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Appearing for UPSC Exam 2020? Why online courses may work

The civil services examination is considered the toughest competitive examination in the country. But candidates are now seeing merit in studying for this exam online.

August 09, 2020 / 11:03 AM IST

Amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, Chennai’s Praveen Chandran has been unable to visit his coaching institute since March for the UPSC 2020 preparations. Chandran enrolled in January for a six-month crash course for the UPSC preliminary examination which will now be held on October 4.

“Since I cannot afford to miss out on the preparation, I decided to enroll into two programmes online for a three-month crash period online. It has been a bit of an eye-opener for me since I did not know studying online could work for tough exams like UPSC,” he said.

Studying online for UPSC examinations is slowly getting popular amongst students. With these e-learning programmes giving freedom to students to prepare as per their schedule and is also cheaper compared to a classroom course and saves travel time.

Also read: Meet a Miss India finalist who has now cracked UPSC

The civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Services Commission (UPSC) is considered the toughest entrance examination in the country. This examination is held for entry into administrative positions in the Indian government.

The UPSC Result 2019 showed that only 0.1 percent of the total applicants were selected in the list released by the commission. A total of 800,000 candidates had appeared for the UPSC Prelims 2019 of which 12,000 were selected for the UPSC Mains Examination. Finally, 829 candidates were shortlisted after the interview.

Of these, there are rank-holders who prepared online using structured programmes from ed-tech firms. These candidates are of the view that these crash courses help and would be beneficial for future students especially amidst the pandemic-led lockdown.

Twenty-six-year-old Navneet Mittal from Delhi who had an all-India rank of 69 in the UPSC told Moneycontrol that it helps save a lot of time. He has been preparing since 2017.

“I used online programmes from Unacademy and the best part about e-courses is that I can use it according to my schedule. The crash courses are particularly helpful,” said Mittal who cracked UPSC in his second attempt.

Civil services aspirants typically start preparing three to five years before the first attempt. Considering the depth of the syllabus and the tough competition, candidates usually dedicate five to six hours per day in preparation for the examination.

Many students travel to Delhi which is considered the coaching hub for civil services examination preparations. But that could be time-consuming and also is an expensive affair. Apart from the coaching fee of Rs 1-2 lakh, accommodation and food could cost another Rs 1 lakh per year.

Baddi’s 22-year-old Muskan Jindal who has an all-India rank of 87 in UPSC 2019 said that studying online is beneficial and helps cut down the travel to coaching centres in metros. She cracked UPSC in her first attempt.

“I could not go to Delhi for offline coaching and hence I enrolled into online studies with Unacademy. The advantage of e-learning is that you can do it from the comfort of your home,” she said.

As a part of her preparation for UPSC 2019, Jindal used to start her day reading the newspapers followed by meeting the ‘daily target’ of how much academic portion to complete. She started preparing for the civil services along when she was completing her undergraduate programme at Chandigarh’s Panjab University.

“Studying at home with the help of online courses, I was able to follow my weekly and monthly schedule of how much to study and by when. There is a misconception that online learning is not effective. But I can say with my own experience that you can totally rely on it,” she added.

Apart from Unacademy, platforms like Gradeup, BYJU's Drishti IAS and ClearIAS offer civil services exam study programmes online.

At a time when the Coronavirus pandemic has struck and physical coaching classes are unlikely to resume before the end of September 2020, coaching institute officials also agree that studying online could be an alternative.

Arjun Mahapatra who holds private IAS coaching classes in parts of Odisha and West Bengal through his MBS Exceed Classes said that his business has come to a halt since April.

“Neither do I have adequate funds to set up online classes nor do my teachers have skills to teach online. So, we had to close classroom lectures for more than four months though I sometimes upload video lectures on my Facebook page,” he added.

There is a definite cost saving for students too. A physical classroom course for a year could cost between Rs 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh. The same course online would cost Rs 40,000-60,000 per annum.

The pandemic has forced competitive examination aspirants to shift online. Industry experts said that this trend is here to stay even for the toughest examination in the country.

M Saraswathy
M Saraswathy
first published: Aug 8, 2020 11:22 am

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