How to prepare notes for UPSC & other exams!

When preparing for any competitive exam, whether it is UPSC, State PSC, SSC, CDS, IBPS, CAT, making notes is one habit that saves a lot of time that later helps in revising what you have studied since the start of your preparation.

Advantages of making notes

Well, there are many advantages, not that all can be written here but could be realized only when the time comes for revision.

You must be able to understand the topic otherwise you won’t be able to prepare them.

10 times reading= 1 time writing (an old saying, yet true)

Good practice for thinking and writing out essays.

Will help you to revise everything whenever you want.

Helps in final revision by reminding us of the most important points of each topic.

Methods to make notes

Sometimes people end up just copying & pasting things from the books into notes. This could be avoided by using any of the two methods.

Linear approach	Pattern approach
Makes use of headings & subheadings.	Main topic is kept at the centre of the page.
These are jolted down to make a linear structure.	Other points are written using lines radiated from it as briefly as possible.
Disadvantage- A lot of copying & pasting.	Advantage-whole pattern can be seen in one go.
Try using loose sheets so that space could be left on each sheet for addition of content later.	Disadvantage- adding too much information could ruin your pattern.

After analyzing the depth of topic, one should decide whether to follow linear approach or pattern approach to make notes.

An example

For an example, let us take the Climate of India chapter 4 from NCERT of class IX. The chapter starts with monsoon. I am going to use linear approach in it since it has a lot of points. One should use whatever method he thinks is more revision friendly.

Climate controllers (& how it affects in brief)

1. latitude(brief)
2. altitude(brief)
3. pressure(brief) etc.
4. Then coming to Coriolis force, Jet stream etc with brief one liners about them.
5. Then Mechanism of monsoon (briefly)
6. Duration of monsoon
7. ITCZ (what it is & what it does)
8. Southern oscillations & El NIno

Seasons In India (duration & other details)

1. Winter
2. Summer
3. Rainy
4. Transition

In addition to all this, keep noting some points that could be of importance like

# Mango showers (pre-monsoon showers) happen during Summer.

# Direction of winds etc.

Other Important details to be remembered

• Try using highlighters or pencil (if you don't want the book to look colorful) for marking points in your book.
• Avoid giving yourself 'notes later' attitude. 
• Keep updating your notes as per needed. You may get more & more knowledge which you would not like to be forgotten. For example, when you read the same chapter given  in above example from Class XI NCERT, you will get some more information about climate of  India.
• Try to leave some space between topics so more points could be added later.
• Don't just make notes. Keep revising them at regular intervals. Nobody has such  superhuman power that he/she will completely memorize a big pile of notes in just last few  days before examination.

Will add some more pints later. Hope it helps. :)