Asalamalaikum,

I have no background of I.R but going through the syllabus it interests me, anyway i am clueless about where to begin. Suggestions on the questions mentioned bellow will be most appreciated.

1- What books to use for core concepts? I already found Goldstein, Kegley and Heywood books on a post and downloaded, thanks to the uploader. Though iv seen the name Prakash a few times, is it a must read ?

2- How much time would it take? i realize its vast subject and i guess no amount of study is enough but still i need a rough idea ? i only have 5 months for all the prep , i belong to the bunch who got another chance owing to the age extension notification on last Friday

3- What should the strategy of studying for this subject be ?

3- What other subjects would go along well with I.R ? to make the burden easy keeping the time shortage in view.

Answer of your 4th question
Us History and International law will be helpful in the study of I.R. Syllabus of both these subjects have lots of similarities with the syllabus of I.R.

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The answer to your queries

1) All 4 books are great. start with goldstein. Reason it's easy and it will help in the formation of your base for IR

2) It took me almost 4 months to grasp all the contents plus one month for notes preparation. My view,it can be done easily in the span of 5 months. The best thing of IR is "No ratta" the answers are required to be conceptual and argumentative. Don't study hard but study smart

3) History of USA, International Law both of these subjects are easy, short and will help immensely in your preparation for IR

Thanks for the response though one thing worries me, did it take you five months for IR alone or did you do it alongside other courses ?

for all the subjects it took me 5 months

Well i gave each and every subject good amount of time. For IR i usually studied 3 hours daily. You should prepare a time table for yourself. It will help immensely

thanks for the information yasir, just one more piece of information would be splendid.

Did you keep studying IR through out your preparation ? How did you distribute your time between other compulsory and optional subjects.

If you can share your time table and strategy, it will be very helpful.

At the moment i give my first session two news and articles, followed by one compulsory subject , then the third for one optional subjects and finally at the end of the day it depends on the requirements though i just started recently so have no flow.

To be very honest. After going through the books of IR and grasping the basics. I watched videos of different theories, definitions, history etc on youtube

my time table was something like

1) Early starting with Dawn and other news 30 -40 minutes
2) optional subject 10 am- 1 pm
3) Optional subject 2pm-5pm
4) CARAVAN MCQS 6pm-8pm
5) compulsory subject 9pm-11pm
6) english prep 12am-1am
7) either compulsory or optional subject depending on the mood 2am-4am

Then sleepy sleep till 9 am in the morning

For relaxation (Qawali of nusrat and aziz mian )

for first week my focus was on Islamiat. I started with the book meaning of Islam and its message by khurshid ahmed that gave me the motivation

Do you have Khurshed Ahmed's book in pdf ? and how much of the revised syllabus does it approximately cover ?

I have the books by kareem dad chughtai, farkhanda noor, Dr. hamidullah and anwar hashmi.

would you please upload these books?which you have mentioned above.

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