limitations are—
(i) The level of question asked does not always matches up to UPSC level.
(ii) Since, most people in group read from similar content, there isn't the diversity which is desirable for such an examination.
(iii) If the groups become large to cater diversity, then the quality and focus is lost in managing such events.
(iv) The casual nature of some students in such group preparation is sometimes taxing on time factor.