Strategy & Tips for Zoology Optional

Dr. Gaurav Dahiya (AIR-76, CSE 2009) has shared the tips below for zoology on my request.

hi i m dr gaurav dahiya, i m a medical doctor by profession.i was working for the past three years on civil services. i have secured AIR 76 in civil services examination 2010. i wud like to share my experience of civil services preparation especially mains and the interview.my optionals were geography and zoology.

PRELIMINARY this stage is screening examination. it requires extensive study.now next year onwards there ll b CSAT i.e civil services aptitude test. it ll test whether a particular candidate has the aptitude for civil services.the exact details ll be known only with the notification of civil services 2011.

MAINS first of all i ll take up zoology.zoology according to me is a tough optional to take. zoology requires a huge amount of hardwork.paper 1 of it consists of extensive study of kingdom animalia.i ll list the books which can be followed

1.kotpal series for both vertebrates and invertebrates.

2.ethology by reena mathur. few topics needs search from library and internet.

3.shukla and upadhayay economic zoology.

4.p d sharma ecology

5. odums ecology especially for biogeochemical cycles and finer detals of ecology..

6.instrumentation: this part is quite cumbersome and it is difficult to find all topics in a single book.but books like b d singh , upadhyay and updhyay.;wilson and walker etc.

7.biostats by veer bala rastogi , though there are many mistakes in it.

paper 1 is a scoring paper. but one needs to thorough in the preparation.

zoology paper2 ..... this paper has become quite tough over the years.now the questions are mostly 20 or 30 markers.this paper is also quite lengthy to attempt.

1.evolution ... by veer bala rastogi . do not leave this section ,there are few compulsory questions which are to be attempted from this section.

2.cell biology...de robertis ; and also book by cb powar.

3.genetics.... this is scoring area, cover all the topics. genetics by veer bala rastogi

; pk gupta genetics; biotechnology by b d singh and t a brown

4.systematics... from internet

5.physiology... by guyton and ganong

6.biochemistry.... lippincotts review of biochemistry;, lehninger

7.developmental biology by verma and aggarwal, ;berry; many topics needs to be searched from internet and library.

If you have any further query, you can reach him at gauravdr_aiims@yahoo.co.in

Many thanks to him for sparing time to share the inputs......CHEERS!!!