[Official] ForumIAS SFG 2021 - Level 1 Details and Important Updates
Important Update : LIVE Session for SFG 2021 - Level 1 General Discussion and Way Forward - 19th January 2021 at 4:00 PM. (Click Here)
To check the instructions on how to write SFG 2021 - Test 1 :
Important Dates:
Date of Entrance Test 2 - 3rd January 2021 (10:00 AM to 11:00 AM)
End Date Registration for Entrance Test 2 – 2nd January 2021 | 5 PM
Please click on the link for instructions regarding attempting the Entrance test.
Result of Entrance Test 2 –4th January 2021
Commencement Date of SFG Level 1 – 7th January 2021
Syllabus of SFG Entrance Test - Candidates can expect 30 questions equally distributed across History, Polity, Economy, Environment and Geography. Further 15 questions will from Current Affairs of October, November and December months and 5 questions from CSAT.
SFG Level 1 Calendar: https://go.forumias.com/sfg21-calender
SFG – How it works
- Select Focus Group (SFG) is a small group of students who are selected by ForumIAS every year for coaching them to clear the UPSC Prelims Examination. Every single candidate selected and retained consistently in the group with Top ranks has cleared the Prelims examination in the past.
- 100 Students will be selected for the Select Focus Group, through the SFG Entrance Test, who will be required to report at 7 AM every day 6 days a week to write an hour-long test based on a pre-planned syllabus, followed by a discussion on the same.
- Candidates who are unable to make it to the SFG, will be maintained in a Reserve List, who can also write the tests. Candidates who couldn't clear the cutoff and are unable to make it into both SFG and RLG can register for the 2nd Entrance Test
- Tests are conducted daily and results are provided within 8 hours of test with Name and Rank list for candidates and parents to evaluate their daily performance. On the basis of rankles, about 50% of bottom performing students from SFG are migrated to the reserve list on a weekly basis, and an equal number of students from reserve list (RLG) are moved into SFG.
- The decision of the management in this regard is final and not subject to dispute. Please note that this migration is done not keeping in mind the overall merit list but moving away bottom 50% from SFG and picking up an equal number of people from RLG.
- Thus those who may be getting more than RLG students, but are bottom 50 in SFG will be moved to RLG.
- Every month, the bottom 20% or so non-performing students are eliminated from the program to maintain the quality of competition.
- All candidates writing the CSE 2021 are eligible to apply for the entrance test.
This year we introduce some changes as to how we conduct the SFG exam. Please note that changes that we bring are always in response to the examination pattern, the student feedback and our own learning with respect to how to best enable a serious candidate to clear the exam
Covid 19 Update:Keeping in mind the Covid situation, SFG – 1 entrance Test and the SFG program will be conducted in the online mode only for the year 2021. SFG – Level 2 may be conducted offline as per government guidelines and this decision will be taken at a later date.
This year SFG will be conducted in two levels as below:
SFG Level 1 (Foundation)
The SFG Level 1 is for beginners, freshers, first-timers, or simply those who have not cleared the Prelims examination ever before. The objective of the SFG Level 1 Program is three things
- Students know the basic books and basic concepts back and forth
- Students complete coverage of the syllabus through self-study
- Students are thorough with previous years papers
- Students develop the discipline and time management skills that are needed to clear the exam
The SFG Level 1 Tests will have book based / text-based / notes-based tests. By the end of SFG Level 1, you can expect that your coverage of the syllabus is complete, and you have done previous years questions well.
SFG Level 2 (Advanced)
SFG Level 2 is for people who have completed the reading and revision of the basic books and are now ready to take on the exam. The objective of the SFG Level 2 is as below
- Developing problem-solving skills for solving analytical, conceptual and thought based questions.
- Developing skills to solve questions based on the application of the reading that they have done for Level 1
- Mastering the art of handling questions from unknown areas and applying concepts from their wider reading which is relevant for the Civil Services Prelims Examination.
- Developing time management skills, and being through with the syllabus
- Providing a reliable, time-bound framework for revision just before the examination.
Current Affairs:
SFG Level 1 will provide coverage of current affairs from January 2020 to November 2020.
SFG Level 2 will have complete current affairs relevant for the Prelims examination 2021 integrated into the course.
CSAT:
CSAT tests will be integrated with SFG Level 2. There will be no CSAT tests in SFG level 1.
Application Procedure
- Admission to the SFG and RLG are based on the rank of the candidate in the merit list of the SFG Entrance Test. Students can apply for the program by registering for the Entrance Test by paying a fee of Rs. 500+ GST. Candidates can register by visitinghttp://academy.forumias.com
- The candidate must appear for the entrance test on the designated date and time, subsequent to which he/she will be admitted to the Select Group or the Reserve List.
- The candidate must pay the monthly fee as per the group he/she is allocated.
