This year, let us conquer the tower of success and crack the SSC CGL the perfect way with rainbow colors.

Many of the students start to have a nervous breakdown when the exam dates start to hover closer to them and exam fever takes a dangerous toll on them trying to lower their confidence and make things a mess.

Some students wonder whether they will be able to crack exams in their first try or whether it is just a concept lying in the realms of a book. This question either makes them too conscious, anxious, or overconfident about their capabilities. The answer to this question depends on your determination and motivation to be an SSC CGL personnel finally in your life. If it is so, you can with the backing of dedicated efforts and strong motivation crack the SSC CGL exam in your first attempt which will be successful and the final one too.

Overview of the SSC CGL Exam

The following table gives an outline of the SSC CGL Exam. Applicants should be well-versed in the SSC CGL exam pattern, mode of examination, number of tiers, set of questions in each tier, marks, and discourse of the paper.

Here we are sharing some tips on how to prepare for SSC CGL 

1. A student should ask himself/herself the question: 'Are toppers more talented than average kids or do they do some different preparation to score the highest'? The right answer is no. Every student must firstly consider him/ herself to be the topper, the best, and then start over. The level of confidence in you should not be less than 100% and then only the level of your preparation will splurge colors.
2. Go through the entire syllabus and exam pattern of SSC CGL. It will help you in utilizing time to read relevant material thus avoiding wastage and also identify strengths and weaknesses and improve the same.
3. Do not read too many books from different authors because they generally have more or less the same content matter. Choose some good books and read them completely, do not shuffle between many books as it can confuse you and give you more doubts than you need. Also prepare study notes as it is helpful in prioritizing your subjects or topics and having a good command on the subject. It improves focus and attention, helps in active learning, healthy retention of the matter, and improves organizational and comprehension skills. 
4. Practice all the topics that seem relevant and non-relevant too. Sometimes you get questions from the part you thought would never come in the paper. So sometimes believe in your own hunch and cover all topics which seem appropriate to you. Give more practice to weaker areas and nominal time to the strong ones. Proper practice reduces the possibility of errors at the time of answering the questions.
5. Maintain continuity in study and practice because ‘hard work takes no excuses and is a bigger shot than talent’. Previous year’s papers and mock tests are equally important in the SSC CGL exam preparation because it gives an idea of the type of questions asked and the difficulty level.

SSC CGL Preparation strategy for General Intelligence and reasoning

General Intelligence(GI) questions can be quite tricky unless you have had a lot of practice in them. You need to solve practice papers and then solve 30 GI and reasoning questions every day. With regular practice you can come up with new ideas and tricks of your own to solve and tackle these GI questions.

Do test book reasoning in order to understand all the concepts for SSC CGL Tier 1 exam and also test book reasoning quiz in which you answer quiz questions to keep a track of what you have learned till now. These quizzes are prepared keeping in mind the SSC CGL Exam Pattern and last year's exam's analysis.

Start with the part that is scoring. Cover topics like analogy, series, coding-decoding etc. Non-verbal reasoning topics like figure counting require your visual imagination. Do not skip questions you think are time consuming. Try to attempt 20 questions in 20 minutes. The reasoning part of the SSC CGL exam is time taking but there are some easy questions in it too. The easy part consists of classification and analogies. You will surely face one question based on classification and analogies. These are easier and less time consuming. It is one of the easiest topics asked from the Reasoning section. The questions on the topic of classification are either number, letter or GK based. In analogies you find out the fourth blank part and complete the set.

Syllogism

Here you are presented with statements and conclusions and then you decide on the most apt conclusion which is logical with the given statements. The trick to avoid the problem between the mentioned categories in various statements is to solve them with Venn Diagrams. Read the question fairly and work one step at a time. Do more and more practice.

Verbal Analogies

The trick behind solving these is to try to find the relationship between terms in the first pair. Build up your vocabulary and make it stronger to solve questions.

The moderate part of Reasoning comprises Blood Relations. It has topics like General blood relation, family tree, coded blood relation and tree diagrams can be drawn to solve these questions.

Data Sufficiency

Then comes Data Sufficiency. It has topics like Blood Relations, Ordering and ranking, Coding-decoding, Circular Arrangements, Directions and Distances, Ages and birth dates. There is no specific trick to solve these questions but more and more practice will give good results.

