5 Free Online Apps to Speed Your UPSC Preparation

– Harneet Singh

In the pursuit of academic excellence, students often find themselves standing at the crossroads of ambition and challenge.

It is when they decide to put their best foot forward with absolute dedication and full concentration that they manage to rise above all challenges and set forth in the right direction.

Preparing for an exam like UPSC CSE requires intense focus and determined efforts apart from a comprehensive strategy to cover the syllabus.

The aspirants must make sure to do proper planning, complete their daily targets on a timely basis, and be consistent in their preparation. However; in times of constant distraction, doing so can become a challenging task!

As we are witnessing a boom in technology, there has been an increase in the number of tools and applications created to simplify our everyday work and boost our productivity throughout the day.

To counter procrastination and ensure effective preparation, I have come up with 5 efficient applications that will help you not just track the time taken but also enhance your preparedness for the real exam.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!

App No. 01: Utilize Notion for Scheduling tasks

On a personal level, I find Notion to be my personal favorite and one of the best applications for well-organized and proper scheduling of tasks.

For beginners, it can be a little challenging to start off with the app as it takes a while to understand its features.

But to give you an example, let’s imagine you are a UPSC aspirant with a commerce background. Now, covering such a vast syllabus becomes highly convenient with Notion, as you can not only list down all the chapters of the topic but also set the deadline and the status of the task.

Apart from this, students can also prepare a to-do list for the other activities they intend to engage in throughout the day.

So, by using this app, it becomes easy for you to plan your routine accordingly and schedule the tasks you aim to accomplish.

App No. 02: Ace Note-Making skills with One-note

Well, I am sure you must be familiar with the good old times when the majority of us would use pen and paper to write down anything.

However, a problem would arise when a few lines needed to be edited or some points were to be added, especially while making some notes for the upcoming exam on the paper.

To top it all, it would lead to a huge waste of paper as well as cause last–minute confusion amongst students while revising those notes.

With the advent of technology, has come other alternatives for students to prepare their notes from. One such application for efficient offline note-making is One- note.

Well, one- note helps in creating chapters for a particular topic and provides the user with an option to either erase or add new lines to the notes created.

Another characteristic that adds to the distinctiveness of the app is the option for users to type or write down the answer, which will also eventually help in increasing the answer-writing speed of the candidate.

App No. 03: Check ChatGPT to improve answer-writing

Still, I am often asked by my students who are concerned about its use and believe it to be a potential threat to the creativity and thinking abilities of the people.

This anxiety related to the use of new technology can be traced back to the days when computers were invented as the majority of people were unaware and suspicious of its use at that time.

Gradually as time progressed, computers became an indispensable part of our lives and the same can now be said about Artificial Intelligence.

Hence, I advise my students to proceed with the times and take advantage of ever-growing technology to perform their best.

To better your answer-writing skills, you can take the help of ChatGPT for simplification, writing introductions as well as suggestions for new ideas and examples that you can incorporate in your answers.

App No. 04: Eliminate distractions with the Forest App

During their initial phase of preparation, many exam aspirants become vulnerable and susceptible to giving in to all the forms of distractions around them, especially their mobile phones.

A surprising fact here is that the solutions to these problems are also provided through technology. One of the apps which I found to be most beneficial during my exam preparation is an app called “Forest”

What makes this application so interesting? Well, to limit the use of your phone, this app presents a plant to its user on the screen. The longer you stay away from your phone, the more that plant grows!

Well, isn’t that fascinating? In addition to this, you can make use of the feature of parental control in your phones.

Let’s assume you spend a lot of time on Instagram, using the feature of parental control you can restrict the time you spend on the app as it will automatically stop functioning after exceeding the time limit you have set for the app.

App No. 05: Master CSAT preparation with CueMath

Especially the section on Quantitative Aptitude of the CSAT paper seems like a challenge to many aspirants who perform poorly in mathematical questions.

This is where applications like CueMath come into the picture! This app not only helps in increasing the speed and efficiency of the students but also helps in doing effective calculations, i.e., multiplication, division, square cubes, etc.

Hence, you can use this app while traveling to be good at solving mathematical questions and ultimately boost your confidence for the CSAT paper!

Advice to the aspirants

With such huge competition and high difficulty levels, it becomes a must for aspirants to ensure comprehensive coverage of the syllabus and leave no stone unturned in their preparation.

Along with focused efforts, making use of these applications will greatly favor your chances of succeeding in this examination!

I am confident that utilizing the applications that I discussed in detail above will prove to be beneficial in your exam preparation.

 

To clear a competitive exam like UPSC CSE you must ensure to stay disciplined in your journey apart from preparing thoroughly for the same.

 

Therefore, make optimum use of these apps in your preparation with along holistic approach and I assure you that your dream of clearing this exam won’t be too far!