Most people who sit for Andhra Pradesh government exams are not full-time students. They work in a shop, a private office, a school, a bank branch or a farm, they travel to get there, and they come home to a family that also needs their time. The advice that circulates online is usually written for someone with eight free hours a day, and a working candidate who reads it either feels defeated or copies a timetable that collapses in the first week. This guide is built the other way round. It starts with the hours you really have, and then fits the real exam schemes into them.
The plan below uses the exam patterns already summarised in our sibling guides on APPSC Group-II, AP DSC SGT and the SLPRB Police Constable notification, so you can check each pattern against its own post. Anything time-sensitive carries "As on October 2026" and the document it comes from. Study-science claims are tied to pages that were opened for this guide and are listed at the end. Nothing here is a promise about how long you will need, how many marks you will score or whether you will be selected; the only honest claim is that a steady, measured routine gives you information about your own progress, and that information is what lets you adjust.
1. Be clear about what a working candidate can and cannot do
A working candidate has three advantages that full-time students often lack: a fixed daily rhythm, an income that reduces panic, and a reason to be efficient. The disadvantages are also real: tired evenings, unpredictable overtime, and long stretches in which nothing can be studied. A plan has to be built around both.
Three principles hold the whole guide together.
First, consistency beats intensity. One hour on 300 days is 300 hours, which is more than a burst of ten hours a day for a month, and it is also easier to restart after a bad week. Our earlier guide on preparing for an AP government job without coaching says the same thing about hours: some people study twelve hours and still fail, while others study four hours with a good method, so what counts is how well the hours are used.
Second, the exam decides the plan, not the other way round. A candidate for the APPSC Group-II screening test needs breadth across five blocks of general studies and mental ability. A candidate for the DSC SGT paper needs subject content and teaching methodology for primary classes. A candidate for the Police Constable test needs a first written paper that is only a gate, plus physical standards that need their own training time. Hours that are right for one exam can be wrong for another.
Third, rest is part of the plan, not a reward for finishing it. A working candidate who sleeps five hours for three months will lose more in recall and mood than the extra study time gains. The sleep and burnout sections below give the public-health basis for this.
2. Start with the exam scheme, not the timetable
Before choosing between one, two or three hours, read what your exam actually asks. The three schemes below are taken from the sibling guides, each of which was written from the official documents named in its sources section. Where a point could not be confirmed, it is marked.
| Exam (as on October 2026) | Stages and sizes as summarised in our guides | What it means for a working candidate |
|---|---|---|
| APPSC Group-II (2023 scheme; latest verified notification 11/2023) | Screening test 150 marks in five blocks of 30; Mains two objective papers of 150 marks each (150 questions, 150 minutes); computer proficiency test of 100 marks follows | Two written stages, so breadth first, then depth; one-third negative marking in APPSC objective schemes |
| AP DSC SGT (Mega DSC 2025 pattern) | 160 MCQs, 80 marks, 2 hours 30 minutes; merit is 80 written plus 20 TET weightage | One paper, content heavy; the TET score must already be in hand; negative marking was not mentioned in the 2025 documents |
| SLPRB Constable (notification of 16 September 2026) | Preliminary test of 200 questions, 200 marks, 3 hours, qualifying only (40, 35, 30 percent); then physical tests; then a final written test of 200 questions | Gate first, then body, then merit paper; three different kinds of preparation |
Read the table as a map of where your hours should go. For Group-II, the written stages carry everything, so almost all your time is reading, practice and revision. For SGT, the paper is one stage but the TET weightage must be settled before you can plan the rest. For Constable, the physical standards are non-negotiable, so a share of your week goes to running and strength even though it produces no marks on paper.
Two cautions about what is not yet settled. As on October 2026, we did not find a new Group-II notification on the Commission's home page, so the 2023 syllabus is the document to prepare against, and the number of questions in the screening paper has to be confirmed in the Detailed Notification when it appears. For DSC, the 2026 notification had not been verified as issued when our siblings were written; the 2025 pattern is a base, not a promise. Our guide to the DSC 2026 notification tracks what is confirmed.