Note: Admissions to the SFG / RLG Group will only be on the basis of merit position of the candidate in the entrance test. Entrance Test will be held on 23rd December 2020. Candidates must register for the SFG Entrance Test by visiting the website http://academy.forumias.com before12 PM, December 22nd.
No admission will be granted to the candidate without appearing for the Entrance Test.
Fee Structure and Details:
- The course duration is of about two months and fees is charged on a monthly basis. Fees for the full duration of the program cannot be paid at one go.
For students selected in SFG- Rs. 1300 + GST (18%) per month. For Payment,Click Here.
For students selected in RLG- Rs. 1900 + GST (18%) per month. For Payment,Click Here.
- Fees are to be paid once the candidate is selected for the program. A fee of Rs. 118 is to be paid additionally for the I-Card by all students.
Wishing you Success,
Always
ForumIAS Academy
https://forumias.com/channel/SFG-20-15th-July-2020
A few suggestions from a community member :
1. Instead of taking an entrance exam what can be done next time is judging the students on the basis of their first week performance and then grouping them in sfg and rlg. This would be a better way of assessing the seriousness of apsirants as well as save 500rs.
2. I feel the entrance test fee is too high and should be reduced to 200-250.
3. The rlg and sfg fee difference is understandable since that acts as an incentive but what is not justified is the steep price hike when tests are being conducted online with no printing cost being incurred by institute . If it's supposed to be a non profit venture , it should remain so.
4. Instead of the fee incentive , the incentive could have been the discussion videos which was exclusive to sfg.
These are my certain suggestions . I'm sure there are certain things on your end which I might not be privy to , so kindly excuse me.
Yoy guys are doing a good job and I commend you for it .
Will be joining SFG 2.0 . Hoping the experience remains as good as it was the previous time
No qualms , just we have high expectations from forum :)
@forumiasacademy @Jack__Sparrow can sfg/rlg test be attempted using android phone?
@forumiasacademy @AcademySupport
Paid the fee through UPI,amount deducted but no confirmation yet.
@forumiasacademy May I know exactly how this RLG /SFG program works and its detailed schedule?
Please join the Channel SFG 2.0
https://forumias.com/channel/SFG-20-15th-July-2020
Everything is there.
Underdog44,@forumiasacademy @AcademySupport
Paid the fee of SFG batch through UPI at 11am ,amount deducted but no confirmation yet.
Hello All :)
It has been great reading the comments :)
So many competing claims and demands, and the most vocal ones get all the attention :)
We have to accommodate the interest of everyone - including people who are looking for a quality program to crack Prelims.
While we understand that most people are thinking of SFG as the cheapest test series sorta thing, we like to clarify that this is not it.
Unlike Test Series, you cannot write SFG beyond the stated hours. Also, we are doing it online only this year because of Covid - absolutely no plans of scaling this up :)
We will be shifting our focus from now onwards to smooth conduct of the program. We would like to clarify that as of now there are no changes in time table / fee structure and how the program works.
All the suggestions that you have emailed / PMed / posted here are already available in our other products such as 10PM Quiz and Prelims Test Series ( such as writing as per convenience etc ).
With regard to the fees, we would like to ensure that we provide value worth more than what you pay.
Currently the fee charges is about 2000 for about 25 tests or so, which comes down to 80 per test or Rs. 1.6 rupee per question.
In Rs 1.6 / question, we will try to provide you best question AND best solution, best teacher , best IT backbone, that is possible within this cost range :)
We want you to know that the questions of Civils are not like Daroga / SHO / Lower Division Clerk exams and at least some thinking and depth has to go in making most questions.
We would love if some of you can send some good quality questions are ravi@forumias.com and we will compensate for it as well :)
Please send in your questions and solutions in about 50 words in Times New Roman Font 11 size :)
If we continue with this pricing issue, soon our students will be Top all exams except Civils Pre. We wont let this happen
Fee issues is a completely management decision and is based on several factors. It is likely to rise in the future as we work on improving the quality of IT experience, questions, answers, teaching etc. :) It is expected that candidates extract as much value out of it as they can, and get out of the exam cycle.
Three years later, the price may escalate by 100% if we focus on good discussions, so please try to clear the prelims this year itself so that you know how to clear Prelims and do good syllabus coverage so that you don't need something like SFG.
We will not be able to read, or follow up on them, and we will be focusing on smooth conduct of the program.
That itself is a challenge now given that Amazon Cloud Service People are telling is that 700+ students performing action in current Software architecture will cost us a few thousand dollars more than our current estimates. There are suggestions to stagger the crowd, but then again that is off the table because that will only increase cheating avenues.
We apologize to those of you who faced IT related issues, and will try to ensure that program runs smoothly henceforth.
Thanks for reading :)
P.S. For all updates please follow https://forumias.com/channel/SFG-20-15th-July-2020
All updates will be provided here or on email.
