IAS Coaching

This question is something that somehow comes again and again in mind of aspirants. Delhi has traditionally been the hub of ias civil service exams. The story that came in mind about an ias winner a couple of years back was “Packing bags to delhi, standing like a stork to study for years, and coming out with ias”. The story doesn’t exist anymore. The trend of exam, the style of exam etc has shaken the role of delhi as the sole centre for ias exam coaching.

Still majority of good civil service coaching centres exist only in metros and certain cities. The so called “study ecosystem” for civil service largely exists in cities only. By study ecosystem i mean the fellow aspirants, availability of books and magazines easily, variety of teachers, sharing of ideas, study groups etc.

The internet has to an extent reduced this problem of information divide which students of rural area experienced in the past years. Most of books are now available now via e-commerce sites. Magazines like frontline, yojana, outlook etc are available free on internet. The quality online coaching, study materials etc are still scarce. The students rarely share good materials on internet. The end result is there is large number of leechers while no one is there to seed. This blog can be counted in the latter side.

Again coming back to the question: Is coaching necessary for civil service exams?

It’s evident from the question that two situations exist

A: coaching is done

B: Self study with no coaching.

I think four situations exist-

A: Good coaching

B: Bad coaching

C: Good self study (you know what to study and when to study and how to study)

D: Bad self study (misdirected, confused, having no idea what to study)

In case you are in section C then you obviously you need no education from coaching institutes, coz you can make it without it. If you don’t belong to C, then you can think of taking coaching. In case you are the one who need coaching, then beware of the bad coaching institutes. Note!: If you are in B then you would never make it, coz all you are hearing is BS.

In case someone asks me to vote for Coaching Vs No Coaching. I would vote for former, but i insist on adding the tag “Good “to it.

Better to be alone than in a bad company. From what i have seen, there are lot of institutes that are fake, that are run just for the sake of money. Avoid them. I have put some articles in archives, which would help you exactly that.