How To Prepare For FCI AG III Exam

NOTE: This article is outdated and will be updated soon in light of the new pattern. Please bear with us.

We have already discussed the paper pattern and syllabus. Here let us now discuss how to go about with the preparation. As we know FCI is one of the most sought after government jobs in our country as such a large no of candidates apply for the same. There is a stiff competition and as such you need to be thorough with the preparation and keep your vocab, reasoning skills numerical formulas ready. Not to mention the current affairs and General knowledge. Let us find out how to prepare for FCI AG III Exam.

The basic rule that preparation for every competitive exam requires is to prepare in a time bound manner. What these exams checks apart from your skills are that how well you perform under pressure. How well you can manage and utilize your time. So it is advisable that you start your preparation in a time bound manner from the very beginning. How do you do that? To begin with make a study routine. Divide time for each section. Put more stress on your weak spots those are the section that you need to devote more time of yours.

Just a sample chart:

• Make a chart for every day of the week. You can add or remove or change topics as you feel comfortable. This will help you to break the monotones of studying the same thing every day! For those of you who are working somewhere it is very important that you gift yourself with study chart because after hard day’s work not every day you would feel like going through the subject. But then,  if you want to crack the paper you need to prepare for it? Right?
• Now coming to section wise study plan: FCI Paper I has 4 sections: Reasoning (General intelligence), Quantitative aptitude, Gk and English. All carry the same marks:50.

1. Reasoning (General Intelligence)

• This section once you master, can be your winning jack! So word of advice: start practicing this section as much as possible so that you are just accurate in this section. Reasoning practice will be helpful for you not only in this exam but also other papers that you might apply as banks, SSC etc.
• General intelligence section will have questions that are aimed at testing your verbal-non-verbal skills. For Coding-Decoding, alphabet series and syllogism it is better if you write down the alphabets and then approach to solve these.
• Practice blood relations and word formations as these are relatively easy topics.
• Sitting/Standing arrangements, who-stays-on-which-floor, in a group of working friends who likes which color and who works in which shift etc. kind of questions can be really tricky and if you are not thorough with practice these can take up a lot of time.
• Assertion and reasoning and decision making questions are tricky but not tough. So again practice practice practice.

You can follow RS Aggarwal’s book for your practice purposes.

2. Quantitative Aptitude

• Maths is easy and scoring. We grew up listening to this during our school days. Well it is a fact. The quantitative aptitude section can put you steps ahead in competition.
• It is important that you start practicing the quant questions in a time bound manner.
• Do not spend too much time on a single question. If you find one sum to be too lengthy then or too time consuming do not fixate on that. There will be plenty others that you will be able to answer.
• But then DO NOT skip all!!!
• The questions are usually not lengthy but tricky. So keep the formulas on your finger tips.
• Practice a lot of questions involving various formulas so that it gives you an edge while solving.
• You might want to follow Quicker Maths by M. Tyra. It is a very good book all the useful formulas are given in the chapters along with the smart ways of approaching a particular kind of question

3. English Section

• Learn the synonyms and antonyms, phrasal verbs and idioms. One or two questions of each type can be asked. The passage is a short one so does not take a long time to read but that said you should not ignore the preparation
• Practice comprehension. The more you practice reading the more you will find it easier to understand the passage at a faster pace. This will leave you with more time to solve other questions. Even if the passage in the paper is a small one, it would be easier for you if you practice the type of passage that is asked in the SSC CGL English section.
• ICSE English Language of class Xth level is a good way to practice for this section.
• You can also follow Wren and Martin book for English language.

4. General Knowledge

FCI General knowledge section is pretty vast. It covers almost all the sections. You need to have knowledge about history, geography, science etc. You need to keep yourself updated with current affairs and all the recent happenings in Science arts culture polity etc.

Now if you ask me how do you cover all? Any short cuts? The answer to that is sadly NO. that said here are a few pointers that will surely be helpful to you:

• You have to go through the topics (as many as you can cover). Follow NCERT books of IX- XIIth standard. The books are comprehensive and hence cover the basics.
• Read the newspapers regularly. Develop it as a habit. This will not only help you with the written exam but also the interviews and other exams that you might apply for.
• For questions relating to economics and business world, its better if you follow business news and do not ignore the economy news section of the daily newspaper. You can also try the business magazines.
• Questions from basic polity you can prepare from NCERT and also you can follow Lucent’s GK.

Paper II has quantitative aptitude and English language and comprehensive papers. Each paper consists of 100 marks. The syllabus dos not vary but the level of questions does. You can expect higher level difficult questions in these papers. So be sure to be thorough with your preparations while preparing Maths and English.

Paper III is for the people who apply for technical cadre. The questions are from graduation level. So if you belong to bio science background do remember to brush up your grads knowledge. Go through all the notes that you took down during the painful lecture sessions. After all those are the ones that would help you to get through this Paper!!

Good Luck !

Photo credit: Frank Lindecke / IWoman / CC BY-ND