How to prepare History optional for UPSC Prelims

History is ‘The Optional’ as far as appearing in UPSC/IAS examination is concerned. Every year, the highest number of aspirants take History as their first optional in this most coveted examination.
Here is experience of Trilochan's in his own words what one needs to do if one has decided to take History in UPSC Prelims ….

I (Trilochan) had done MSc Biotechnology before entering into civil services preparation and my optionals are History(1st) and Geography(2nd) .One might have this doubt that how this guy managed these optionals while coming from a science background. My answer is simple, it was my interest in knowing our hisorical facts and stories and places of ecological, economical significance that prompted me to opt for these subjects.
Few of my seniors advised me to take History as my first optional, they told me the advantages of taking history as it is safest and intake for mains from history is also more(because most people appear with history optional).
I listened to what seniors told me, that is different, but at the same time I also introspected regarding subject and important areas. One thing I have realized is that "revision and comparision" is very important to succeed with this optional as it contains more facts like years, names and other theoretical facts.
I did not attend any coaching classes for History as it is theory based and especially for prelims I feel coaching is not required. After the introduction of negative marking, safest mark to clear prelims is to get 70+ questions correct.
There are so many books in the market which helps us to become master in the subject .I, myself have studied all NCERT books for history which gave me an idea about the limits of the subject and later on i studied TMH(Tata McGraw Hill) written by Krishna Reddy .Here, I prepared my notes from NCERTs and TMH , I emphasised on facts which require at least 5 revisions ( i revised my notes 3 times and 2 times those books) . With this kind of preparation, I landed in 50+ mark which includes both direct questions and indirect questions (means through elimination process). After this home work, I opened Romila Thapar for Ancient , Satish Chandra for Medieval, Bipin Chandra for Modern (this includes both books that is struggle for freedom and after independence) . These books I revised only once which helped me to touch 80 marks.
Generally ,few of my friends studied only text books by avoiding TMH, this is also good because during mains it will save our time and one can have very good concept of any particular topic.
I also had IGNOU material, Gazetteer Volume2 (Publication Division) and Grover & Grover, but I did not get time to read all these books.
I didn’t take coaching anywhere, so naturally I committed few blunders while in preparation, later on I rectified those after taking suggestions from my friends. Facts are very important for prelims, at the same time one should not neglect their mains preparation, I mean to say take 2008 mains history paper , those who have studied texts books which I have suggested are well placed to get very good marks. Of course revision and comparision is always required, i.e. take "society", how was it during pre vedic, vedic, post vedic periods; what are the additions in the later stages and like that...this kind of analysis is important in solving assertion and reasoning type questions and true and false questions in prelims. These type of questions are most tricky and eat our marks as these had maximum weightage in 2006, 2007 and 2008 papers.
Preparing notes is the best method for remembering facts, because we'll write only those points which would need revision.

General Studies
Every time I could cross 75+ in general studies paper as my preparation was extensive which generally eats lot of time and memory power to be honest. I followed the current trend, suppose geography is my optional I have to study many things for map pointing so i focused on atlas .In prelims questions on geography part contains questions like this ... one country and capital, island, river , mountain, transport, mineral etc .So, I always kept one thing in my mind that i have to pick up the answer from the given multiple choice question. For example ,i can tell more than 100 countries and its capitals ,but i can pick up the capitals for all 200+ countries if i get multiple choice .Though i was little bit tensed regarding prelims general studies, i was never afraid even if i dont remember any fact. But I kept on revising...as general studies contains many segments we need to be perfect in at least 2 to 3 segments along with current affairs which would help us to clear prelims easily .
Last but not the least, after reading all these areas if any body feels that paper is tough ,be relaxed because paper will be much much tougher for all others and one can start mains preparation without counting on cutoff mark. Just stick to few standard books and keep revising, naturally success will come …. All the very best to you all !!!
Best Wishes
Trilochan Rao

Courtesy - upsc-prelims.blogspot.com