Seating Arrangement

Then comes the topic of Seating Arrangement which includes Circular and Linear arrangements. The Linear Seating Arrangement has Floor based, persons sitting in a single/dual row. All of them may be either facing only one direction or both of them. An extra variable may be given to complicate the problem. Circular arrangement includes uni and bi-directional problems on rectangular,square and circular tables.

Reasoning

Then comes the tricky part of solving Reasoning questions. It consists of coding and decoding which again consists of letter shifting, coding in fictitious language, place value operations, coding and analogy, coding by words and conditional matrix. Give more attention to numbers and alphabets in the given code. Check whether the sequences are in an ascending or descending order.

The non-verbal reasoning has questions like pictorial analogies, symbol series, finding the next picture based on previous ones, symbolic operations, spatial relations, numeric patterns etc. Develop a strong spatial reasoning aptitude.

Then come matrix and puzzles which are not only tricky but also time taking. The best way to solve these is to read the questions carefully. Improve your vocabulary and reading speed to understand this question easily.

SSC CGL preparation strategy for General Awareness section

It is the most scoring section of the exam. If you have done a thorough preparation of this section it will not take more than 10 minutes of your time for the total exam.

The exam has more questions from Static GK than current affairs. So you need to focus more on static GK but also revise the current affairs section.

You can prepare the subjects in this order -Science - History - Economy - Geography - Miscellaneous.

In static GK the fields covered are- culture, history, geography, environment, economy, polity etc. Don't stuff your head with wasted information or points. Instead take notes, make mind maps and work smart. This will save time and make things more manageable and easier. You need to practice at least 20 GA questions per day. You should focus on previous year’s papers of SSC CGL exam. For the section of General Awareness revision is the ultimate key to success.

SSC CGL preparation for Quantitative Aptitude

This section is considered the most time consuming and tough section of the exam. Try to master some areas of the section like profit and loss, percentage, ratio and proportion, speed, time and distance etc. To do a foolproof prep for this exam go through all tricks, shortcuts and valuable concepts. Try and solve the quizzes as best as you can. Take a mock test everyday. Do more of the questions on simplification, simple interest, percentages, ratio and proportion, partnership as these are easier to score. Mensuration, number system, speed, distance are more time-taking. Learn the formulas totally. Do some analysis of your preparation. Solve various kinds of questions to identify your weak and strong points. Devote two hours a day to practice for Quantitative Aptitude.

SSC CGL preparation strategy for English Language

Master 3 areas completely for cracking the English language section better. They are-Vocabulary, Grammar, and Comprehension. If you attain command in Vocabulary and Grammar you have done great. The style and type of questions get more frequently repeated in this section. Practice 5 comprehension passages daily. Read the question first before reading the passage. Do a lot of reading and learn new words as much as you can. Also learn a word's synonym and antonym. Learn effective memory techniques for this section. While revising grammar, focus on these areas- error spotting, replacement of the phrase, fill in the blanks. Exhaust all the previous year question papers and gain complete knowledge and confidence in your kitty. Read the newspaper daily and practice more of the quizzes and mock tests to get an overall idea of the subjects.

Some other tips for SSC CGL preparation are:-

To get assured success, do follow these added SSC CGL preparation tips as well-

1. Solve at least 1 mock paper each day.
2. Divide time section wise and according to some pre-thought idea of how much time a particular section will take.
3. After taking the mock test, review and analyze it totally for your errors, time taken, accuracy and approach.
4. Give more time to sections which you think you are not good at.

Quantitative Aptitude is one of the most tough and important sections to clear the exam. It needs one’s concentration and accuracy. But it can’t be ignored so do the right preparation and gain marks in this section too.

The SSC CGL exam or any exam may sound too tough and challenging but with the right preparation, approach, knowledge and motivation you can win this war truly because as the saying goes, ‘nothing succeeds like success’, you too can prove out that you can be a deserving one. Likewise another one says, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. So we as students should have full confidence in our preparation, our ability and we should let fears rest, only focusing on how to solve the paper best and shine bright. We all have it in us. We just need to unleash that power.