To excel in the BCS examination

Friends!

For those preparing to take the BCS examination, the first change you need to make during your preparation is in your mindset. The nature of the exam has changed, which means it has changed for everyone taking the test with you. You are not unique here. The fact that previous exams were easier doesn’t mean those who got jobs through those exams were less talented than you. They had no control over the exam format. Had the exam been like today’s, they would have prepared themselves accordingly. Well, would you have gotten the job if you had taken the exam during their time? Are you sure? Before calling anyone less qualified than yourself, compete with them, defeat them, and then speak. Before calling yourself qualified, prove your worth through action, not words. Speaking costs nothing extra—you just need to know how to talk.

You’re preparing, yet it’s not working properly. Why? Your preparation method is wrong. What you’re doing might be correct, but it may not be enough. Nokia was doing everything right, there were no gaps in their work, their product quality was good, yet they still shut down. Why? The time had come to change their business methods, to update their products, but they continued doing business their old way. Their competitors weren’t sitting idle! While others were easily embracing change, they clung to the old ways. It’s not enough just to do the right thing; you must see how much of that right thing needs to be done. How you are is not determined by how you think of yourself. You need to understand what you actually are. Everyone thinks they’re the best, better than others. If you sit around thinking such things, it will give you nothing but foolish self-satisfaction. You’ll remain exactly as you were. No one cares what you think of yourself. Others see what you actually are. You’re judged by your work, not by your thoughts. What’s the point of boasting verbally or mentally? In the kingdom of one’s imagination, everyone is a king.

Try to understand whether what you cannot do needs to be done. If it’s necessary, think about how to learn those things. Write down on paper what weaknesses you need to overcome. You cannot give yourself even the slightest break here. It’s not a problem that you can’t do something. The problem is that you need to learn it but you’re not figuring out how to. The difference between those who can become BCS cadres and those who cannot isn’t great. There seem to be differences in three areas. One: the method of preparation. Two: the method of taking exams. Three: luck. You don’t believe in the third? Fine, take the BCS exam—you’ll be forced to believe. There are four principles for doing well in any exam: knowing what to work on, why to work, how to work—understanding these three correctly and working hard accordingly. Currently, the BCS exam is the country’s most difficult examination. To do well in this exam, hard work is worth many times more than intelligence or talent. Your intelligence can at best help you figure out how to prepare yourself in the best way. But the real work is sleepless nights of tireless effort. Read that again. What you become or don’t become is largely determined by your hard work. To become a BCS cadre, you don’t need to be talented or a genius. Rather, it requires an honors certificate and hard work. You will face the punishment for not working hard immediately.

Until you become what you want to be, don’t speak about it at all—work silently, speak after ultimate success comes. Actually, you don’t even need to speak after success comes. Success can speak quite loudly for itself! After you succeed, others will learn on their own how you succeeded—you won’t need to say anything yourself. I think your work will be easier if you keep your eyes and ears open while keeping your mouth shut and working. It’s better not to speak on matters where you haven’t earned the right to speak. When someone asks me how to do well in academic exams, I say, “I don’t know.” Because whether I know it or not, my academic results speak for themselves—I have no qualification to speak about it. How can a student who got second class in honors and masters give advice on getting first class? If you become accustomed to hearing false praise for things you don’t deserve praise for, you’ll never receive genuine praise.

I don’t think blindly grinding away leads to very good results in major exams. Before following someone’s preparation technique, think about it at least ten times—whether they’re worth following. Work with the mindset that your daily performance should be better than the previous day’s. New and various subjects are being included in exams, which means you too must bring novelty to your preparation methods. Just because someone before you passed with less study doesn’t mean you’ll definitely pass with less study too! Every exam has aspects that no one can predict beforehand. Whoever can handle those aspects most beautifully has the greatest chance of success. You don’t need to become a great scholar in any subject. What you need to do is know the basic aspects of all subjects well. In this regard, whoever can learn more will stay further ahead in the competition. When you can answer questions that most candidates don’t know, it means you’re ahead of most others, and after the exam you won’t have to make the excuse that ‘the questions were hard, so I couldn’t do them.’ Only those who can’t answer say the questions are hard. For instance, almost all questions in my honors exams seemed hard to me because I didn’t know the answers to most questions. That’s what happens when you take exams without studying! Increase your ability to answer different types of questions. This isn’t possible without increasing your reading habits. Those who read more books develop a kind of strength within themselves. That strength keeps them far ahead of others. This strength is called confidence. There are few treasures greater than reading habits. Reading good books and writings, watching good movies, visiting good places will improve your thinking. This will make your writing better than others’. Why should you get more marks than others if you write just like everyone else? If you sleep 30 minutes less than your friend every day, you’ll get the job three years before your friend. That’s reality. Keep sleeping and fall behind.

