Dear BCS Candidates,My heartiest "sympathy" to all you guys as you have stepped into one of the most tedious roads towards success. About me, couple of days back I was a poor soul wondering about what will happen after 2.5 years of hardwork, patience and unbearable uncertainty. Fortunately, I made it in 28th BCS and my position was 4th in the Police merit list.Before I start, one thing I want to clearly state that I do not consider myself qualified enough to "Teach" you how to do well in the BCS exam. As your fellow traveller, I am just sharing my experience. If you find these Tips useful and use them to achieve much bigger success, I will consider my efforts successful.So let's get started!!!As you all know, BCS starts with Preliminary exam. In my opinion, Preliminary is the toughest of all the exams a candidate face in the entire process. You get only one hour to answer 100 questions and the syllabus is as big as an ocean- these two things combined make the preliminary exam most challenging. Ironically, marks of preliminary exam are not added in the selection process-all you need to do is pass!I followed the following strategies to pass the preliminary exam (both 28th and 29th):

PREVIOUS PRELIMINARY EXAMS:This is the first step every BCS candidate should take- they should collect the questionnaire of BCS preliminary exams from10th-29th BCS and solve them thoroughly. Little booklets containing all the preliminary questions are found in Nilkhet which should not cost more than 50 taka. Before you start your preparation, collect it and solve all the questions. This exercise will give you a very good idea of what you will face in the real exam. As they say in Guerilla Warfare handbooks-"Knowing your enemy is winning half the battle"-so appropriate for BCS!!!

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE(Bangladesh and international)If you go to any "candidate's crowd", you will see at least 70 percent of them are studying General Knowledge crazily. They are trying to memorize anything and everything they have at hand, including questions like "What toilet paper Barak Obama uses".Dear friends, please DO NOT spoil your time and energy like this. General Knowledge does not have any syllabus and no matter how much you study, you will never be able to ensure full marks. Spend this extra time in Maths, Science or even Bangla, you will get better result with less effort.CAUTION: I did not say that you would not study General Knowledge at all. As your preparation, take one Big General Knowledge book (Ajker Bishwo, Notun bishwo etc whatever you feel comfortable) and collect current affairs magazine (preferable Professor's) every month. DO NOT try to memorize the entire book, just study them for 30-45 minutes a day. Try to remember things that you feel important (for example, "What is the name of US president" or "Who became champion in WC Football 2010).DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT spoil your time and energy trying to memorize unnecessary information. Have a good knowledge of what a normal person should know (you will understand what is "Normal' once you go through the previous preliminary questions)-you will do just fine!!