3. Audit your real hours first
Do this before you copy any timetable. Take a week and write down, in half-hour blocks, where your time goes. Do not judge yourself while you do it; just record. At the end of the week mark every block as fixed (work, travel, meals, sleep, family duties), flexible (chores that can move) or free (scrolling, television, idle waiting).
Most working candidates discover three kinds of hidden time.
The first is the commute. If you travel by bus or train, the time is usually passive, which makes it good for light study, but not for anything that needs a pen or silence. If you drive or ride a two-wheeler, it is not available for study at all, except through audio revision, and even that should be used with care for safety. Count only the commute time that you can really use.
The second is the break time at work. A lunch break of 30 to 45 minutes may hold 15 minutes for a flash-card review or ten practice questions on the phone, if your workplace allows it and the break is not already your only rest. Do not give up the meal or the walk for study.
The third is the weekend. A Saturday afternoon and a Sunday morning can hold three to five hours of deep study, which a weekday cannot. For most working candidates, the weekend is where the long reading, the full mock tests and the physical training happen.
After the audit, choose one of the three plans below by the number of weekday study hours you can protect without borrowing from sleep. If the answer is less than one hour, begin with 45 minutes and build up; a plan you can keep is better than an ambitious one you abandon.
4. The one-hour plan
One hour a day is possible for almost everyone, and it is enough to keep an exam alive, but it demands discipline about what goes inside the hour. The rule is one subject per sitting and no new app, book or video every day.
A good one-hour daily shape uses three parts. The first 35 minutes go to a single topic from your syllabus, read from one source and then closed. The next 15 minutes go to practice questions on that same topic, without looking at the notes. The final 10 minutes go to writing down in your own words what you remember and noting any errors in a small error notebook. That ending matters: it turns reading into retrieval, which the research cited later says is the more useful habit.
Spread the subjects across the week rather than doing all of them every day. A simple pattern for Monday to Friday is to rotate through five areas. For a Group-II candidate these could be Indian history, geography, Indian society, current affairs and mental ability, which matches the five 30-mark blocks in the screening syllabus. For a DSC SGT candidate they could be child development and pedagogy, Telugu or the language subject, English, mathematics and environmental studies. For a Constable candidate they could be arithmetic and reasoning, general knowledge, English grammar, Telugu and current affairs.
On the weekend, one-hour weekdays are supported by two long sessions. Saturday holds a block of two to three hours for weaker topics and revision of the week. Sunday holds a timed practice paper, even if it is only a sectional test, and its analysis. This gives roughly 11 to 12 hours a week, which is a real base for a first six months, though probably not enough on its own for a full 150-mark or 160-question paper in the final stage. Plan to move to two hours as the exam date approaches.
An hour a day is also the right plan for a candidate who is still deciding between exams. It is cheap, and it covers the content shared by Group-II, DSC and police papers: general studies, English and Telugu basics, and arithmetic.
5. The two-hour plan
Two hours is the most common sustainable level for a working person, and it allows a proper cycle of learning, practice and revision inside a single day. Do not do it as one block. Two sessions of 60 minutes, or a session of 75 minutes plus 45 minutes, protect attention better and fit around work.
A shape that works for many people is a morning session of 45 minutes and an evening session of 75 minutes. In the morning, when the mind is fresh, revise what was learned the day before using your notes and the error notebook. This is a spacing step; the next section explains why it matters. In the evening, take one new topic for 40 minutes, practise 20 minutes of questions on it, and spend the last 15 minutes on a current-affairs entry or a language drill.
If mornings are impossible, split the evening into two parts with a ten-minute walk between them, and put revision first because it is the thing that gets skipped when the day has been long. Our guide on how to study current affairs for AP exams shows how to keep the daily news habit to ten or fifteen minutes so that it does not eat the new-topic time.