Many people can’t read English novels. There are two types of people in this case. Most don’t even start reading because they can’t read well. Some begin reading with a novel written in simple, fluent language to learn to read; this beginning itself is the important thing—even if it’s the Harry Potter series. (You really can start with the Harry Potter series, or Chetan Bhagat.) Later, the second type will get ahead of the first type—this is natural. Because we are poor, we must learn this language of the rich. Whoever learns it better is more like the rich, therefore qualified; this is what the country and society assume. Whatever you read, keep two things in mind while reading. One: what is the author trying to say. Two: what would you write if you were writing. This will increase your creative ability, meaning your writing ability. You must read extensively, understand what you learned from what you read, and apply what you learned to work. While learning, learn knowingly—whether what you’re learning is necessary to learn at all. It’s better to sleep during that time than to learn useless, unnecessary things.

You don’t need to quit your current job to do well in the BCS exam. Often quitting means depriving your family of their rightful due. Many of our colleagues were in other jobs before coming to civil service. You should quit your job only when you get your desired job. Until then, hold onto your ‘transit job.’ I’ve seen many people whose advantage from quitting their job was that their sleeping time increased compared to before. Short on time? Think a bit—is time short only for you? You didn’t study before? Fine, sleep less now. You may have a thousand reasons for not being able to study, but while those reasons may be very valuable to you, they’re not worth a penny to the whole world.

Success needs no excuses; all excuses belong only to failure. What is failure? Failure is not being able to do something I want to do. Or failing at something when I’m incapable of doing anything better in return. Let me speak of myself. Even though I failed in business, I don’t consider it a failure, because I never held business in high regard. What I prioritize in my life is entirely my own affair. Only if I fail at that am I truly a failure—not before then. So if someone makes money through business and acquires cars and houses, it doesn’t disturb me in the least, doesn’t make me envious. I can quite cheerfully celebrate their success. What concerns me is whether I can go as far as possible in what I’m doing, whether I can do what I love to do in my own way. I’m in the civil service; if I must judge the position of someone who isn’t in this service, I should judge them considering their own field. But the best approach is not to judge anyone’s position at all and simply live your own life in your own way. Most unhappy people tend to be terribly judgmental. What’s the point of worrying about what others are doing, how they’re faring?

Where you’re studying or have studied doesn’t matter at all. If anyone makes an issue of it, please forgive their foolishness with your own grace. Your current position is the result of your past actions. Similarly, your future position will be the result of your present actions. If you’ve been negligent before and are being negligent now, it means your future will also be quite wretched as a consequence of that negligence. If you can accept this, you might as well spend your life in negligence. That’s not bad in one way. Those who mock your style of hard work—you can also mock them silently and peacefully in return, because they’ve decided to stay behind you. Then again, it might be that what you’re killing yourself to achieve, they may have already acquired through inheritance or marriage. We call those who work like demons crazy. I’ve seen that in this world, it’s the crazy ones who always stay ahead. Let others say what they will. Just don’t care!

Sit down to study every day. You might miss a day or two of studying—make up for it by studying more the next day. The BCS exam isn’t for seasonal students. When studying, definitely exclude unnecessary topics. Which topics are unnecessary? To understand this, study the patterns of questions extensively. You can’t prepare well for the BCS exam without thoroughly examining questions from similar exams. Read reference books, but don’t try to read everything in them. The BCS exam isn’t about knowing more; it’s about knowing what’s needed. Reading everything will make you a scholar; reading thoughtfully will make you a cadre. A working donkey is better than an unemployed scholar. Which one will you be? That’s your choice! Read lots and lots of questions. Whether you find them in guides, question banks, model test guides—wherever you find questions, definitely read them. Revising two old guides or finishing one new guide is far more useful than reading four new reference books.

