Career

Hi Dhiru,
Taking coaching for UPSC civil services exam is your personal call. A coaching institute can guide you initially how to prepare for the exam and equip you with right material and books which are needed in different stages of the exam like prelims, mains and interview. But today, a lot of free materials is available online which is more than enough to crack the prestigious exam. You can refer to free resources like Mrunal, Inisight IAS, Vision IAS, etc. In recent years, there have been many top ranking students in the examination, which did not go for any coaching but focussed on the basic material with the right strategy. So, at the end of the day, it will be your personal call.

Yes, distance has no value compared to the regular course of the same. 99% of the recruiters recruit candidates from regular and with the good academic profile. So concerning this, I can say that distance education has no value. That too generation/ scenario keep on changing from time to time. So if you opt to do distance education, it may help you to earn some money or value to your career. But it will not work for you in near future says after 3 or 4 years since the trend is been changing, and innovative students are been emerging out. So I suggest you not to go for distance education. You may do the same course after 1 year, but do the regular course instead of distance.
As you have already got some work experience, you might have got some practical knowledge over your core subjects. Automatically it helps you to study the concepts and subjects easily. So you may give some gap to your work and concentrate on studies. Remember after years later, you can not be able to continue your studies as the age goes on and automatically concentration gets reduced. So I recommend you to go for the studies and soon after completion of the course you would get a fruitful job. The job you may find after your regular course, you may even demand more salary. We must always hear the decision of everybody, but we must choose the best among them which gives a good result. If you have chosen distance education, then there is another way to overcome that. You try to get certified from renowned institutes of you related studies by doing certificate courses. So do not get scared and kindly follow the above instructions.