At two hours a day on weekdays, add three hours on Saturday and four on Sunday, and the week reaches about 17 hours. That is enough to cover the Group-II screening syllabus once in a reasonable number of weeks and still revise, provided the revision schedule is respected. It is also enough to follow the sibling DSC 90-day plan in a stretched form, with the 90 days becoming perhaps 150 to 180 calendar days for a person who can give two hours rather than a full day. Treat this stretching as a planning assumption, not an official figure.
6. The three-hour plan
Three hours is a serious schedule for a person who works, and it should not be started unless the sleep budget allows it. It suits the final stretch before an exam, the months after a notification is published, or a period in which the job has a lighter season.
Divide the three hours into three one-hour sessions if possible: before work, in the evening and at night, or two sessions of 90 minutes. The first session is for revision and a short mock-based drill. The second is for new content, the heaviest cognitive work, in whichever part of the day your mind is best. The third is for practice questions and error analysis, which are lighter tasks that can be done when tired.
The danger at three hours is not laziness but over-reading. Candidates read a third book, watch a fourth video series and stop doing practice. Our guide on negative marking, time management and mock strategy points out that reviewing only wrong answers and ignoring the unattempted ones is a common error, and that a mock without analysis teaches little. So the third hour should always include at least 20 minutes of review.
With three hours on weekdays plus four to five hours on Saturday and Sunday, a week can reach 23 to 25 hours. That is a lot beside a job. If sleep falls below seven hours, or if work performance suffers, step down to two hours for a week before the pressure becomes a burnout. The next sections explain why.
7. Weekday template: hours, commute and break blocks
Putting the above together, here is a fill-in template for a weekday that you can adjust. Times are examples only.
| Block | One-hour plan | Two-hour plan | Three-hour plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commute (if passive) | 10 to 20 minutes of flash cards or audio revision | 20 to 30 minutes of revision notes or a current-affairs summary | 30 minutes of revision and vocabulary |
| Lunch break | Optional, only if you still get a real break | 10 to 15 minutes of ten practice questions | 15 minutes of practice questions |
| After work | 60 minutes: topic, practice, recall | 75 minutes: new topic, practice, language drill | 90 minutes: new topic and deep practice |
| Before sleep | Plan tomorrow in 5 minutes | 20 minutes of light revision of the error notebook | 30 minutes of error analysis, then stop |
| Fixed stop time | One hour before bed with no study | Same | Same |
The most important row is the last one. A fixed stop time, followed by a wind-down, protects the sleep that the whole plan depends on. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises adults to turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime and to go to bed and get up at the same time every day, so a study session that ends with a phone-based mock at midnight works against your own plan.
8. Weekend blocks
Weekends are where a working candidate catches up, but the same discipline applies. Do not turn both days into twelve-hour marathons, which tend to produce a Monday crash. A pattern that uses weekends well is as follows.
On Saturday, hold a block of two to three hours in the morning for the weakest topic of the week, followed by a break, then a block of two hours in the afternoon for revision, error-notebook review and note-making. Keep the evening free. On Sunday, hold a timed mock or sectional test in the morning, since it simulates exam conditions and your mind is fresh, followed by two hours of analysis in the afternoon. Keep the late afternoon and evening free for family, a walk or physical training.
For a Constable candidate, one of the weekend mornings should be given to physical work: running, and strength and flexibility work. The SLPRB Constable notification summarised in our Police Constable guide fixes the physical standards (for men, a minimum height of 167.6 cm and a chest of 86.3 cm with 5 cm of expansion; for women, 152.5 cm height and 40 kg weight) and a running event of 1600 metres. Our PMT and PET preparation guide explains the physical test, and it should be read together with this plan so that the training does not injure you in the middle of a heavy work week. Check the latest notification for the events, since the sibling guide records them as of 16 September 2026.