Keep two things in mind regarding handwriting: that it can be read and that you can write very quickly. Beautiful handwriting matters, but if your writing is beautiful but slow, some questions get left out, or you can’t write one or two answers to your satisfaction—such beautiful handwriting has no value. You can answer in either Bengali or English. Just keep your writing style, presentation, originality, relevance, and scope right. But let me mention one thing. Initially, I decided to take the exam in English and started preparing in English. Later I found I couldn’t get the necessary books and study materials for proper preparation. Besides, I could write more when writing in Bengali. Then I started preparing in Bengali. You can use pencils for drawing and blue ink pens for quotations. If you don’t practice writing, it won’t come from thin air in the exam hall. Practice freehand writing on various topics from time to time. Every night before sleeping, write a page or two in very simple English about what you did all day, what happened. Do it on Facebook if you want—there’s no problem with that. Actually, that’s even better. You can learn many nuances of language while replying to friends’ comments. Develop the skill to write on any important topic until told to stop. How do you write well? By increasing your reading habit and writing on various topics. There’s no need for much research to start these tasks. You’ll be able to do it once you start. Overthinking and over-intellectualizing destroy preparation.

Start studying from the beginning. If you don’t, as punishment, when others are revising, you’ll have to read new material. When studying and writing in your notebook, remember that the beginning and end of an answer are very important. Start in such a way that makes people want to read your answer, and end in such a way that creates a positive impression about your analytical ability in the examiner’s mind. Give a hint at the beginning about what you’re going to say, and at the end, give your opinion about what you’ve written so far. For English, try to write in simple style without errors. Good English doesn’t require good vocabulary, nor do you need to know a style of writing that shows off erudition. Just don’t make spelling mistakes, don’t make grammar mistakes. Write relevantly. That’s it! Marks will definitely come!

Writing comes with practice. The BCS exam isn’t for specialists; it’s for generalists. To do well in this exam, knowing a little about many things is more important than knowing a lot about few things. It’s better not to write about political and controversial issues. Don’t write a single word that belittles the country or government. The more you include data, charts, maps, tables, flowcharts, quotations, various references, constitutional quotes, etc., in your answer sheet, the more your marks will increase. Without prior study, including all these things is quite impossible. Searching and reading topics online is very useful, especially for preparing Bangladesh and international affairs. Every day, translate a Bengali newspaper editorial into English and an English newspaper editorial into Bengali. Really do it! Along with translating the English editorial, summarize it too. Then write a page yourself on that topic. No matter how difficult it is, don’t go to sleep without doing this work. Never ask anyone the meaning of words; find them yourself by searching dictionaries. Regularly visit online articles from domestic and foreign newspapers and websites of various organizations. It will be very useful. Regularly listening to TV-radio news will help you remember many necessary things with less effort. Don’t read everything, don’t listen to everything. There isn’t so much time to waste. Stay only with what’s useful for the exam. When reading papers, read the front page, editorial page, articles, news analysis, case studies, business and commerce, various international issues, etc., carefully. Sometimes you can try writing something yourself after reading these—it will be very useful. Don’t spend more than 1.5-2 hours daily reading newspapers. Read only what’s necessary for the BCS exam from the whole paper. Reading newspapers online is best. It saves a lot of time.

Don’t follow anyone’s suggestions. Create your own suggestions. Make at least 4-5 sets of suggestions by adding, removing, and editing. Use previous years’ questions, various guides’ suggestions, and your own IQ for this. When writing long answers in the exam hall, decide on relevant keywords or key phrases and write by analyzing them in your own way. Writing this way will give you many ideas for writing. You don’t need to memorize any answers while preparing, because that question might not come in the exam, and the time wasted memorizing could be used to read four different questions or read that same question from four more books. This is much more fruitful. The more sources you read from, the more you’ll be able to write creatively. Note which source you’re reading from next to questions in your suggestion-notebook. It will be very useful during revision. Identify which parts you can score above average by studying cleverly and focus more on those. If you want to compete, you need to know what the competitive areas are, right?

It’s true that the best is achieved on the first try! Most of the top 10 in the merit list are candidates who succeeded in their first BCS exam. Still, those who aren’t taking the BCS exam for the first time should never think that you’ve wasted a lot of time. Rather, keep in mind that if you don’t get the job next time either, you’ll waste at least another year. Many of those who ranked high in the BCS merit list didn’t succeed in their first BCS either. If you too can rank high in the merit list, much of this agony will disappear. Make that effort. To me, every BCS is your first BCS. How so? If you’re taking the kth BCS exam, that’s your first, because you’ve never taken the kth BCS exam before. The BCS exam is like a kiss. Every kiss is a first kiss, every BCS is a first BCS. Just as it’s impossible to give a second kiss, it’s impossible to take the BCS exam a second time. There are many who couldn’t even pass the preliminary the first time, but later secured a place in the merit list. Such examples are numerous. Everything depends on your own willpower, patience, and hard work.

