TNPSC Group 4 Study Plan: 90 Days to the January 2027 Exam

Phase 1, weeks 1–6 (12 October – 22 November): learn. Read the Samacheer Kalvi textbooks unit by unit and make short notes as you go. Do General Tamil every day and 30–45 minutes of aptitude every day. End each week with a test on what you read. Our Group 4 books guide lists which textbook to open for each unit.

Phase 2, weeks 7–10 (23 November – 20 December): revise and test. Go back through your notes, one block at a time, with topic tests after each. Take one full-length timed test every Sunday and spend the evening reviewing it.

Phase 3, weeks 11–13 (21 December – 10 January): practise. Take three full-length tests a week (two in the exam week), revise from your notes and your list of mistakes, and go over current affairs. Start nothing new in this phase.

Keep the Sunday of every week for catching up. A plan you can actually finish beats a perfect plan you abandon in week three.

General Tamil has its own guide, with the question types for each unit: TNPSC General Tamil.

Most Group 4 aspirants study around a job, college or family work. Pick the timetable that fits and keep it for 13 weeks.

If you work (about 3 hours on weekdays):

If you study full-time (7–8 hours):

Studying at home, the trap is reading without testing. If a day has no questions in it, it has not really been a study day.

Tests are where marks are made in the last six weeks. How you use them matters more than how many you take.

1. Take them timed. From week 7, sit at least one 3-hour, 200-question test a week in one go, at 9:30 AM if you can, the same time as the real exam.

2. Review every wrong answer and every guess the same day. Write the fact you were missing in one line in a mistakes notebook.

3. Re-test weak topics within a week. A topic that keeps costing marks goes back into next week’s plan.

4. Watch your Part A score on its own. Falling below 60 in General Tamil means the rest of the paper is not marked, so you want a wide margin, not a narrow one.

Thervu’s Group 4 tests are timed, in Tamil and English, and marked the moment you submit, with the topics that cost you marks. Wrong answers come back in your revision queue until you get them right. On the free plan you get daily tests across the full syllabus; choosing a subject or topic, and tests built from your weak areas, are on Pro.

These rules are from Annexure IV of the notification. Read them now, not on the morning of the exam.

• Reach the venue an hour early. Gates close 30 minutes before the start, so be there by 8:30 AM for the 9:30 AM paper. Carry your hall ticket, a photocopy of your Aadhaar, passport, driving licence, PAN or voter ID, and a black ballpoint pen. Nothing else is allowed in.

• Never leave a bubble blank. Each blank costs 0.5 mark. Shade option E (“answer not known”) for a question you cannot attempt. Since a wrong answer costs nothing, an educated guess is never worse than E.

• Fill the summary boxes. Darken “Yes” if you answered all 200 questions, or “No” with the number left blank.

• Put your left thumb impression in the space on page 1; a missing impression also costs 0.5 mark.

• Sign page 1 and shade the question booklet number correctly. A missing signature, or a booklet number that is left blank, shaded twice or shaded wrongly, voids the whole answer sheet. So does using a pencil or any pen other than black ballpoint.

• Use the bells. A bell rings every hour and 10 minutes before the end. Use them as checkpoints.

A time split that works for most people (adjust it after your full-length tests):

Starting in November? Keep the last three weeks for full-length tests no matter what, and cut the learning phase instead. Cover General Tamil, Tamil Nadu history, the economy with Tamil Nadu’s administration, and polity first: together they carry 155 of the 200 questions. Science and geography come last.

When you clear the exam, posts are filled by rank. Our posts on cut-off marks and Group 4 salary and posts explain what happens after the result, and the TNPSC Group 4 exam guide covers eligibility and selection.