SFG 2023 Level-2 | Program starts - 28th February 2023

Dear Students,

January is here and we are hardly 150 days away from Prelims 2023 schedule for 28th May 2023. Now is the time to shift focus from Mains Examination completely and ramp up your Prelims Preparation, especially for aspirants to whom Prelims has proved to be a stumbling block.

With Prelims 2022, the Commission has stood up to its reputation to be dynamic, challenging, and ever evolving. This year we have seen the continuation of conceptual questions derived from a rich balance of static and current affairs, there has also been a return of pre-2013 format with assertion/reasoning-based questions, a different format in pairing based question, questions on personality, and major sports events etc.

ForumIAS Select Focus Group (SFG) is a program designed on three parameters of a) discipline, b) rigorous and c) revision. Many of students who joined ForumIAS SFG were able to cross the Prelims hurdle for the very first time. While many students who write mains and appear for interview join SFG for a quick revision of prelims syllabus.

SFG has been able to keep up with dynamism of UPSC paper by striking a rich balance between static and dynamic content as well as ensuring conceptual development of every subject. Our performance can be validated with more than 2000+ selections in 2022 through our SFG Test series, we are hereby announcing SFG LEVEL 2 for the 5th year of one of our most innovative programs for successfully cracking the Prelims Examination.

SFG 2023 Level-2 will be starting from 28th February 2023, and this is the optimum time where one facing the prelims hurdle should get cracking on their Prelims preparation.

The Select Focus Group test series has been designed exactly to the demand of the Prelims examination. In Level 2 we will focus on:

1. Developing the art of solving prelims questions as well as helping in consolidating and revising knowledge base.

2. Complete chapter wise coverage from recommended and advanced textbooks.

3. Focus on developing analytical acumen through interlinked and multi - dimensional questions.

4. Focusing on pattern and difficulty which is similar to UPSC prelims paper.

5. We will be covering comprehensively both static and current affairs General studies Paper 1 portion for Prelims 2023 over 40-45 tests.

6. We will covering complete CSAT portion over 8 – 10 tests.

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 7AM every day 5 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 will be rejected and they will not have any opportunity to join the Program.
Tests are conducted daily, and results are provided within 8 hours of the test with Name and Rank list for candidates to evaluate their daily performance. On the basis of ranks, 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 2023 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.

Important Dates and Updates:

Registration for Entrance Exam Starts: 13th February 2023 | 5 PM

SFG 2023 Official Noticeboard: https://blog.forumias.com/sfg/

Entrance Test-2: 19th February 2023 | 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM

Entrance Test Results: 23rd February 2023 | 8 PM

SFG Program Starts: 28th February 2023 | 7 AM

Instructions to attempt the Entrance Test:Click Here

Please Note:

If you have any clash with any other exam, you will get an opportunity to write the second entrance exam. Only those students will have opportunity to write the specific entrance who will email other exam hall ticket to farej@flaviant.com.
SFG is available in both Online mode and Offline mode at Hyderabad, Patna, New Delhi Centers.
As a privilege, the students selected in SFG will be provided with test discussions, ~~while students selected in RLG will not be eligible to receive test discussions in either online or offline mode. RLG students will only receive solution pdfs and All India Rank.~~
Update: The student selected into RLG will be eligible to watch the online discussion on their portal only however students selected into SFG will be eligible to join the Test discussion in Online or Offline at New Delhi Centre.

Application Procedure 

The program will commence from 28th February 2023, admission to which will be entrance-based. The Entrance Test-2 will be conducted on 19th February 2023 in both online and offline mode. The results of the Entrance Test will be announced by 23rd February 2023. 
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.700+ GST.Candidates can register by visiting https://academy.forumias.com/sfg/ 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.  
100 students will be selected for SFG - 50 from online mode and 50 from students who gave the test in offline mode in Delhi, Patna and Hyderabad Centres. The remaining students will be selected for RLG. The ranklist of online and offline students will be published separately.
The candidate must pay the program fee as per the group he/she is allocated.

Here are some updates with respect to the SFG Entrance Test:

The test will be of 1 hour's duration. It will have both GS and CSAT questions.
There will be 50 questions. For every correct question, there will be 2 marks, and for incorrect questions, there will be a negative marking of -0.67
It is expected that candidates will have gone through the basic books and are aware of the concepts across different subjects.
For GS part, you can expect a judicious mix of questions from Polity (10 Questions), Economy (9 Questions), Modern History (9 Questions) and Indian geography (6 Questions). For Current Affairs (6 Questions), questions will be asked from the last 3 months from November and December 2022 and January of 2023.
For CSAT part, a total of 10 questions from Reading Comprehension, Reasoning, and Aptitude will be asked. The previous year's question paper from 2013 can be used as a reference point for preparing these topics.
The entrance test will challenge your problem-solving aptitude within the given time constraint

Note: Admissions to the SFG / RLG Group will only be on the basis of the merit position of the candidate in the entrance test. 

No admission will be granted to the candidate without appearing for the Entrance Test.  