9. Revision spacing: what the research says and how to use it
Revision is the part of the plan that working candidates most often skip, because it feels like standing still. It is not. Two pieces of research opened for this guide explain why.
A summary of a major review of learning techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues, published by the Association for Psychological Science, reports that practice testing and distributed practice received the highest utility ratings among ten techniques, while summarisation, highlighting, underlining and rereading rated low. The researchers' own advice is to spread studying out over time and to quiz yourself before the exam.
A quantitative review of spacing, by Cepeda and colleagues, looked at 839 assessments across 317 experiments. It concluded that the gap between study sessions that produces the best retention grows as the retention interval grows. In plain terms, material you must remember for a week needs a shorter gap than material you must remember for months, so a plan for an exam that is half a year away should use spaced review that stretches out, not one reread in the week before.
A third paper, by Roediger and Karpicke, studied students who read passages and then either tested themselves or reread. On a test five minutes later, rereading did better, but on tests two days and a week later, prior testing produced substantially greater retention. This is the reason the plans above end every session with recall and questions rather than another reading.
None of this proves that any particular schedule will give any particular result for you, and the studies were done on groups of students under laboratory or classroom conditions, not on APPSC candidates. But the direction is consistent, and it is cheap to follow. A simple spacing rule for a working candidate is the following.
- Review a new topic the next day for 10 minutes from memory.
- Review it again after about a week with five to ten questions.
- Review it again after about a month with a short mixed test.
- Then keep it alive with a mixed review every two to four weeks until the exam.
Use a one-page tracker with a row for each topic and four columns for those reviews, and tick each as done. If you miss a review, do not start again; do the next one when you can. The tracker also tells you, in the last month, which topics have been seen only once and need work first.
10. Mock cadence for a working candidate
A mock test is a practice paper taken in exam conditions. For a working candidate it has two jobs: to teach pace and to find gaps. It should not be a weekly source of anxiety.
Our guide on preparing without coaching suggests taking one mock in the first month to learn the starting level, a few sectional tests each month after that, and one full mock a week in the final phase. For a working candidate, adapt that as follows.
In months one and two, take one sectional test a week, of 30 to 45 minutes, on the syllabus covered so far. In months three and four, add a full-length mock every second weekend. In the last two months before an exam, move to one full mock every weekend, placed at the time of day of the real exam if it is known. Always allow at least as much time for analysis as for the test.
Analysis should classify every error as concept, careless or time, as the sibling guides describe, and record the topic. After four to six mocks look for a trend, not a single score. If you cannot find three hours on a weekend for a full paper, take two sections on one day and the rest on another. A broken mock is better than none, though timing practice needs at least some full-length papers.
For papers with a penalty for wrong answers, the APPSC objective schemes apply a deduction of one third of the marks for a wrong answer, as printed in notifications and summarised in our negative-marking guide. For police and DSC papers, the notifications and bulletins summarised in that guide did not mention a penalty, which is not a confirmation that none exists. So record two scores in every mock, one with no penalty and one with a one-third penalty, until you have read the notification for your exam.
11. A six-month calendar
A six-month calendar suits a candidate who already has the basics or who is preparing for an exam whose notification is expected within that window. Because no notification date can be assumed, treat the months as stages of your own preparation and not as predictions. The pattern below uses two hours on weekdays and longer weekend blocks.
| Month | Focus | Mocks | Revision |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Read the syllabus; first pass of the two highest-weight subjects; set up the tracker | One baseline sectional | Next-day reviews |
| 2 | First pass of the remaining subjects; start daily current affairs | One sectional per week | Weekly reviews |
| 3 | Finish the first pass; start error notebook seriously | Sectionals plus one full mock | Monthly mixed test |
| 4 | Second pass on weak topics; language and mental ability drills | Full mock every second weekend | Monthly mixed test |
| 5 | Second pass on all subjects; speed work | Full mock every weekend | Mixed reviews every two weeks |
| 6 | Revision only; error notebook; timing rehearsal; physical test training for police posts | Full mock every weekend, analysis in full | Mixed reviews, no new topics in the last two weeks |
The idea of a first pass and a second pass is simple. The first pass builds a map: you read each unit once, at moderate depth, and answer basic questions. The second pass fills holes: you go back only to topics where mocks or reviews show errors. A candidate who tries to master each topic in the first pass often runs out of months with half the syllabus untouched.