Hey, thank you for acknowledging the feedbacks. Can you elaborate the idea of community sfg?
I have no problem in scheduling some pdf uploads. But 10 PM Quiz is already being posted, you want to create a ranking mechanism in it? And it'll be free, but 10PM quiz already is!?
But 10 PM Quiz is mostly current affairs and sfg is a 50 question, syllabus based test. Just demarcating the difference.
Hoping to hear from you!
Cheers.
Of Course!
Look how wonderfully some people are doing it :)
People are already doing what you want to do :)
Why we talk so much about culture is because see, students are already in stress. There is already so much negativity in the world. If we need more negativity, all of us have relatives :)
When we were doing the forum well with good moderation, ( Like if you write Hindi, moderator would edit and type it in English ) we would have ranks like 1,2,3,5,7,8,9,10 from this forum itself - just check out 2013 / 14 years.
When discussion quality was unmoderated, it went down and down and we moved focus on the academy. We got ranks 1,3,5,7,8,10,11,13 from our academy. The whole good crowd of forum shifted to the academy.
All we did was provide a good environment. People get selected on their own.
With this community also the goal is to create a good environment and you will be surprised that among you people itself you will have at least 5 ranks out of Top 10 ranks of CSE 2020 and CSE 2021 .
When we get good discussions , Basically two things happen.
One, good people come. They are driven away when there is too much crap or negative things - even if genuine , and if it is against our academy or any other academy. Then it becomes a culture. You have a coaching problem, come and write something on forum.
More than that, a lot of people who are in remote areas and don't know anything about preparation, for the first time come to know about how actually people prepare. See this.
There is no learning more than peer learning. In the end you will get selected because someone here guided you ( not even taught you - but guided you ) . And it will be some peer of yours with the right buddhi.
See the kind of stuff people are sharing.
If we get the culture right, you will see that automatically the average level of the user of this website will rise like anything , and even you will benefit from it.
It takes a lot to develop a culture. Lot of time and effort.
So even if this looks totalitarian , anti-democratic it is important that we have a healthy and knowledge oriented culture here.
See, the academy will thrive completely on the basis of quality. We have realized that. If quality is good, we will have a good word of mouth reference. If people who are getting selected don't think that we were useful for them, they will not send their juniors, siblings and others to forum.
But for the community to thrive, we have to have limits on what we can say and what we cannot say, because we are not twitter or quora or facebook. We are ForumIAS.
And deep inside, we know that selection in this exam is very less, but do you realise that if you have good contributing people here, the readers minds will open. Once the minds are open they will crack one Top exam, even if something does not work out in Civils ( Think from an elder guardian perspective, not a student perspective on this part )
We all are the average of 5 people we interact with. And we want to meet good people here.
Let not one initiative of the forum monopolise the conversation. And let us not stoop below a level. Lets build something nice.
Now off to tomorrows Test, or else again server will crash tomorrow. Or something will go wrong!
Regarding justice and injustice on the forum , injustice will be there. Some people will take advantage. In offline also at least 300+ students didnt pay the fees and wrote tests until we came up with the App based attendance.
Aaj ka itna hi hai,
Bye Bye!
@forumiasacademy @AcademySupport
Paid the fee of SFG batch through UPI at 11am ,amount deducted but no confirmation yet.
Send mail to helpdesk@forumias.academy . They will help you out.
I HAVE REGISTERED FOR RLG. where is the schedule? i have paid the fees too but its not showing in my courses.Please help me
P.S. For all updates please follow https://forumias.com/channel/SFG-20-15th-July-2020
I HAVE REGISTERED FOR RLG. where is the schedule? i have paid the fees too but its not showing in my courses.Please help me
@forumiasacademy @AcademySupport same query. Please solve
https://forumias.com/channel/SFG-20-15th-July-2020
Everyone please listen, 2360 Rs for RLG and 1500 rs for SFG is not happening.
I am not at all in favor of this fee scenario. Please you guys, refrain from payment.
Economics is about supply demand, we the consumers need to unite in this fight against tyranny.You can get daily dosage of questions from anywhere and I am only asking forumias to reduce the payment amount,
Last year for offline it was 1800 and 1200, and for online it should be even less because they have no printing cost. Only a pdf needs to be created.
This is extortion guys, please speak up.
Non serious guys will drink booze for the money, but will protest against tyranny.
Have been part of this program. Cleared Prelims just because of this. Followed insights, 10pm and all that, but i cracked the exam finally because of it.
I am working with a coaching now in part time capacity, and I can see how coaching have been struggling to pay rents and maintain salaries of employees.
Especially coachings with physical centers are doomed if they don't survive this year. Good luck to you guys.
I was expecting that forum will disappear from Karol Bagh, but you guys have held up against all odds.
And don't listen to such guys who have not even conducted a college fest to know how much it costs to run an event, leave alone a program.
that college fest part is so Relatable :) cheers
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