Note-making is an extremely crucial step for UPSC preparation. Moreover, we tend to lose about 40% of the new information in just 24 hours. Hence, to retain it well, it is important to keep revising it. Since the syllabus is too vast and the books are too many, it is humanly impossible to revise multiple times directly from books! In such cases, UPSC Notes are the biggest tool that can come to help!
Most students feel at sea when it comes to making UPSC notes of NCERTs. We quite understand the gravity of it, hence, we're here to help! In this article, the CL-Gurus will help the UPSC aspirants with how to make notes from NCERT for UPSC! We've also compiled NCERT notes that you can download directly for revision!
As you know the syllabus of UPSC is extremely vast for both Prelims and Mains. Hence, to study and revise them effectively, you must have succinct and crisp UPSC notes for revision.
Secondly, reading almost all the NCERTs from VI and XII is a task in itself! What most students fail to understand and thus waste a lot of time is that you do not need to read the entire book, you only need to stick to the syllabus. Hence, note-making of relevant content from NCERT is extremely essential to save time, especially while revising.
The first step to making notes for any exam is to read the syllabus. Your notes should strictly be syllabus-specific. Hence, first and foremost, read the syllabus and glance through the previous year’s papers’ as a pre-note-making essential! Now, when it comes to NCERT note-making, here’s a seven-step process that should help you a lot while at it. Let’s begin!
The first step is while preparing UPSC Notes is to read the books without underlining or writing anything down. Otherwise, you will re-write everything as you may find everything important. So, give it a first quick read and try to understand the major points. Having read the syllabus and previous years’ papers’, you would know what is important. Hence, in the second reading, note only that part down!
The second thing that you should not miss is writing in bullets. Never make UPSC notes in a paragraph form as it will be a task to read and filter! Hence, always resort to bullet points while making notes and underline whatever is the key-phrase. It will help you filter down information quickly. Use sticky notes to divide the chapters in order to ease revision.
The next thing that you must keep in mind while preparing UPSC Notes for NCERTs is to write short sentences. Do not go for writing long sentences as it will be tough to read. Make notes in your language. It is not necessary to re-write the exact same sentences used in the book. Rephrase them to make them short so that your notes are crisp and succinct.
Digital is the new age technique for anything! Optimally use apps like Evernote to make UPSC notes. It will help you in saving a lot of writing time! It also helps in editing or updating the notes very easily. You will also not have to worry about saving them physically.
Make subject-wise UPSC notes on loose sheets against registers and keep them in multiple folders. It will be easier to store information that way. Registers are bulky and often get misplaced. Moreover, it is too difficult to store too many registers against the loose sheets. UPSC Notes prepared on loose sheets are easier to manage and read.
You can substitute the wordy information into flow charts. Prepare flow charts whenever possible as pictographic information is easier to read and retain than wordy sentences. Whenever there is a chain of events, especially in history, it is easier to retain information via flow charts. Hence, prepare your UPSC Notes in the form of flow charts.
There are two purposes for revising your UPSC Notes on a regular basis. The first is to retain the information and the second is to retain what you’ve written. As funny as it may sound, most students forget the shorthands they used or the half-sentences they’ve written if they read the notes after a gap of a long time! Hence, in order to keep them fresh in your memory, keep revising your notes. At the same time, keep updating it with current affairs and new information.
This is a brief overview of how to make UPSC notes from NCERT. We earnestly hope that this would help you while you make your own NCERT notes for UPSC. If you’re on a severe time crunch, you can also download our NCERT compilations for better revisions!