12. A nine-month calendar
Nine months is better for a candidate who is starting from a low base, who is working long hours, or who is preparing for two exams that share a core, such as Group-II and a Group-III or Group-IV post. It has a slower first pass and more room for revision cycles. The notification timing remains unknown, so the schedule should be adjusted if one appears.
| Months | Focus | Weekly hours (weekday plus weekend) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | Foundation: NCERT-level history, geography, polity, economy; English and Telugu basics; arithmetic | 11 to 14 |
| 3 and 4 | First pass over the full syllabus, with Andhra Pradesh-specific topics; one sectional a week | 14 to 17 |
| 5 and 6 | Second pass; current affairs consolidated monthly; full mock every second weekend | 17 to 20 |
| 7 and 8 | Exam-pattern work: timing, negative marking, section strategy; full mock every weekend | 17 to 20 |
| 9 | Revision and rest; no new topics; reduced hours the last week | 14 to 17, then lighter |
Notice that the weekly hours never exceed 20 in this plan. That is deliberate. A working candidate who holds 17 to 20 hours for nine months does more than one who peaks at 30 hours for three weeks and then stops. If your job has a busy season, such as a year-end close or a school examination period, plan for the weeks at the lower end of the range and catch up when the load eases.
13. How to handle leave days
Leave days are valuable and easy to waste. A day of casual leave spent entirely on study often produces less than a planned day with a mock, an analysis and a rest.
Use leave in three ways. First, take a single leave day before a full-length mock series or before a major revision block, so that you can do a full mock in the morning and its analysis in the afternoon without fatigue from work. Second, take leave around the examination itself, including travel: the notification gives the centre, and a long journey the day before is a source of stress that no mock prepares you for. Third, take at least one day of leave purely for rest if you notice the signs of exhaustion described below.
Do not save every leave day for the last month. If you are entitled to casual leave or earned leave, check your employer's rules early, and if you are in a government job and are applying for another government post, check whether any rule requires you to inform or seek permission from your department. That is a service-rule question the notification and your department can answer; this guide cannot. Also check the dates for certificate verification, since those are another place where a day of leave may be needed, as the examination guides explain.
If a leave request is refused, do not drop the plan. Convert a weekday to a lighter day, move the mock to the weekend and tell yourself that the next window is only a few days away.
14. Sleep: the part you cannot trade away
Sleep is not a luxury for a working candidate; it is the condition that makes the other hours work. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises adults aged 18 to 60 to get seven or more hours of sleep a night. The same page lists habits that help: a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, a quiet, relaxing and cool bedroom, turning off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bed, avoiding caffeine in the afternoon and evening, and avoiding large meals or alcohol before bed. It also says that enough sleep helps improve attention and memory, and it links insufficient sleep with impaired attention and memory, along with mood disturbances and a higher risk of accidents and chronic disease.
Turn that into rules you can follow.
- Choose a bedtime that gives seven hours, and defend it. If your job starts at 9 and you must wake at 6, the bedtime is 11 at the latest, which means the study session ends by 10.
- Do not extend study into the night to make up for a missed session. Move the session to the next weekend block instead.
- Keep a regular wake-up time on weekends, within an hour or so of weekdays, so that Monday is not a jet-lag day.
- Take tea or coffee before the afternoon is over, and use your own judgment on quantity.