Determine how many hours you will study each day according to your capacity. By capacity, I mean 80% mental ability and 20% physical ability. Mental strength is what you need most for hard work. Let me share my own experience. I set myself a target of studying 15 hours daily, and throughout my BCS exam preparation, I followed this 15-hour rule very strictly. By 15 hours, I mean exactly 14 hours, 59 minutes, and 60 seconds—not a second less. Sometimes the time would extend beyond this, but I had made a vow that unless I fell ill, I would never reduce my study hours. The benefit I gained from this was that I could keep myself free from last-minute pressure. Our minds work according to an invisible schedule. If this weren’t true, why would 9 AM mean office time? Those whose offices start at 8 AM wake up exactly one hour earlier. Once you can set your mind into a routine that suits you, you’re all set! Due to nervous tension, many people perform poorly in exams despite good preparation. Excessive pressure also reduces self-confidence, which is extremely self-destructive. Many might have managed with less study time than this. This depends on one’s study method and basic foundation. Since I was never particularly brilliant, I had to study for longer hours. However many hours you study, quality study is more important than quantity study. During whatever time you’re studying, give your 100% to your studies. If you slack off, you’ll have to bear the consequences of your own negligence. At the end of each week, spend 4-5 hours doing a quick revision of everything you studied in the previous six days. When reading any material for the first time, always mark the necessary and difficult parts with colored ink. This makes revision much easier.

Many ask me whether attending coaching centers is right. My advice in this regard is that you can attend coaching centers if you don’t blindly believe everything they say. You must understand very clearly what you should do and what you shouldn’t. While listening to them, you need to figure out which of their statements are merely meant to increase student enrollment at the coaching center. If you follow their rigid formula, you might become a cadre, but you won’t excel. It’s better to study from various guidebooks, reference books, the internet, and newspapers. You can attend coaching centers if you can keep your personal studies intact while following their advice judiciously. How? Suppose there’s a model test at the coaching center the next day. You must never let this disrupt your personal studies the day before. If necessary, you’ll have to put in extra hours. It doesn’t matter if you score less in the coaching center’s exam. I haven’t seen many coaching center toppers become BCS toppers. You should join a coaching center to save your mind from overthinking, to push yourself toward better preparation—not to attend every class to get your money’s worth. There’s nothing more foolish than attending every coaching center class. Many boys go to coaching centers daily just to see pretty girls, and many girls go to eat singara at the boys’ expense. No job, yet endless showing off. There’s no greater self-deception than this. You should go to coaching centers to understand how to begin, to learn some techniques, to take model tests regularly, and to know your position. If you don’t go to coaching centers, you might often fall into various complacencies: thinking you know a lot while others don’t; what you know is sufficient; you’re studying plenty and don’t need to study more. If you feel it necessary and have the money and time, you can attend coaching centers, but studying depends entirely on you. You’ll get the job based on your personal studies, not because of the coaching center.

For doing well in BCS exams, it’s best to organize and study in your own way rather than following others’ advice. However, keep this in mind: there are countless differences between the techniques for doing well in job exams and academic exams. I’ve seen several honors and master’s degree toppers fail even in BCS preliminaries. Always remember one more thing: never discuss BCS with too many people or seek too much consultation. Only talk about it with those who have succeeded in this exam. If you can’t find such people, or if they don’t give you time, there’s no need to talk to anyone. You can’t become a BCS cadre just by chatting with BCS cadres or listening to their chatter. Keep studying methodically, maintain complete faith in yourself—victory will surely be yours!

I feel like saying a few things:

One. Your well-being is someone’s dream. To keep that good person happy, stay well yourself.

Two. If you perform poorly in exams, someone will find great peace in it. If nothing else, just to keep them restless, do well in your exams. What wonderful revenge!

Three. If you can reach a good position, your parents and loved ones will be honored because of you. Study well to make them proud.

Four. So that no one can mock the tireless effort you’re putting in, get that job and show them.

Five. Give a fitting reply through your work to the fools around you who are talking nonsense about your abilities! Truly, you’ll feel much more at peace.

The final word of all words: I have at least 30+ writings about BCS prelims, written, and viva that have been published in various national dailies at different times. Beyond these, there are at least 100+ relevant writings. You’ll find all these writings in my Facebook notes. All my notes are public, so whether you’re on my friend list or not, you shouldn’t have trouble reading them. Those interested can read them. You’ll find many necessary things there that aren’t in this writing.

Good luck!!

Sushanta Pal

Your Senior Colleague

sushanta.customs@gmail.com