Salam. I am a Pakistani medical student at Mohammed V University Rabat, pursuing my medical degree. I intend to appear in the CSS exam but I am confused about starting the preparation how and where to start first. I have more than 4 years. Can spare 2 hours daily. Could seniors please guide how and where to start? I have gotten through the preparation guides but could not find anything particular about my query.

Hi mstayyab86,

First of all look at the subjects and their syllabus. For all the subjects, compulsory+optionals, my advice will be to consult Recommended Books. They are a good place to start from. You don't need to read from the entire list. Just pick up 1 book. If you're not sure which book to read from, it's better to Google all the books, read what they are about, check their table of contents and then decide which book you should read. Recommended books are great source material to prepare from.

For Current and Pakistan Affairs read newspapers. International and national. You'll have a good understanding of what's going on from them. Use Dawn, CNN, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, New York Times, Guardian, The Economist etc. For preparation material, Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) and Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) are two very good resources. From there you can get articles analysing the situation of Pakistan and about international issues too. These two sites are good, scholarly places to build your analysis apart from newspapers.

Work on building your analysis. Work on building good solid argumentative essay writing skills.

That's all I can think of.

AoA Dear,

To begin, it is a welcoming sign that you want to prepare and appear in the CSS exams. Now moving towards your query.

Firstly, before going into further details, I would like to mention that a gargantuan portion of the exam is pertinent to current affairs. Hence, it might be bit early to prepare for the exam, that is four years ahead.

Secondly, please keep in mind that civil services, including CSS exams, reforms process is also perpetuating.

Finally, if you want to initiate the things, download the list of optional subject list. Then, select tentative subjects. Afterwards, review the syllabus of each subject, and analyze the past 4 years papers. By this way, you would be able to select the subjects.

During whole bunch of time, another suggestion is to work on your writing skills. It should be smooth, clear, argumentative, and terse.

Best of Luck,

Cheers,
Usman