- If you cannot sleep because of worry about the exam, write tomorrow's tasks on paper before bed and then stop; the next section gives other steps.
If seven hours are not possible on weekdays because of work and travel, that is a sign that the study load is too heavy for your life, not a sign that you should sleep less. Cut the plan from three hours to two, or from two to one, before you cut sleep.
15. Burnout, stress and movement
Working while preparing is stressful, and it helps to know the difference between ordinary tiredness and something more serious. The World Health Organization describes burn-out in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, with three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job or negativism toward it, and reduced professional efficacy. The WHO also says it is not classed as a medical condition and that the term refers specifically to the occupational context. That definition describes work, but its three signs are a useful check for any long, high-pressure effort. The signs are exhaustion, a growing cynicism and a feeling that nothing you do works.
The National Health Service in the United Kingdom lists signs of work-related stress in three groups: emotions such as feeling withdrawn or tearful, thoughts such as catastrophising or self-blame, and behaviours such as avoiding tasks, working longer hours or taking unexpected time off. Its practical suggestions include identifying triggers, focusing on what you can control, setting boundaries, building a support network, using calming techniques such as belly breathing, and short breaks, movement and healthy meals during the day. It recommends starting with one manageable change rather than trying to change everything at once.
For a candidate, that translates into a few habits.
- Keep one half-day or one full day a week with no study at all. If this feels impossible, the schedule is too tight.
- Take a ten-minute break after every 45 to 50 minutes of study, and use it to stand, stretch or look away from the screen.
- Move your body daily. The World Health Organization's fact sheet on physical activity recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week for adults, notes that any amount is better than none, and lists improved mental health, cognitive health and sleep among the benefits. A brisk 25-minute walk on most days meets that, and a Constable candidate's running already counts.
- Talk to someone. Isolation makes a bad week feel like a failure.
- Watch the three signs above. If you notice them for more than two weeks, reduce the hours for a week and, if low mood persists, speak to a doctor or counsellor.
If you ever feel hopeless, or think of harming yourself, please tell a trusted person or a mental-health professional immediately. This guide is not a substitute for medical care, and your health matters more than any exam.
16. Fitting the plan to each exam
The generic plan above needs three adjustments for the exams named at the start.
APPSC Group-II. The screening test splits 150 marks into five blocks of 30: Indian history, geography, Indian society, current affairs and mental ability. Rotate through the five blocks during the week so that none is neglected. For the Mains, the two 150-mark papers split into four sections of 75 marks, covering the social and cultural history of Andhra Pradesh and the Indian Constitution in one paper and the economy and science and technology in the other, as our Group-II Mains syllabus guide records. A candidate with limited hours can start the first pass with the screening blocks and add the Mains sections once the first pass is done, because the screening test is the gate. Also keep the profile ready: the Commission's web note of 29 September 2026 asks applicants to update their One Time Profile Registration from 30 September 2026, which our OTPR guide explains. Finish that on a weekend long before any notification.
AP DSC SGT. In the Mega DSC 2025 pattern summarised in our SGT guide, the paper has 160 MCQs for 80 marks in 2 hours 30 minutes, with three quarters of the marks from subject content and methodology of the primary subjects. The merit list adds 20 marks for the TET weightage, so a candidate without a valid TET result has a gap that no amount of DSC study can close. Plan the TET first if needed. Then give most of the weekday hours to content and methodology, and use the weekend for timed papers. The DSC pattern guide shows the part-wise structure.
SLPRB Constable. The preliminary test is qualifying only, with 40, 35 and 30 percent as the minimum for different categories, and the marks do not count toward merit. So the working candidate's priority in the written part is to cross the line with a safe margin, and then to prepare for the physical tests and the final written paper, which decides merit for the civil post. Divide your week into three streams: written practice on arithmetic, reasoning, general knowledge and English; physical training on at least three days; and a revision stream for the final paper. The age rule matters here too: our age-limit guide shows how the reckoning date of 1 July 2026 works, so check your own eligibility before you invest months.
In all three cases, the final word belongs to the notification for the cycle you are applying to, and not to a summary, including this one.
17. A weekly review ritual
Close each week with a 20-minute review, on Sunday evening. Answer four questions in writing. How many hours did I actually study, against the plan? Which topics did I finish, and which did I only start? What were the three most common errors in this week's practice? What is the one change I will make next week?
Keep the answers in one notebook. After a month, read them in order. You will see whether a problem is repeating, such as a subject always skipped on Thursdays or a mock always taken late, and you can fix it with a small change instead of a new plan. This ritual is also the best protection against the two big failures of a working candidate: silent drift, where weeks pass without anyone noticing, and the sudden restart that takes the form of a new timetable that cannot be followed.
Key facts for exams
- APPSC Group-II (2023 scheme): screening test 150 marks in five blocks of 30 (Indian history, geography, Indian society, current affairs, mental ability); Mains two objective papers of 150 marks each (150 questions, 150 minutes); computer proficiency test of 100 marks follows.
- APPSC objective schemes apply a deduction of one third of the marks for a wrong answer, under G.O.Ms.No.235 of 6 December 2016, as printed in notifications; confirm in the notification of your post.
- AP DSC SGT, Mega DSC 2025 pattern: 160 MCQs, 80 marks, 2 hours 30 minutes; merit is 80 plus 20 TET weightage; the 2025 documents did not mention negative marking.
- SLPRB Constable notification of 16 September 2026: preliminary test of 200 questions, 200 marks, 3 hours, qualifying only; age reckoning date 1 July 2026.
- CDC advice: adults aged 18 to 60 should get seven or more hours of sleep a night.
- WHO describes burn-out as a syndrome from chronic workplace stress with three dimensions: exhaustion, mental distance and reduced efficacy.
- WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week for adults.
- Dunlosky and colleagues rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility and rereading and highlighting as low utility.
Ten practice questions
1. In the Group-II screening syllabus of 2023, how many marks does each of the five blocks carry? (a) 20 (b) 25 (c) 30 (d) 50 Answer: (c). Five blocks of 30 marks make 150.
2. How many written marks are there in total in the 2023 Group-II scheme, counting screening and Mains? (a) 300 (b) 450 (c) 600 (d) 750 Answer: (b). 150 for screening and 300 for the two Mains papers.
3. What is the weightage of the written test in the Mega DSC 2025 merit for SGT? (a) 60 marks of 100 (b) 70 marks of 100 (c) 80 marks of 100 (d) 100 marks of 100 Answer: (c). The remaining 20 come from TET weightage.
4. For the SLPRB Constable preliminary test, what is the role of the marks? (a) They are added to final merit (b) They are qualifying only (c) They decide the PET score (d) They are used for age relaxation Answer: (b).
5. Which study technique did the Dunlosky review rate as low utility? (a) Practice testing (b) Distributed practice (c) Rereading (d) Self-testing with feedback Answer: (c).
6. In the Roediger and Karpicke experiments, which group did better on the delayed tests (two days and one week)? (a) Those who reread (b) Those who tested themselves (c) Both did equally (d) Those who studied the longest Answer: (b).
7. What did the Cepeda review conclude about the best gap between study sessions? (a) A single fixed gap is best for all cases (b) The best gap grows as the time until the test grows (c) Massed study is always best (d) Gaps do not matter Answer: (b).
8. How much sleep does the CDC advise for adults aged 18 to 60? (a) 5 or more hours (b) 6 or more hours (c) 7 or more hours (d) 10 or more hours Answer: (c).
9. Which is NOT one of the three dimensions of burn-out in the WHO definition? (a) Exhaustion (b) Mental distance or negativism (c) Reduced efficacy (d) Excess salary Answer: (d).
10. A candidate has a mock that was taken with a one-third penalty and one without. Why record both until the notification is read? (a) The penalty may or may not apply for the post (b) Both always apply (c) Penalty never applies (d) Marks are not needed Answer: (a). APPSC objective schemes print a one-third deduction, while the police and DSC documents reviewed did not mention one.
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a day do I need while working? There is no verified figure. One hour is enough to keep an exam alive, two is a common sustainable level and three suits the final stretch. Choose the level you can keep without cutting sleep below seven hours.
Can I prepare for two exams at once? Yes, if they share a core. General studies, English, Telugu and arithmetic are common to many AP exams. Keep the first pass shared and split the final months by exam.
What if my shift changes every week? Plan by blocks, not clock times. Decide the number of study blocks per week and place them wherever the roster allows. Keep the sleep rule fixed.
When should I start full mocks? A baseline sectional in the first month is useful. Full mocks every second weekend can begin around the third or fourth month, and weekly in the last two months, adjusted to your own progress.
Is it better to study in the morning or at night? The sources opened for this guide do not settle that. Choose the time when you are most alert and can keep a regular schedule, and put the hardest new material there.
Should I take leave just before the exam? Many candidates find a day or two useful for travel and rest. Check your employer's rules early.
What if I miss a week? Do the next review that is due and carry on. Do not rebuild the whole plan.
Related reading
- Preparing for an AP government job without coaching: study hours and method
- Negative marking, time management and mock strategy
- APPSC Group-II guide
- Group-II Mains syllabus and strategy
- Group-II prelims 90-day plan
- AP DSC SGT
- AP DSC exam pattern and marks
- AP Police Constable 2026
- AP Police PMT and PET preparation
- Common mistakes first-time AP candidates make
- Andhra Pradesh hub
- Telugu version: ఉద్యోగం చేస్తూ AP ప్రభుత్వ పరీక్షలకు ప్రిపరేషన్
- Telangana state guide (same syllabus for the general-studies sections)
- Telangana government exams 2026
When your weekly routine is in place, you can practise timed mock tests for APPSC, DSC and police exams on pareeksha.in, which offers 10 Lakh+ MCQs, 100+ Exams and 5,000+ Full-Length Mocks, and review your errors after each paper.
Sources and verification
Pages opened for this guide (as on October 2026), official and public-health sources first:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sleep pages (cdc.gov/sleep): seven or more hours for adults aged 18 to 60, sleep-habit tips, and the effects of insufficient sleep.
- World Health Organization, news item on burn-out as an occupational phenomenon in ICD-11.
- World Health Organization, fact sheet on physical activity: 150 minutes a week, benefits, and the advice to limit sedentary time.
- National Health Service (UK), Every Mind Matters page on work-related stress.
- Association for Psychological Science, news release on study strategies (summary of Dunlosky and colleagues, 2013).
- Cepeda and colleagues (2006), distributed practice meta-analysis, abstract on the University of South Florida repository.
- Roediger and Karpicke (2006), test-enhanced learning, abstract on the Washington University in St. Louis profiles page.
- slprb.ap.gov.in and psc.ap.gov.in home pages (opened; they did not display the text of the 2026 notifications or any Group-II notification).
- Exam patterns, ages and negative-marking positions are taken from our sibling guides, which cite APPSC Notifications 07/2026, 14/2025 and 11/2023 materials, the Group-II syllabus of 27 April 2023, SLPRB Rc.No.91/SLPRB/Rect.2/2026 of 16 September 2026, and the Mega DSC 2025 notification and bulletin.
Not verified: the number of questions in the Group-II screening test; whether any 2026 DSC notification has been issued; negative marking for DSC and police papers; the SLPRB 2026 notification text, which I did not re-open directly because the home page showed older notices; any rule on informing a current employer; and any figure for months needed. The study-science sources describe group results from experiments and reviews, not guarantees for any person. The weekly hours and month-by-month calendars are planning aids written for this guide and are not official.
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